Hillary Pronounces: “No Woman Is Illegal”

Mrs. Clinton manages to play the gender card whilst campaigning for the illegal alien vote.

From the Las Vegas Sun:

Campaigning here, Clinton goes over Culinary’s head

The union backed Obama, but she’s pitching members, one by one

By J. Patrick Coolican

Fri, Jan 11, 2008

Just beneath the smiles and the hugs and the flash of cameras, Sen. Hillary Clinton played in-your-face politics in a visit to Las Vegas on Thursday.

A day after the 60,000-member Culinary Union endorsed Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for president, Clinton walked a northeast Las Vegas neighborhood heavy with Culinary workers and won the support of several…

Thursday was a day of free media for Clinton, who was followed by a horde of cameras and notebook-bearing reporters as she walked with Assemblyman Ruben Kihuen through a Hispanic neighborhood in his district.

Clinton was making an appeal to Hispanic voters, who make up about 40 percent of Culinary membership. Obama and Clinton are fighting hard for Hispanic voters. Both have invested heavily in the effort, airing Spanish-language radio ads and hiring dozens of bilingual organizers between them.

Clinton’s walk through the neighborhood wasn’t exactly a spontaneous stroll. The homes Clinton visited were the same ones that Kihuen canvassed with a Sun reporter last month

Many of the neighborhood residents either weren’t citizens or weren’t registered.

Clinton must have been a bit baffled, for instance, when Kihuen took her to visit Esperanza Solorio, who’s not a citizen. Kihuen explained her importance: She is a community activist who can move voters…

Clinton stopped at the home of Gilberto and Elizabeth Santana and their two young children. Elizabeth Santana is a housekeeper at Harrah’s who cleans 16 rooms during every eight-hour shift. She’s supporting the family because her husband was injured on the job and can’t work.

Gilberto Santana asked Clinton about immigration and said he hoped more of his friends and family could work in the country legally.

Clinton explained her proposal to secure the border but provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, provided they pay a fine and back taxes, and try to learn English.

The event gave Clinton some pitch-perfect TV moments. Sitting on the Santana couch, looking concerned as Gilberto Santana explained the family’s financial difficulties, Clinton said, “If we don’t take care of our children, we don’t care of our future.” She was once on the board of directors for the Children’s Defense Fund.

And, Clinton managed to get some residents to sign caucus pledge cards. A caucus, which requires participants to show up at their precinct meeting at 11:30 a.m. on Jan. 19, requires the campaigns to produce committed supporters. The pledge cards allow the campaigns to count supporters, and people who sign them are 80 percent more likely to attend the caucus than those who don’t, according to data amassed during previous Iowa caucuses…

And here are some excerpts of the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s version of this momentous event:

LAS VEGAS STOP: Clinton pitch hits home

Democratic hopeful goes door to door

By MOLLY BALL

People in the Las Vegas neighborhood saw all the cameras and trucks and buses and police on the streets Thursday, and they began to trickle out of their houses to find out what was going on.

Soon, as a sherbet-orange desert sunset filled the sky, they got their answer, as New York Sen. Hillary Clinton began walking up the street of low-slung houses near Eastern and Washington avenues, accompanied by the area’s representative, state Assemblyman Ruben Kihuen…

Gilberto Santana, 38, sat on the edge of a chair as Clinton sat on the brown leather sofa in his living room next to his wife and two young children.

Santana told Clinton how his wife, Elizabeth, a housekeeper on the Strip, was barely supporting the family single-handedly while he was unable to work for two months because of an operation.

“We’re sort of struggling,” he said. “We’re getting there, but you have to be strong to make it.”

Clinton asked the couple questions about their mortgage and his disability payments, and answered his questions about immigration and the war and health care costs.

Stroking the 4-year-old girl’s head, Clinton said, “I feel so strongly that if we don’t take care of our children, we don’t take care of our future.”

Santana said, “We are going to do everything we can to make sure that everyone in Las Vegas votes for you.”

That is the warm, earnest, human side of campaigning, politicians comforting people with detailed explanations of how they will solve their problems and flattering them with their presence.

There was nobody who didn’t know who the Democratic presidential candidate and former first lady was, even if they didn’t speak English or weren’t old enough to vote. They flocked to her for camera-phone pictures, and she posed in tableaux of adorable multicultural children…

She reiterated her doubts about the caucus process, which requires in-person, on-time participation.

“That is troubling to me,” she said. “People who work during that amount of time, they’re disenfranchised. People who can’t be in the state or are in the military, they cannot be present. … If people feel like there’s no reason to participate or they can’t, then that’s the same thing. So I think it’s a problem.”

Clinton and her busload of traveling press moved from there to the popular local Mexican restaurant Lindo Michoacan, where a “roundtable” that was actually square passed a microphone around to tell her people’s concerns about the mortgage crisis and foreclosures. She took notes and munched on tortilla chips.

In broken English, one woman told Clinton how she wasn’t making money as a broker anymore.

“I have no income at all,” she said. “So how will I survive?”

Choking up with emotion, the woman said, “In my neighborhood, there are brand-new homes, but the value is nothing. I’m glad you are here so I can tell you, because you’re going to be the president, I know.”

A man shouted through an opening in the wall that his wife was illegal.

“No woman is illegal,” Clinton said, to cheers…

Beautiful, is it not?

But doesn’t our nation have laws? And isn’t a President expected to enforce them?

Clinton must have been a bit baffled, for instance, when Kihuen took her to visit Esperanza Solorio, who’s not a citizen. Kihuen explained her importance: She is a community activist who can move voters.

So one supposes that neither Mrs. Clinton nor anyone on her staff reported this illegal alien to the proper authorities — because she is a woman.

And speaking of (probable) illegals, if the heavily featured Mr. Santana is so concerned about his family that he couldn’t find some other way to work while he is “disabled”?

He looks healthy enough to do something.

Maybe he could go to work for Hillary, that is if he isn’t already on her payroll.