Hillary to Take a Month Off

“[Senator Clinton] took some well-deserved R&R with her family last week, and she’ll be back here before you know it. In the meantime, she continues to work for New York and America, and she’ll be fighting harder than ever for the issues she has throughout her public life.”

-- Clinton’s Senate spokesman Philippe Reines


Clinton takes month off
By J. Taylor Rushing
Posted: 06/17/08 07:44 PM [ET]

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is taking a month off from Congress to recuperate after her marathon run for the presidency.
She is not expected to return to the Senate until July 7 or July 8 after the Independence Day recess, according to two Democratic sources.

Clinton’s Democratic colleagues in the Senate are taking a sympathetic attitude toward her extended absence, which comes after a grueling 18-month formal bid for the White House and, according to some calculations, a decade or more of planning and positioning since the days when her husband was president.

“People understand this is a transition for her,” Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) said.It is a transition from the possibility of the most powerful job in the world to the reality of a junior senatorship among 99 others in a chamber dominated by overweening egos that have already indicated they will make no special provision for her to ascend quickly to a leadership role.

Hillary needs to "recuperate?" People understand it's a "transition" for her? Grief! Then she complains about "sexism" in politics. It seems to me that everybody is "being nice to the girl." Hillary doesn't seem to mind.

This paragraph makes me wonder how important Hillary's votes really are when it comes to moving the liberal agenda of her party in the Senate:

The Senate’s Democratic leaders, Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Charles Schumer of New York, downplayed the effect that Clinton’s extended absence is having on their ability to move the party’s agenda in the upper chamber.

“It [her absence] has not had any impact on anything significant yet,” Durbin said of Clinton’s absence. “She has been great. She has returned every time we needed her.”

Hillary is getting preferential treatment from "the boys" and some girls in the Senate:

“If you get down to one or two [votes], obviously it could make a difference. But we’re not close right now, and everybody believes that Sen. Clinton is entitled to a little R&R,” said [California Sen. Diane] Feinstein.

Really? "Everybody" believes Hillary is "entitled" to rest and relaxation?

Man alive! Oops.