It is a large room, jam packed with at least 2500 people weaving under chromium theatrical lights to plaintive disco with a commanding backbeat.

The stars enter, dressed in light summer colors, pale yellows and cool greys and it is a formidable group of women, all polished and powerful. Ellen Malcolm begins, looking like everyone's favorite field hockey coach with her curly hair, cherubic face and rimless glasses. Her style is folksy and evocative, "Baby you ain't seen nothin' yet," she says after recounting the 21 new women Dems in the house and 5 in the Senate, and the joint flips. It could be camel races in Morocco...yips and cries. Her goal is to have women collect $10 million to mobilize women voters by 2000. She's a serious player.

She introduces Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, the first woman Senator elected without a vast women's machinery behind her. Senator Mikulski looks startlingly as if she could be the mother of actor Rick Moranis. She's a feisty fire-plug, exhorting the troops as Mayor Daley might have once. A woman sitting nearby turns to me and recounts running into Senator Mikulski in Washington.

"Oh, you're Barbara Mikulski", she said, delighted to see her in person.

"SENATOR Mikulski", the Senator snapped and passed on. Just as I was pondering this breach in solidarity, she leaned in and confided that she had once run for Congress in Arizona. "I'm not real fond of Emily's List", she said. "They told me that they were only going to fund incumbents. Sounds like a good ol' girls club to me."

Senator Diane Feinstein called Emily's List her base of support in her $14 million campaign against Huffington and ended with a quip, "Two percent may be good fat content in milk, but it's not good for women representatives in the Senate." More cheers, ululations, then she ended with a curious nursery school litany, asking the crowd of smart, accomplished women, "Which candidate?" Crowd: "Clinton!" "Which Party?" Crowd: "The Democrats!" This is repeated several times, until the audience of independent, autonomous women were melded into a solid mass of uncritical political support.

Senator Patty Murray from Washington looked like a serious young student, with short carrot-red hair perched over curiously sad eyes. This women took on the pesticide lobby in her state and fought them for eight years until she got the strongest notification laws about pesticide spraying in the nation. She organized 5,000 mothers to defend pre-school programs, and before her honest dedication to, in her words, "ordinary women and their daughters and their aunts and their grandmothers," it was impossible to be cynical.

Senator Barbara Boxer followed her. This is the woman who demanded open hearings on the Packwood affair, challenging the boys club and preventing them from keeping their dirty little indiscretions against women out of the light of day. This is the woman who has gone toe to toe with Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey; the woman Bob Dole has vowed to "eliminate" from the Senate. She has "two little things" she wants to accomplish: "Re-elect Bill and take back the Hill." She thanked all her sisters in the House of Representatives and acquainted the audience with their courage in tackling the particularly mean spirited batch of boys in their dens. Her generosity to others won her huge applause.

Senator Carol Moseley-Braun, the African-American woman who stared down Jesse Helms and made him take down the Confederate Flag, is a highly articulate woman of grand bearing. She reminds the audience that it is the anniversary of women's sufferage, passed on the 18th of August in 1920, and tells the charming tale of Tennessee Senator Henry Thomas Burn, once a stalwart anti-feminist who changed and cast the deciding vote in favor of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote. When queried about why he changed, he grinned sheepishly and explained that his mother told him to.

These women are powerful, and curiously, unlike their male counterparts do not seem to radiate the core insincerity of the professional politican (Though Diane Feinstein, speaking out of the sides of her mouth like Jimmy Hoffa, gives one pause.) What sets them apart is the solidity of their integration -- their skills, their beauty, and their intelligence makes them somehow rarified and special, and yet their message is so consistently to THE OTHER: mothers, children, the helpless; fundamentals of education and health. It begins to feel like a sea-change to me, and some voice in my conciousness begins to chant, "Yes, give it to them for Christ's sake. Men have screwed things up long enough," and even though I am chastened by thoughts of Indira Ghandi and Jeanne Kirkpatrick -- women I could imagine personally dispatching a political operative with an ice-pick -- some part of me is still eager to see what they will do when they assume the power they are so assiduously hunting.

Tipper Gore is next, and somehow this woman I'm prepared to like least, who I remember trying to censor records, becomes my favorite. She has a perky boarding school manner and a charming humor, but of all the women she is the only one who has not and is not running for office. There is something risky about her. She gets herself out on limbs and one is never quite sure whether or not she can return. She means what she says, and has the courage, before this crowd and these other women to appear uncertain, searching, and unsure. My heart goes out to her and I have to admit, that no matter how much I disagreed with her top-down solution to content in records, it took courage to say, "Hey guys, something is WRONG here. Our children are listening to lyrics which are blatantly sexual, violent, and anti-social. Are we just going to ABANDON them to the machinations of unsavory people trying to become rich and famous?" I agree with her and while I would not have pursued it the same way, her approach was so contrary to political correctness that it felt authentic to me, inspired by caring about her family and children -- a subject about which I am prepared to cut people generous slack.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is next, and as she stands there, basking in the applause and approbation of the crowd, she strains to appear serious; strains to keep their enthusiasm within dignified bounds. But it continues, washing over in waves, cheers and cries, and "go girls" and waving hands. All the love and respect these women can muster; all their personal and pent-up frustrations and hopes have been exemplified by this fiercely independent and intelligent woman who has been tested in ways which would have broken myself and most people I know, perhaps. As the applause annoints her continuously, it happens, and forgive me for speaking this way of the wife of the President of the United States of America, but Hillary's face breaks out into what would be labeled in any other place and time, as a shit-eating grin. She is happy! And proud! And it breaks out of her face like a light and the crowd sees it and goes crazy.

Then Hillary runs down a list of why IT MATTERS who's in the White House and who's making decisions: She cites 10 million new jobs, lowest unemployment and inflation in 27 years, and explosive opportunities for women in busines. She reminds us of the increased minimum wage and how 10 million of the nation's poorest employed (two-thirds of whom are women) will get sorely needed raises due to her husband's efforts. She cites the Kennedy-Kassebaum Health Care Reform Bill and the investments in Head Start, better public schools, Family and Medical Leave Act. People are reeling, but she's continuing, reminding us of the President's stand against the NRA, who tried to defeat the Brady Bill and the Assault Weapons Ban. The President signed a Violence Aainst Women Act, and while we are still reeling from this list, she plays it backwards, asking us to consider what we would have lost had Clinton NOT been there, and pauses to cite the consequences of those accomplishments not being made.