Can we admit finally that sexism was a huge problem in both 2008 and 2016 elections

[BainsBane]

89. That's one way to advertise that you never informed yourself

On the issues the Democratic nominee ran on, and quite another to advertise it a year later. Those positions are archived on her site. https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/ Those who know how to capture caches pages could find the site as it existed during the campaign. I linked to it multiple times during the election and since, and it is uncanny how many are invested in refusing to inform themselves on those positions so that they can continue to promote false narratives, which is precisely what your post does. Meanwhile, we see people demand the party adopt progressive policies that were part of Clinton's campaign platform.

Clinton ran on jobs, criminal justice reform, the environment, gun control, reform of K-12, publicly funded higher-education, and offered many other policy proposals, far more detailed that her opponents. Yet you manged to remain willfully uninformed on all of that. You clearly never bothered to read her website or listen to her campaign speeches. Perhaps your entire exposure to her issue positions was limited to the 26 minutes of television coverage they received during the campaign. That didn't change the fact she talked about them continually. You appear to have filtered everything through the lens that she was a woman and you needed to know nothing more. Yet you proclaim absolute knowledge of a campaign's positions that you never bothered to read about.

Democracy is not threatened by a woman you don't like running for president. It is threatened by the willful ignorance of citizens who treat rumor and internet meme as fact and ignore evidence. That is what insures that they make poor political choices, and it is that which leads them to vote in ways that give rise to authoritarianism. It is that abdication of civic responsibility that threatened democratic self rule.
The US is now undergoing the rapid deterioration of democratic norms and institutions and continual repetition of lies as fact. And now we see a return to one of the false narratives that helped Trump seize power. That argument was invoked by Trumpsters to place a sexual predator in office, and the result showed how women are viewed in our society, including by too many other women. It was part of the big lie that enabled the rise of fascism. We see all kinds of justifications for why Hillary wasn't acceptable, even in the midst of the worst presidency in history. I suspect that for some they are seeking to justify their collaboration with fascism.

Those who refuse to care about or inform themselves on the policies of female candidates are not going to "stop being sexist" period. Failing to inform oneself of a woman's policy proposals and then invoking the mendacious claim that her entire argument was vote for me because I'm a woman shows a refusal to consider that woman as a full human being whose platform is worthy of consideration, particularly when the claims are so easily refuted. It is much like the insults of women as "vagina voters" that women were subject to. Daring to vote for a woman for president even once meant women were voting with their vaginas because the only legitimate president is male.

Insisting that women must meet an exalted standard of perfection in order to be considered acceptable for office is part of how patriarchy is maintained. Clinton's level of experience far exceeded her predecessors.
Such a standard was held for Obama, and he met it, at least in terms of his campaigning ability and his dignified comportment in office. That is the only way a racist country could elect a black man. The fact he was president didn't vanquish racism, no more than a woman head of state banished sexism in Pakistan, the UK, or Brazil. Additionally, we have seen progressive candidates like Warren savaged with the same arguments used to defeat Clinton. And of course the language of "corporate whore," dormant since Clinton's defeat, has been resurrected against Kamala Harris. It is the language of male dominance, an effort to maintain the established social order --with whiteness and maleness at the top--above all else. That is the true establishment, far more enduring than any occupant of the White House. It has endured for millennia, and any challenge to it results in false narratives invoked to maintain inequality at all costs.