Clinton also singled out the Hobby Lobby decision, and those she said applauded it. Clinton to women: Midterms a priority

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday urged Democratic women to prioritize the midterms, for the sake of advancing women’s rights — and also in defense of a larger progressive agenda.

“We’re here because there’s a movement stirring in America,” Clinton said, discussing paid sick leave, equal pay, affordable childcare and a living wage for fast-food workers. “This is a movement that is not waiting for Washington with its gridlock and grandstanding. This movement won’t wait, and neither will we.”


Clinton spoke as part of a full-day schedule of top Democrats addressing the Democratic National Committee’s Women’s Leadership Forum issues conference. Vice President Joe Biden spoke earlier in the morning, and President Barack Obama is scheduled for the afternoon.

Every word Clinton says and every move she makes is being parsed for meaning about her presidential plans, but Clinton urged the crowd not to forget the midterms.

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She sketched out a more extensive frame for this year’s elections than nearly any other Democrat has — looping together the effects of the resistance Obama faces from congressional Republicans, a vision of a stronger future and why the issues Democrats are pursuing relate to their present lives as well as the future.

“I know that they might not be as glamorous as presidential elections,” she said of the fall elections with a smile, leaning back from the microphone for a moment in her bright gold top.

Clinton was involved with the co-founding of the Women’s Leadership Forum in 1993, a history she referred to throughout the speech. DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, however, has expanded the women’s outreach at the organization in recent years, saying that she felt like the leadership forum had been treated mostly as “an ATM.”

Citing paycheck fairness, the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision and the resistance to renewing the Violence Against Women Act, Clinton said the decision is between Republicans and “leaders who will fight for women and girls to have the same opportunities and rights that they deserve.”

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Clinton singled out the Hobby Lobby decision, and those she said applauded it, for special attack. The decision allows employers with religious objections to opt out of providing insurance coverage for contraception.

“I think it’s fair to say that just as the Affordable Care Act was going into effect, the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision pulled the rug out from beneath America’s women,” Clinton said, in one of her biggest applause lines of the speech. “It’s a slippery slope when we start turning over a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions to her employer.”

Together, she said, there is only one question: “Will Congress do anything about it? That’s why midterms matter.”

Clinton hasn’t spoken much publicly about the impending birth of her first grandchild, but Friday, that’s how she anchored her argument.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about family, because as you know, I’m on grand-baby watch. And I think a lot about this new member of our family and what he or she can look forward to,” Clinton said.

“The Democratic Party is at its best, just like America is at its best, when we rally behind a very simple but powerful idea: family.”