The XX Factor: What women really think.

A Feel-Good Campaign?

I admit, this Robin Morgan letter got me a little bit. Particularly her asking if we can't get behind Hillary because she isn't as "likeable" as we want her to be. My lack of affection for Hillary always surprises me: Am I so deeply in the post-feminist generation that the first plausible female candidate leaves me totally cold?

But then pretty quickly, Morgan lost me. Obama is "papering over real suffering" in the promise of a "feel good campaign"? Is she serious? Has she read all the e-mails about Obama the Muslim? Did she hear Bill Clinton compare him to Jesse Jackson, with no correction from his wife? Does she honestly doubt that millions of Americans would never vote for Obama just because he's black?

And then there's that annoying second-wave notion that only certain women are real women, i.e., Condi Rice and Elizabeth Dole don't count, Golda Meir was really a man, and you're a traitor to your gender if you think otherwise.

By the end of the letter, I came closer to understanding why I have so much trouble rallying for Hillary. She doesn't identify anymore with the part of herself that's a pathbreaker, a radical, a free spirit. Instead she is much more attuned to the side of herself that, as Morgan sourly puts it, feels she's being constantly "silenced" by the big boys.

Obama could do that too. But he doesn't.