The XX Factor: What women really think.

But how DID Hillary become a US Senator?

Meghan,

Chris Matthews was more interested in being nasty than being right. But isn't there something to the fact that the reason Hillary's a US Senator, the reason she's a candidate for president...is the fact that her husband was president at all?  Reverse the first paragraph of that Gloria Steinem article  again and ask yourself this: Imagine a talented man who falls in love while at Yale law school student and decides to follow his wife to a very provincial city - Little Rock, say - where he makes a decent but hardly national reputation for himself. Then he follows his more important wife to Washington, where for eight years he works as a full-time spouse. Is such a man qualified to be a senator, let alone president? I know that this is the old reductive narrative, I know we all know this, and I know it's reverting to the basic facts, but personally I find the fundamental presumption of Hillary's candidacy impossible to get away from.

The thing I don't get about Hillary, and never have, is why she is championed by feminists like Steinem. To me, a woman who owes her fame and reputation to her husband - and we would never of heard of her, a Little Rock lawyer and the governor's wife, if it weren't for his own New Hampshire surprise -doesn't inspire, however smart and talented she may be. I can see that there would be other reasons for New Hampshire women to vote for her, but because she's a role model for women? I don't get it.

For the record, I'd also like to note that everyone I know, even the most apolitical, is suddenly talking about American politics. Personally, I've found it hard to care deeply about the primaries, which always seemed to be months away. But—pathetically, predictably—now I'm gripped, absolutely gripped, by the whole thing, am even scouring YouTube for the latest soundbites. There's an actual race! There are interesting issues! Sexism! Racism!  I can't be the only one out there who feels that way - might this be the election that gets the non-voters out to vote?