There is polling on these issues. IIRC, more people are bothered by McCain's age than Obama's race or Clinton's gender. Every candidate has strengths and weaknesses; the winning candidate is the one who does the best job maximizing strengths and minimizing weaknesses. Given all the advantages that Senator Clinton had going into this race (name recognition, institutional support, fundraising), it's amazing there was even a race.

If she voted against the Iraq invasion, instead of for it, she'd be the next president.

I didn't vote for Obama because I hate women. I voted for Obama because he didn't vote for the war.

I don't know about TimB.'s counterfactual prediction, but on voting, he speaks for me as well. I would have *loved* to vote for a woman in this primary and in the general.

Maybe someone should find out what Shirley Chisholm thought.

Open sexism is still pretty well accepted. Racism has to be in code. That doesn't mean it isn't there. I agree with Clinton about the misogyny, but she has no credibility saying this claim hasn't been racist; she has actively participated in the racism in a sustained and systematic way, not only with Wright and Farrakhan but through what has been the primary rationale for her nomination since February--that white people's votes should count more than black people's. Sadly, I think she knows this.

I agree with HRC that sexism is frquently A-okay in the US. And I agree with her that women's issues are one of the biggest problems facing the human race, world wide.

I don't think it's necessary to use that to stomp on indigenous religion because you're an anti-religious bigot. (Does someone have an Iraq vote problem?) Nor do I agree that the kind of sexism to which HRC was subjected cost her the election.

I think we have a ways to go before we start annointing HRC some sort of patron saint of women. The record just doesn't bear that out.

I'll have to note that Sen. Clinton's self-pity doesn't do her any favors. The US has problems to overcome and some historical problems cannot be fixed in a day. Sen. Obama is an excellent choice for the presidency. Sen. Clinton is merely very good.

Yes, and she said much the same thing in Beijing and several times since. She's not saying something new since she's freed some the campaign, perhaps you are able to hear something new now that your focus doesn't have to be on destroying her campaign?

How many blacks are in the Senate?

How many women?

How many blacks are in the House of Representatives?

How many women?

How many blacks are elected governors?

How many women?

Try again, Hillary. Even though he has plenty of reason to, Obama has never blamed his problems this primary on racism. Sexism has nothing to do with her implosion; the fact that she has now morphed from the tough as nails, gritty street fighter into a classic blame anybody but herself whiner has everything to do with it.

She disgusts me, she really does. The sooner Democrats are rid of this toxic Clintonism, the better.

Obama surrogates and advocates have blamed racism everytime he lost. They started with the Bradley effect after New Hampshire and now they have moved on to the Appalachian effect.

Of course brewmn doesn't care about sexism. That is why he has left comments like these all over the blogosphere

Can't Let It Go, Can You...You stupid, bigoted cunt?

Hillary must have balls...
..because Joan Walsh sure loves sucking her dick.

He is a race baiting misogynist liar who is probably on the O payroll.

Has Hillary Clinton been "good for women"? "Bad for women"? I think at best it's a wash. If I look really fast, I can imagine that women were inspired by her campaign, she shone a lite on sexism yadda yadda. But for me personally, she's tainted any anti-sexism argument she makes by all her other actions--most of which I wouldn't anyone, male or female, to emulate. So even the most innocuous arguments against sexism--arguments that I fully agreed with 6 months ago--now grate on my ears when uttered by her or her supporters, and I almost reflexively want to disagree with them just because she and her supporters irritate me so much. For people like me, she's been a disaster for feminism--and I'm a woman.

"Of course brewmn doesn't care about sexism."

At least I'll put a handle behind my opinions, unlike you, you pathetic coward.

HRC has no class I am so disappointed in her , I use to love her , and that's because she was always hidden behind Bill as first lady, but when she voted for the war, I begun to wonder about her motives, now during the campaign they way she talked , and what she did made me not vote for her , I have nothing against women, My mother is one , my sister, I am married to one, IT'S YOUR CHARACTER HILLARY, GET A FREAKING CLUE

Hillary is, as always, full of shit. Are black women voting for her? No, they are not. I mean, maybe they're not "hard-working" or whatever, but you think they'd have a sense of which discrimination is worse. Oh, and Hillary is running in a party where women are 57-58% of the electorate. Sexism is her best friend--it gets her base out to the polls in droves. She has as much business saying that sexism is losing her the race as Nixon would saying that flag-burning hippies were making him unpopular.

