If anything, the sexism in media — very real, very nasty — was her biggest asset — it pissed off enough women into going to the polls and voting for her. It’s why she won New Hampshire, for example.

Certainly plenty of people refused to vote for her because she is a woman, although I suspect more people are going to refuse to vote for Obama because he is black. But those people wouldn’t have voted for her whether there was sexism in media or not. It’s possible the sexism in media gained her more votes than cost her votes.

When an ambitious woman gets trashed for being successful and ambitious I would call it misogyny all the time. The fact remains that the really ugly sexism aimed at Clinton wasn’t why she lost the nomination. If anything, the sympathy vote was her biggest asset. And it would be really great if people could just address the sexism issue without wrapping themselves in the gloriously self-indulgent mantle of victimhood. Thanks much.

Read the above three times, child. Try to take it in before commenting here again.

“Yes, normally when an ambitious woman gets trashed for being successful and ambitious I would call it misogyny, but not this time.”

But it’s not always sexist. For example, the cracks about Clinton not being a Democrat that Melissa cited as examples of “sexism” had nothing whatsoever to do with her gender. That was strictly aimed at Clinton’s own bad behavior.

This proves my point, which is that by making excuses for Clinton’s bad behavior, people complaining about sexism are ruining their own case. Yes, there was sexism, but let’s be clear what is sexism and what isn’t. If we begin to define “sexism” as “everything negative said about a woman candidate” then we lose.

“…acknowledgment that Clinton was behaving very badly as the Endless Primary rolled on, and her behavior was putting the Democratic Party’s chances at winning the White House at serious risk.”

It’s what I would have liked to have seen, because it is the flat-out truth, and second because it would have been an acknowledgment that something other than *just* sexism was going on.

That’s an odd perception that I don’t think reflects objective reality. And, frankly, the only “sense of entitlement” I perceived was coming from the Clintons.

The fact is that the race, mathematically speaking, was over by early March. From that point on Clinton’s only real hope was with the superdelegates, because there was no way she could have surpassed Obama *honestly* with elected delegates.

But Hillary Clinton was allowed to continue her very dirty and destructive campaign, tearing down Obama and generally being divisive, only because she was Hillary Clinton. Had any other candidate behaved the same way, the Dem Party would have put a halt to it a lot sooner.

Certainly the media distorted what was happening, but they distorted it both ways, both for and against Clinton and Obama. Particularly in the last few weeks one could not turn on the television here without seeing some pundit talk about Obama’s “elitism” or his problem with small-town working-class voters. That was a meme the Clintons established.

There was much sexism, and much bad behavior on many sides, but Clinton was no innocent victim in this. You play dirty, you get dirty.

But that’s not what the article was about; it was about a different topic. The fact that it didn’t address a topic that you wanted is immaterial to its claims — unless you wish to argue that “fair and balanced” is actually a virtue.

Much — not all, but much — of the “sexist” commentary McEwan took out of context was aimed at Clinton’s behavior, not her gender.

So? If it’s sexist, it’s sexist, no matter what it’s “aimed at.”

…acknowledgment that Clinton was behaving very badly as the Endless Primary rolled on, and her behavior was putting the Democratic Party’s chances at winning the White House at serious risk.