Hillary Clinton Is Every Character From “The Baby-Sitters Club”

She’s a little bit of everything all rolled into one.

Saying Hillary is Tracey Flick from Election is not just boring; at this point in the cultural conversation it’s lazy. She’s got dimensions! Layers! It is much more interesting and also more accurate to argue that she is every single character from Ann M. Martin’s break-out hit series of the ’80s, “The Baby-Sitters Club.”

Hillary is:

KRISTY

Fearless leader. Softball player. HARD WORKER. Not overly concerned about her appearance. Has a dumb boyfriend for show but people suspect maybe that’s not where her affections truly lie. Kristy is the idea woman of the group, the executive, the person who gets shit done. If a House committee investigated Kristy, she would deadpan and grit her way through it, and she might appear exasperated but she would always — eye on the ball, Kristy — remain polite.

MARY ANNE

A little prudish, a little shy, but cheerful and optimistic, Mary Anne is a born Secretary who totally grows up to be a Methodist Sunday school teacher. She starts each day with Bible study and can discuss First Corinthians eagerly and in detail. She might well restrain herself from eating cheesecake, though she would look at a slice with the kind of longing most people reserve for Idris Elba.

CLAUDIA

Although Claudia is responsible — you have to be, to be Vice President — she also has a DGAF streak that extends to her choice of colors and secret stashes of junk food, and, yes, bleeds into a certain sloppiness when it comes to email. You know she carries hot sauce in her bag. And you know, after handling Mean Jeanine and that brat Betsy Sobak, she’s tough enough to take on Putin.

DAWN

Dawn is, let’s face it, kind of bland. She’s the kind of person who would wear a monochrome pantsuit every day because it’s just easier.

STACEY

New York, represent! Holla!!!

MALLORY

Earnest, intellectual, responsible Mallory is a policy wonk, the kind who takes crates of books with her to her dorm room at Wellesley. Later, in grad school, she’s flattered, if a bit flustered, when a popular, almost too charming guy looks past the glasses and the no-makeup, and asks her to marry him. Twice. (Take that, Dorothy Parker!) She says yes after he buys her a house she’d admired and asks one more time, though. You have to admit that’s some top-shelf romance. But she insists that he’s going to have to take her career seriously too, not merely his own. At some point.

JESSI

Jessi is the kind of focused, disciplined person who forgoes dessert even in a celebratory group setting, instead ordering fruit with shaved coconut on top, because she can delay gratification like a beast.

Ester Bloom is an editor at The Billfold and a total Mallory.