I think that you are right, Noam. The blatant sexism revolted most people and probably caused a sympathy backlash. The hedgehogs who only see one big thing miss this. Hillary did endure sexism, as you maintain but surely it was not a decisive factor in her defeat.

HRC's tearing up in NH was when (according to HRC) she "found [her] voice."

You can't have it both ways.

If HIllary received more support after suffering from sexist or misogynist attacks, does that mean that, as a society, we're starting to shift to a place where this is not acceptable?  That would be a good thing.

Indeed it would, asnevitt.    

This was just the Democratic primary, imagine how truly horrible would have been the General election. Liberals might be willing to examine their sexual biases, I sure as hell doubt the Republicans would have. And her campaign crying sexism at the Republicans would have been met with derision, if she couldn't handle it during the campaign how could she handle it as President? I think Penn was right, she wasn't running to be President of NOW and women's issues, but of all Americans, male and female, imagine 4 years of Feminist consciousness crammed down our throats. The original decision not to do that was right, and as President I think Hillary would have tried to lead by example, but if she relied on screaming sexism as a crutch, it would have gotten painful quickly.

have we already forgotten that the day after New Hampshire the Pew Center dismissed the tears and told us that the racist "Bradley Effect" was showing its ugly head?   Forget Obama's tremendous win in Iowa.  

"When Mrs. Clinton made points forcefully, people called her shrill, not bold and determined. When Mitt Romney teared up, he was described as compassionate, while she was labeled weak."

That's typical use of passive voice to make up statements without having to verify that they were really said. I don't remember Romney being praised after he teared up. I do remember Clinton being described as bold and determined a lot more than she was described as shrill.

The anti-Hillary media sexism meme is dependent on rewriting history.

I may be remembering things wrong, but I thought Romney was tearing up at the thought of dead soldiers, while HRC was tearing up at the thought of fewer people voting for her than her opponent.

This seems like a legitimate distinction, unless you want to go a step further and say that the structural gender bias makes it OK for people to cry about heroism, baseball and loyal dogs, but not about your own lot.

Noam, you do understand that this is a tactic the GOP is employing to try and peel off disaffected Clintonites right?

Maybe it would be a good idea to treat it that way.

What sexism?  A few hecklers?  Certain commentators?  

What I observed was that a whoe lot of women were very happy to have had an opportunity to vote for a woman, and that when Hillary's gender was an important influence on someone's vote, that person was voting for Hillary - not against her.  Hillary's team played the victim of a vast male chauvanist conspiracy, and in the last weeks of the campaign it worked for them.  It was a cynical and destructive thing to do, but she was guided by a great moral principle - anything to win.  

Now that she is done, can we all stop analyzing her alibi for failure, her Hail Mary pass?  It failed as it should have done - it was never worthy of any credit.  To discuss it now is to give it far more weight than it deserved when it was helping her win the votes of people who - having been presuaded of such nonsense - are now unwilling to vote for the Democratic candidate.

I really can't bear to read any more about how badly the boys behaved.  Please.

Neil.

I was always an Obama supporter, but at the beginning of this campaign I tried to remain respectful of Clinton. But every time she invoked her womanly womanhood and how great her candidacy was for women, I lost some of that respect for her. Not because I was reminded that she was a woman - I knew that already. But rather because she thought that I should CARE. I really don't. I was judging her entirely on her merits, and I didn't see her gender as one of them, whereas she (and many of her still-angry supporters) acted as if her gender gave her an extra claim on the nomination. It doesn't.

What kills me is that there seems to be no shortage of people who would call me a sexist for denying Clinton that extra claim. Real gender-neutrality is unfathomable to some, but it's second nature to me. My mother was the primary breadwinner in my family. Most of my greatest teachers were women, but some of my worst ones were women as well. I have had many women supervisors in my adult life. Some extraordinary, some awful. Of course the same can be said for men. My point is this - Past oppression doesn't equal present virtue. And real equality means that women have an equal chance of reaching their goals, and an equal chance of falling short of those goals as well.

Clinton had every advantage going in to the primaries, but fell short of the nomination. Personally, I think it was because she was the lesser candidate, and was outmaneuvered by the Obama campaign, who surprised her team early with a big win in Iowa, and then had a plan which extended past Super Tuesday. Those who think she fell short because of her gender should take a second look at how it happened.

It was the war, plain and simple. If she had voted against the war Obama would not have had an opening in Iowa. Her bad vote opened the door to Obama. The rest is history. Her complaint that it was all about sexism is a huge lie - one that is comforting to her and frames her as a victim. It's just not so. I wish for the sake of the veterans, and those who died, that she would have come clean at the end and said "And I made a mistake, I shouldn't have voted the way I did". That would have been courageous. Her speech was okay, but she walked away as a victim.

Very well said by bsimpson.  With so many of those early polls dating back to early in 2007 showing Clinton with such a wide lead, I think many Clinton supporters might have fell prey to all the hype and were all but ready to reserve seats for the inauguration ball.  While the early polling showed what would appear to be such a wide lead, many here at TNR pointed out that name recognition wouldn't last for a year and a half and that often the undecideds in those polls hit as high as 40%, so there was evidence early that there was potential for another candidate besides Clinton to emerge.

