Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton went shilling in San Francisco on Tuesday, thrilling a tech gathering by advocating for their importance in politics, pushing for net neutrality, and throwing a bone to her prospective 2016 candidacy by intoning that she hoped the United States would join “the ranks of those countries… which have overcome the hurdle to gender equality.”
Clinton said that running for political office has been made more difficult by information technology and social media, adding that they pose “very difficult hurdles.” She asserted that the media is culpable for “looking for the best angle, the biggest hit, the biggest embarrassment, instead of — in a democracy — what we should be doing, which is giving people information.”
Clinton appeared at the Salesforce.com convention called “Dreamforce,” as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. 130,000 people are expected to attend the convention, which is headed by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, one of the biggest donors to the Democratic Party. Roughly 1,000 people attended Clinton’s speech.
Benioff gushed that Clinton represents “everything that is good” about children’s advocacy. He mentioned her efforts for “Too Small to Fail,” a project with the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland. Clinton gushed right back, hailing Benioff as a great philanthropist.
Clinton has been romancing the Bay Area, appearing at numerous tech gatherings in recent months. As she spoke of net neutrality — that governments and Internet providers should provide equal access to all content – she stated that keeping the Internet free is “an ongoing struggle with more oppressive regimes around the world… who want to be able to shut it down at will (and) interfere with people’s freedom… (It’s) going to be an ongoing debate. I hope our side wins.”
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