LOL at the "Evil Clinton" theme that sprouts any time anyone mentions sexism in this campaign.

Hillary Clinton has advanced feminism in a major way just by going the distance. Her campaign has been no more negative than any others; those who believe otherwise are the same who believed Bush's lies about Iraq. Same cheerleaders behind both pulling the old "steamroll" thing, and yall are falling for it...again.

"Of course brewmn doesn't care about sexism."

"At least I'll put a handle behind my opinions, unlike you, you pathetic coward."

Yeah, no. It would be better if you cared about sexism and remained anonymous.

"It would be better if you cared about sexism and remained anonymous."

No matter how much you try to change the subject, the fact remains that Hillary's stunning implosion has nothing to do with sexism. Absolutely nothing.

That's one viewpoint, but certainly not the ONLY one that will be written.

What was particularly nauseating to me was the Hillary hating amongst some of the liberal elite women. In particular some here at TAP, some over at Slate.
If one is allowed to engage in pop psychology (which I think only fair since they all pop-psyched Hillary), I would say they were projecting their own conformist guilt and fear onto a woman who had had to make the decisions most women make privately, public.

Check the exit polls from Kentucky. A sizable number of white voters there said that race was an important issue to them, and they voted for Clinton.

Now, I kind of think that Appalachia isn't vastly more racist than the rest of the country, however many folks there are more honest about it, and not ashamed of it.

It's not universal; rural white voters voted for Obama in large numbers in Oregon.

I posted on this here:

http://dilan.blogspot.com/2008/05/theyre-all-ganging-up-on-her-we-are.html

She's conflating her personal political prospects with the cause of feminism. They are, in fact, two different things, both because of the difference between being a female presidential candidate and being an ordinary working woman, and also because of the broader feminist agenda which doesn't stand or fall on Hillary's candidacy.

Dilan,

Of course they're too different things just as Obama's campaign and the fight against racism are or SHOULD BE; I don't think anyone's disputing that. By the way, what policies/platforms has Obama unveiled that are specifically targeted to the African American Community?

*crickets*

More double standards from the world of Clinton Rules.

"The treatment of women is the single biggest problem we have politically and socially in the world. "

I guess that's why she decided to make a major speech confronting the issue head-on, as Obama did about race.

Oh wait, she didn't do that. She could have. But she decided not to. She decided that other problems, like the problem of people not having seen her drink shots and show off her blue collar street cred should take first priority. Oh well.

Anonymous:

1. Why does Obama have to have policies specifically targeted to blacks rather than just good urban policy?

2. I don't think the Obama campaign has ever said or implied that its cause is the cause of civil rights. Rather, Obama has asked blacks to vote for him based on the same broad-based message that has attracted whites. It's the Clinton campaign that is narrowcasting.

Dilan, I might be misreading, but think that was "Anonymous"'s point--he's agreeing with you.

RE: war. Obama's record is virtually identical to Clinton's.

RE: Shirley Chisholm. She once said she had faced more discrimination for being a woman than for being African-American.

RE: "toxic Clintonism." I see some of Sen. Obama's supporters haven't gotten the word about their new "charm offensive."

"I see some of Sen. Obama's supporters haven't gotten the word about their new "charm offensive."

Until Senator Clinton supporters stop trashing our candidate of choice and his supporters, I am under no obligation to be nice.

Loser.

Give it a rest. The race for the nomination is over, Obama's won, and everyone, including Clinton knows it. That's why she has now come out and mentioned the unmentionable--sexism.

It's time to move on. This issue isn't Hillary any more. It isn't whether she lost because she was a woman or because she was a Clinton or because she didn't run a good campaign or because she voted for the war or because she was personally offensive. The issue is whether sexism and misogyny are still with us, and what this campaign has shown is that they are.

