I don't know about everyone else, but my schedules don't give any insight into how I'm feeling.   Schedules are pretty mechanical by nature.  What exactly were people expecting to find that would have spoken to Hillary's inner self?

4:00 Meet with Sen. Kennedy

5:00 Stew in frustration over failure of health care plan

6:00 Dinner

Seems like sort of a long shot.  I thought the relevance was to helping assess Hillary's claims for her experience as First Lady.

MIchelle, you can't have it both ways. You (unintentionally) captured perfectly the media's treatment of this. Start with an honorable, principled look down your nose at the foolish media scrum, then shrug "oh well" and dive right into the muck anyway. All of you keep citing "the enduring sense " and other indefinable, meaningless phrases, perpetuating the same storyline you pretend to criticize.

If you'd left off the last paragraph, you might have had something here. But that was just a typical squeamish way of trying to say something without standing for anything. Doesn't cut it, at least for me.

I see your point Michelle. But I don't characterize my unease with Hillary as dealing with an enigma, I don't find her difficult to understand.

I characterize my unease, after watching her for several years now, as: Hillary is about Hillary, first and foremost - not exactly mysterious stuff.  My unease comes from never seeing her stand up for a progressive cause once and yet never owning up to that.  Is she a conservative?  Say so.  Is she really voting her beliefs in the Senate or hoping Rush Limbaugh doesn't call her names? Does she really think anything she does will change that?

I could be wrong - who knows, Hillary may actually believe we need a Constitutional ammendment to ban flag burning.  She also really might, even as  the self proclaimed health care expert - really believe that the banking system needed that bankrpucy bill, even though 80% of people who file for bankrpucy (as surely she knows) are forced to so from unpaid medical bills and that that bill hurt the poor and middle class more than anyone (and that commercial banks made record profits last year).  

Who knows?  Maybe she really did believe that she was just giving George Bush more diplomacy tools (?) in her Iraq vote, even though it was entitled "Authorization for Use of Force in Iraq."

She comes across as either incredibly craven or right wing, but her words and self-image do not match those actions. Like millions of us out here, I experience that as a disconnect, not an enigma.

wandrey -

I don't know if you'll see this, but I wanted to make one note on:

"My unease comes from never seeing her stand up for a progressive cause once and yet never owning up to that"

She seems to have worked very hard on supporting local agriculture and local food systems in rural NY, championing programs that linked farmers to local consumers including hospitals and universities. My understanding, though it may be incomplete, is that she won the respect of many otherwise conservative rural New Yorkers by her efforts on their behalf. That is a very progressive cause.

One of my biggest concerns with her is that she never seems to own up to the good things she's done either. She should be trumpeting this sort of work as a perfect example of actually getting something done in an area where Americans are increasingly supporting local food supplies, yet it never gets play, even on her website.

Just thought I'd point that out, since I'm not sure things like that trickle down to NYC.

Well literatehobo - thank you, I haven't always been clear or fair in my critiques of Senator Clinton, I didn't know that and I live in NY, shame on me.  Too much emotion in this election.  

Why didn't she shout to the rooftops about such terrific work? In this election? I always wonder - because of these other cringe-worthy votes that made my blood boil - if it's because she's afraid she's going to be called names?Or alienate the global warming deniers and other blue collar folks who are suspect of environmental busy-bodies?  I know she had to keep her head down and was held to different standards, I wish she would have risked once, just once.  Because she couldn't even eek out that once, it really aliented me from her.

I don't care about her schedules, her laugh, her heart, her gender - I care about her votes.

Who cares about her schedules?  I don't know, probably the same people who care about hers and Obama's travels:

Brom CNN Breaking News:  "Hillary Clinton's passport file was breached in 2007, Secretary of State Rice told Clinton, according to the senator’s office."

wandrey,

Without sounding like an advocate, here's a couple links for you from Clinton's own Senate site, showing her progressive work on agriculture issues. Not doing this to push her candidacy, just thought you'd be interested since you haven't heard about these.

clinton.senate.gov/.../details.cfm

clinton.senate.gov/.../record.cfm

clinton.senate.gov/.../details.cfm

I have no idea why she isn't playing this work for all it's worth. But it's a shame she isn't.

I find these Senate sites pretty helpful in understanding what the candidates think is important. They can't control whether the media care about a press release, but the release itself tells us what they want people to hear. Reading through the release index for a particular person gives a really good look at their priorities.

clinton.senate.gov/.../index.cfm

wandrey,

one more for you:

clinton.senate.gov/.../details.cfm

This one specifically notes her work in attempting to increase support for use of EBT machines at farmers markets, which should be a topic near to your heart and work. My market is currently going through the transition to using EBT, and it would be nice to have more support in doing so.

I'll stop now.

Oh no, fabulous - thank you so much literate.  It keeps me out of the melodrama mode and in to concrete things that matter.  

Watching Hillary court the supposedly hard right farm community in upstate New York has been something I wish she'd bragged about more.  It's been masterful - and sincere! And real!  She could never have won, especially the margins that she won by, without her farmers.  Really, her consultants should be flogged, what are they all thinking?  Why in God's name didn't they put a team of them in ads for her?

I have two dear friends I literally love like family here in the city who are so upset by Hillary not being in the winning seat and so drunk on Obama-hate, they will not even return my calls. It's very sad, upsetting.

I went to church in Harlem with another set of friends last weekend. One older woman almost stared a hole in the back of my head and shook her head in disgust at me - not because I'm a six foot white lady, but because I had an Obama button on my purse and my son had one on too (he's three and a half and says "Obama is your Mama" alot, he likes that word, what kid wouldn't? He's like a pardoy of an Obama ad - blonde haired, blue eyed sitting in church with his black godparents  with his Obama button on - I kind of wanted to vomit myself).

WHat are we going to do?

PS My 69 year old Mom (nice Presbyterian lady) and 72 year old stepdad (retired Republican fire chief, a nice law and order white man) are in Eugene, Oregon today screaming with all the kids and latte drinkers and kool-aiders (what else do they call us? Obamabots?) for Obama.

I started out being inspired by this campaign season, by the diversity of candidates on both sides and the actual democratic processes in action. Now I'm just disallusioned by the inability of the entire country (public, media, and candidates alike) to engage in substance. It's pathetic that neither remaining Democratic candidate can think of one single issue on which to offer a new plan, idea, or policy that would distinguish them from their rival. They're both playing identity politics, and people are taking sides like it's a sporting event. I want no part of it.

I cast my vote back on Super Tuesday and I am once again irrelevant until November, or at least until a nominee is settled and I can look forward to attending events from McCain and his rival to help me make a decision. In the meantime I find that TNR is 90% horse race and partisan side-taking, and 10% substance and analysis. BLoggers and commenters alike.