Not Only Sexism

This is a brilliant piece of journalism from TNR by Michelle Goldberg, and it states what I feel about the Clinton-Obama struggle, albeit far more eloquently:

Of course, Clinton has encountered straight-up misogyny--lots of it. At the same time, anger at obvious instances of sexism has expanded to encompass every setback she's faced, every jab thrown her way--the cut and thrust of any normal campaign. Several of her feminist defenders, for example, interpreted calls for Clinton to drop out, lest she cause a party rift, as expressions of condescending gender bias. "The first woman ever to win a presidential primary is supposed to stop competing, to curtsy and exit stage right," Ellen Malcolm, founder and president of Emily's List, wrote in The Washington Post on May 10. But that wasn't anti-woman or even anti-Clinton; it was just Democratic politics.

Indeed, Clinton has never been just a victim of her gender. When it came to the deeper narratives of the campaign, Clinton benefited, as do many women in politics, from her good fortune of having married a successful political man. Hillary Clinton has spent only four more years than Obama in the Senate, but she was consistently assumed to be a more plausible commander-in-chief than her rival based on her time as First Lady. At the same time, it's been widely assumed that she's been entirely vetted, leaving many parts of her life--her disastrous leadership style on health care reform, her role in trying to silence and discredit Bill's mistresses, her husband's post-White House financial dealings--unexamined. The slimy right-wing rumor mill that tormented the Clintons in the '90s has directed its venom toward Obama...

I yield to no one in my loathing of the Clintons--the nicest thing to call them would be fair-weather liberals. But this article focuses more on what her campaign meant to its supporters, and I admit that I found it touching and persuasive. For the record, I think electing a woman president would be awesome, and I'm sure it will happen within my lifetime. I just never wanted it to be this woman. If Nancy Pelosi had run, I'd have sung a different tune.