So it seems to me that it's time to start talking about that again--about sexism--because we can no longer assume that we live in a post-feminist world where it's been fixed.

There are people who didn't vote for her because she's a woman and there are people who didn't vote for barack because he's black. But you don't see obama crying like a little baby about it. Someone stick a pacifier in her mouth already.

Nice example, Big Dee. I rest my case.

Where was Hillary's concern over sexism when people went nuts over that doofus walking across the stage to hand her a piece of paper during a NY senatorial debate? Hell, imagine if Obama had lost his cool in a press conference and yelled "Shame on you, Hillary Clinton!"

It's hard to take Hillary Clinton seriously on the subject of sexism when she's the one who chose to put her political career and ambitions second to her husband's and she's the one who retreated into back into the protective role of spouse when after her health care debacle.

Before anyone starts blaming sexism for Hillary's troubles, they ought to think about this. It's at least remotely possible that a charismatic white woman could have achieved the same sort of success as Obama has in this campaign. But it's inconceivable that a 60+ year old white man who spent his entire adult life playing second fiddle to his wife's political career could essentially get a U.S. Senate seat handed to him and then find himself the presumptive, 30 points ahead frontrunner for a Presidential nomination.

Mike

Obama really is a great candidate. So is Hillary. This is not a choice between good and bad, but between two goods. If Obama had really cared about this country he would have waited. Hillary should have run this time. Obama could have run in 4 to 8 years. How great that would have been for the Democratic Party and for this country.

I have heard the most disgusting, debasing comments delivered about Hillary -- from the mainstream media and pundits! Don't you think that influenced people who didn't know any better? Sometimes the media becomes way too much of an influence on elections, doesn't it? Hillary isn't as cool as Obama, is she? She's just a 60 year old woman, not much good for anything, especially not good enough to join the boy's club of U.S. Presidents.

So ... get over it Obama supporters. Stop the nastiness, please. And you really are not superior to everyone else.

" I guess that's why she decided to make a major speech confronting the issue head-on, as Obama did about race.

Oh wait, she didn't do that. She could have. But she decided not to."

You have got to be f-ing kidding me. You think, in this environment, a speech by Clinton on sexism would have been received as anything but the whining you are calling it now? A-holes like brewmn are still spreading the lie that she cried before NH.

Further, Obama was to be the post-racial candidate remember? But he only gave his "speech on race" because he had to...and then he recanted much of it later.

Your husband, some hotshot.

The parts youbolded about the the need t control woman is at the basis of fundamentalism and the Moslem's world antipathy to modernism... is not something she's just started to say. She's said it before....and it shows how much you underestimate her and how little credit you give her...that YOU DIDN'T KNOW THAT.

I reject the premise that the nomination slipped from her fingers. That is just wrong.

We don't talk about the nomination slipping through Rudy's fingers, though he had a huge lead for much of 2007. Polls that are many months before an election measure name recognition, and don't tell us much about who will win.

The simple fact of the matter is that Obama has won the nomination by being the better candidate and running the better campaign. All of the name recognition in the world won't stand up if you don't have the leadership, the judgment, and the charisma. Against a different field, she probably could have won (say the 2004 field), but to look at different tactical decisions and say they cost her the election buys into the idea that she was ever inevitable. She never had the track to the nomination that her campaign tried to portray.

Hillary is a woman, and she voted for the war, and she's a Clinton, and there are people who hate her unreasonably, and the media frequently treated her poorly (though she did have a bad media strategy as well), and she's running against another strong candidate who steals her "historic first" thunder, and she irrevocably alienated black voters in South Carolina, and her campaign made a huge tactical blunder in poorly contesting caucus states. She was not destined to lose. If any one of these things had been different, I suspect she would be the nominee. But none of them were. So she's not.

-- ACS

"Against a different field, she probably could have won (say the 2004 field), but to look at different tactical decisions and say they cost her the election buys into the idea that she was ever inevitable."

Agreed. No female presidential candidate can be "inevitable" yet. It's still too threatening.