Will Chicago's own, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, announce her candidacy for the presidency when she speaks at Bryn Mawr College on July 9? I got an excited call from my niece Jackie a few days ago, excited to get a ticket to go. She' s a junior at the Seven Sister school with a love of architecture and real estate, hoping to follow in Donald Trump's footsteps as she also takes courses at Trump's alma mater, U. Penn, part of the Four-College Consortium.
Why wouldn't Madame Secretary Clinton announce in the crucial electorally vote-rich swing state of Pennsylvania in a Philadelphia suburb near the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? Where better to make this "herstoric" announcement than at a women's college in a picture perfect setting? After all, she's the one who got rolling the Women in Public Service Project in 2011. She'll be speaking at the Women in Public Service Policy Institute held on the Bryn Mawr campus.
As for the Republican plan to paint Clinton as too old for the job, they must not have been paying attention in their high school English classes. Poet Robert Browning wrote, "Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be." Yes, the best is yet to be. It's surprising two-term president Ronald Reagan, when he ran at the same age as Hillary will be when she runs, didn't use that line in his two successful campaigns. No doubt he thought of it privately.
Although President Reagan demurred in a debate from making an issue of his opponent's youth, don't count on Hillary doing the same. Won't the GOP ever learn that you don't court women voters by harping on a woman's age?
In sheer numbers, the Baby Boomers, Clinton's generation, still rule. That translates into more registered voters and more likely voters who are Boomers.. And don't count out campaigner-in-chief, her husband President Bill Clinton. She will also have the endorsement of the sitting president Barack Obama together with First Lady Michelle. Among the four, Ivy League galore. A couple of Harvard and Yale degrees with Princeton and Columbia in the mix, too.
So we'll see if the best is yet to be. But don't be surprised if Hillary Clinton announces her historic candidacy for the presidency of the United States just five days after our nation celebrates its birthday and its independence in the City of Brotherly Love.
Lest we forget, women have had the right to vote in the U.S. less than a hundred years. When both my grandmothers were born and my great-grandmothers whom I was very lucky to get to know, women still didn't have the right to vote. Sad but true.
My paternal grandmother was 21 years old before women got the right to vote. When my own mother was born, the right of a woman to vote was barely a decade in the making. It took a constitutional amendment -- the nineteenth -- before women gained the right to vote in 1920. Shame on those who don't vote.
Let's make our ancestors proud, especially the distaff side, with a firecracking kickstart in our cradle of liberty in Philly on July 9. Then, on with the presidential debates. May the woman win!
Lonna Saunders may be contacted at lonna2@msn.com.