Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton blew in and out of Connecticut Monday, wowing an overflow crowd of close to 1,000 while leaving one questioner with an empty feeling about her health care programs, especially those earmarked for seniors.
Melissa McClain, right in photo, and Sara Holland drove up from New Haven’s Morris Cove neighborhood to see the candidate in person. They said they were quite happy with both her stump speech and the answers to the half-dozen questions Clinton took during what was billed as a morning town hall-style meeting.
Stephen Shapiro of Middletown asked Clinton what plans she has to make health care better “for all Americans.” Shapiro said. He said he was representing the American Association of Retired Persons; he wore a red AARP T‑shirt, which stood out from the blue and yellow Hillary T‑shirts sprinkled liberally throughout the crowd.
Clinton’s answer included giving Medicare the right to negotiate for lower drug prices. She said the nation needs to have programs for people not eligible for Medicare and called for money to help those who are caring for aging and ill relatives and friends. She said it would cost $300 billion to replace them.
“It was an empty answer,” Shapiro said. “She skirted around the question. She doesn’t have a plan” for issues such as long-term care for older Americans.
Clinton’s speech rang true, however, with the majority of people who packed the gym at the Learning Corridor, a learning institution in the shadow of Trinity College and near Hartford’s troubled Frog Hollow neighborhood.
The crowd, some of whom stood out in the cold for up to two hours, seemed to come more from Trinity than from the neighborhood. The crowd was predominantly young, white and enthusiastic.
While waiting for Clinton, who arrived nearly an hour after the scheduled 9:30 a.m start time, the crowd was whipped up by State Rep. Kevin Roldan, a Hartford Democrat, and State Rep. Jason Bartlett, a Danbury Democrat.
Bartlett seemed to borrow a page from Sen. Barack Obama’s stump book when he led the crowd in a dozen or more stanzas of the mantra, “Hillary is one of us.”
State Comptroller Nancy Wyman and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal introduced Clinton, as the cheering bounced louder and louder off the metal barrel room and cement sides of the gym, until reaching a peak as Clinton stepped to the podium.
Neither Clinton nor Blumenthal and Wyman, seen introducing her in photo, mentioned Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s backing of Obama or mentioned President Bill Clinton except in passing.
Hillary Clinton appeared genuinely moved by Wyman introduction, in which she said she was “willing to put my precious grandchildren” in Clinton’s hands.
Clinton touched on the war in Iraq and the last State of the Union speech to be given Monday night by President Bush, saying she knew Bush would say the state of the union is strong.
“With due respect, come out on the road with me,” she invited Bush. She said she believes that health care is a moral right; that people have the right to organize and bargain collectively; that the education system is not just about taking tests, but unlocking children’s imaginations, and that anyone who wants to move a job from Connecticut oversees should not get tax money to help do it.
“I believe we have to start over and scrap No Child Left Behind,” she said, talking about the Bush education initiative.
Those precepts and others lived up to the expectations carried into the meeting with New Haven’s McClain and Holland.
“I’m ready to see a woman in the White House,” McClain said. “She’s been there. She knows Washington. I am with her on the issues,“McClain said.
Holland said she is a supporter of children’s education and thinks Clinton has the answers. McClain said she was happy with Clinton’s answers, but said she wasn’t necessarily going to work for her.
She said New Haven, with its populations of haves and have-nots, is just the kind of city that needs Clinton as president.
Clinton left the state after signing dozens of posters, heading for a date in Springfield, Mass., for which she was undoubtedly late.