Selon Heilemann, Clinton n'a pas seulement été une excellente partenaire d'entraînement pour Obama, elle a également acquis une nouvelle stature. Acculée au mur, cette femme coriace a combattu jusqu'à la dernière extrémité, amassant autant de votes que le vainqueur. Je cite le journaliste dans le texte :
She is bigger now than any woman in the country. Certainly, she is bigger than her husband. And although in the end she may wind up being dwarfed by Obama, for the moment she is something he is not: fully, poignantly human.
Dans son article, Heilemann révèle qu'Hillary et Bill Clinton sont profondément pessimistes quant aux chances de Barack Obama d'être élu à la Maison-Blanche. Je le cite à nouveau dans le texte :
It would be hard to overstate the private pessimism that Hillary and Bill Clinton feel about Obama's general-election prospects. Or the irritation they feel about the dismissive attitudes of some of his advisers toward her coalition, as evinced by the words of Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, after the Pennsylvania primary: "The white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections ... This is not new that Democratic candidates don't rely solely on those votes."