While Clinton no doubt was subject to incidents of sexism at various times along the way, I think her own campaign went to the well way too many times in making the charge at anybody who had offered sound criticism of her statements or actions.  Letting Ferraro continually run amok making very shaky if not flat-out false charges against Obama turned many voters who might have been on the fence off to Clinton for good during a 'change' election and the perception of lack of any merit in her attacks on him may have even caused voters to further tune out the sexism claims from that point on.  Crying sexism because a woman wrote a column criticizing Clinton for wearing clothing exposing some cleavage just doesn't cut it with voters facing $4-a gallon prices at the pump while Halliburton charges the taxpayer $100 for a load of laundry.  Perhaps to certain voters in Ferraro's generation that have as much access to wealth as she does, the price of gas, war-profiteering and concerns about the future of programs such as Social Security and Medicare don't hit home on the same level as the perception of being slighted solely on gender.

Just goes to show that just because someone with media access can afford to make the charge repeatedly, that not everyone can afford to listen to it much less buy into it.

Who called the teary Dash Riprock "compassionate"? As I recall, most commentators made fun of him and accused him of calcuation because it followed so closely on the heels of HC's teary moment.

I would say that on the whole, HC got better treatment - it was at least leavened with a certain respect for her tenacity - than Dash, who was widely regarded as a calculating, blow with the wind knucklehead....

does this mean that there is an anti Mormon bias...or perhaps just a bias against phonies?

The tearing up hurt her in the long run not because she seemed weak or because we are all sexist, but because it revealed her inauthenticity.  We heard commentators say and then ther campaign agree that she won NH because she "found her voice."  That signalled to us voters that she was looking for it, and in the process, trying on many different voices, a tactic she returned to over and over, producing a cacophony of indecipherable personalities, all of which seemed to be phony attempts to win power.  Her lust for power is unbecoming.

I don't buy sexism as the reason for Clinton's loss.  Some sexists voted against Clinton just as some racists voted against Obama.  Time has an interesting analysis of women's vote during the primaries.  Overall, Clinton won those over 65 and split middle-aged women with Obama.  Obama won the votes of younger women.  Now how on earth does that support the suggestion that sexism did her in?

Let me fix what I said. The last sentence "her lust for power is unbecoming" came off wrong. (All pres. candidates lust for power on one level or another, so it sounds like I think a woman can't have that same ambition).  I meant that throughout her campaign she has been saying the obligatory things about trying to become president so she can solve all these problems and improve everyone's lives, but I was never convinced that she meant it sincerely.  She hasn't mastered the art of making it look like you are willing to do this, but somewhat reluctantly, only because you are a hero volunteering for your country.

It's a complete truism to say that many honest, authentic people come off looking fake and many cynical ambitious jerks can bring off a substantial, convincing act.  That said, HRC's problem was a double bind in that, as stgla suggests above, that she couldn't seem to find the right note between realistic ambition and a claim to sainthood.  Even when the rhetoric was genuine, it sounded brittle and forced.  When it was clearly put on for the moment (e.g. the populist turn in PA), it also sounded brittle and forced.  I think she never found a comfortable voice that both did the job politically and expressed something natural in her.

Honestly, I feel Hillary lost because Obama's campaign was better organized, especially with his 50 state strategy. But some of you that are discounting the sexist comments on blogs and in the media just don't uderstand women and how hurtful it was to hear, read and see the sexism as if it was OK. Just bear with me and try to keep an open mind. Would it be OK to say on TV that "Obama was pimping "his family, had a ruler being sold saying "can you measure up to Obama that is only 3 inches long"or an organiz ation with the  initials spelling N.i.g.g.e.r". How about comments saying that he does not cry so he is unfit to lead the fight for health care, or being told to  to  quit at halftime because he's a loser if is he playing in one of his basketball games. There's more, but I think you get the picture.  For those of you who do not get the picture.... Hillary was accused of pimping Chelsea on MSNBC... had a nut cracker made  using models of her legs, had a group that was public that had initials spelling C.U.N.T., etc. Those of you who are saying Can't you take a joke? do not yet have the maturity and empathy to really feel what hurts women.

debbrodie, all of the stuff you list is indeed awful, but as an Obama supporter I don't feel that I have to answer for it, anymore than I would think it your duty to answer for the 20% of her voters in West Virginia who cited race as a factor. Sexists vote and racists vote, and both make asses of themselves when they open their mouths. I don't think most people are denying that both campaigns had their "isms" to deal with, though I sometimes wonder about the really embittered Clinton supporters who talk about how a historic opportunity has been lost. This viewpoint completely ignores that Obama and his supporters just made history with his nomination.

But this is the problem with identity politics. It automatically forms people up into groups that have to convince others that their grievances are much worse than anybody else's. And then it becomes some sort of absurd competition. Part of why I supported Obama is that he largely rejected this kind of politics because he saw it as divisive. When Hillary gave speeches talking about how she was running for every 90 year old woman who couldn't vote at one time, Obama never turned around and said that there were a lot of much younger black Americans who couldn't vote at one time either. He resisted the temptation of identity politics. Hillary didn't.

Oh, gad, Noam.  That whole, "When he cried, nobody said anything, when Hillary cried, she was pilloried" is such an old, tired stchick.  And unexamined.

It's not tears per se that are the question, it is the source and nature of the tears.

If a man or woman cries out of grief or joy or moved by beautry or pathos, or in Senator Muskie's case, by attacks on the woman he loved-- who today would mock that?

But, Hillary cried saying in New Hampshire that the primaries were "so hard".  She was crying in the face of vissisitude.  

In a man, that is considered unmanly.  And if Obama or Kerry or Bush or any male politician cried in adversity, he would be derided all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

For a woman seeking a job always previously held by men, to cry because things are getting tough, well, of course that's going to raise some eyebrows pretty high.

As it is, the criticism was muted because everyone was fearful of being labeled a "sexist," whatever the hell that actually is.

Hillary got a pass left and right.  Including on her cry-baby binge.  

So quit crying, Noam.