We could start at the south end of Broad Street where, every New Year’s Day, men in skirts and sequins known as Mummers march and dance and twirl and sometimes also make fun of trans people and Native Americans, among others, reminding the world that here, in the cradle of American democracy, there are plenty of people who might like what they hear when the Republican candidate for president says, “We cannot afford to be so politically correct anymore.”

We could walk through the site of the Lombard Street riots, where, in 1871, white Philadelphians, enraged that blacks had won the right to vote, shot and killed the civil rights campaigner Octavius Catto, a black man who, historians note, had been on his way home to pick up ammunition for the newly purchased gun that was part of his national guard uniform.

Maybe we’ll stroll up Locust Street, toward the jewelry stores and the expensive boutiques, where we’ll pass Planned Parenthood and the protesters. Once, one of them once yelled at my friend Jamie, when she was pushing her stroller, on her way to the gym, “Thanks, Mom, for not killing your baby,” and Jamie yelled back, over her daughter’s wails, “I’m pro-choice! Do you think a teenager should be forced to do this?!”

We could make our way to Queen Village, my neighborhood, leafy and lovely, with brick rowhouses, little cafes and hidden parks. We’ll walk to Monroe Street, and my first apartment — two bedrooms, hardwood floors, central air, dishwasher and garbage disposal and a shared garden in the back, $600 a month in 1994.

I set up my metal-legged folding bridge table in the second bedroom and wrote my first novel on a Mac Classic, imagining that I’d find an agent and sell a book, and someday, my dreams would come true and I would be happy.

I wonder if Mrs. Clinton ever thought like that. If Bill wins the election. If he wins another term. If I become a senator. If I become president, that would be enough. People slam her for her drive. They say she is all raw ambition, no heart; a soulless automaton with her eyes eternally on the prize who will do, or say, or forgive anything to get what she wants. I’ve wondered, when I’ve been called ambitious, whether there’s any acceptable way for a woman to desire, any way to say I want, where the object is anything besides a man or a baby, and not have it be perceived as a threat.

When Mrs. Clinton was in Philadelphia for a fund-raiser in January, I brought my daughters, because this was history, and I wanted them to see it. Upstairs, we had our picture taken. The three of us had ended up in black-and-white dresses, and the candidate smiled at our outfits, as my 8-year-old said, “I hope you win!”