Lois Romano of the WaPo profiles Hillary Clinton’s inner circle (with an all-women photo on the front page):


“Fifteen years after Clinton first brought these women together at the White House, the “board” has officially reconvened to help map her unprecedented effort to follow in her husband’s footsteps. They are acutely aware their work is making history. Once seen as a tight little sorority, today the group — happily self-described as ‘Hillaryland’– is at the center of a front-running presidential campaign. Never have so many women operated at such a high level in one campaign, working with a discipline and a loyalty and a legendary secrecy rarely seen at this level of American politics.


“Older and tougher, they have formed a closely knit Praetorian Guard around Clinton that plots strategy, develops message and clamps down on leaks. But their extraordinary protectiveness also contributes to an ongoing perception of insularity around the candidate and the campaign.”


Despite the decidedly elite (but not mentioned in the story) background of Mandy Grunwald, whose father was Henry Anatole Grunwald, ambassador and Time magazine honcho, or Lissa Muscatine, the first female Rhodes Scholar, Romano offers this:


“Like others in Hillaryland, Solis Doyle has a compelling personal story. She was the sixth child of Mexican immigrants from Chicago; her mother worked in a “horrible” industrial laundromat, she says, and her father worked three jobs. ‘My father died never making more than $18,000 a year,’ she says.


“She is the person who speaks to Clinton several times a day and the one who declares when a decision has been made. “I’m a closer,” says Solis Doyle.


Romano quotes one of the members of Hillaryland saying, “A lot of us are from middle-class-even lower-middle class-families, people who wanted to make it.”


Romano paints Hillary as a boss who has “cultivated a nurturing culture or collegiality and loyalty.” The male insiders are introduced at the end of the long article.


Expect more of the same in the months to come.