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

[JHan]

143. No, because this whole Iraq thing..

is once again judging her to different standard.

She can't make mistakes - others aren't hounded over the same behavior. It's the biggest double standard in politics for which gender is just one explanation where she is concerned. It explains the Crime bill, her taking the blame for a whole bunch of shit her male peers aren't subjected to..

Henry Louise Gates covered this in the 90's..and when I first read it, it made me think.

Like horse-racing, Hillary-hating has become one of those national pastimes which unite the élite and the lumpen. Serious accusations have, of course, been levelled against the President’s wife, but it’s usually what people think of her that determines the credence and the weight they give to the accusations, rather than the reverse. At times, she herself sounds at a loss to explain the level of animosity toward her. “I apparently remind some people of their mother-in-law or their boss, or something,” she says. She laughs, but she isn’t joking, exactly.

The remark chimes with something I’ve been told by the redoubtable Sally Quinn, who—in part because she’s a frequent contributor to the Washington Post, in part because she’s the wife of the Post’s legendary editor Ben Bradlee—must herself count as a figure in the so-called Washington establishment. “There’s this old joke about the farmer whose crops fail,” she says. “One year, he’s wiped out by a blizzard, and the next year there’s a rainstorm, and the next year there’s a drought, and so on every year. Finally, he’s completely bankrupt—he’s lost everything. He says, ‘Why, Lord? Why, why me?’ And the Lord says, ‘I don’t know. There’s just something about you that pisses me off.’ ” She pauses, then says, “That’s the problem—there’ s just something about her that pisses people off. This is the reaction that she elicits from people.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/02/26/hating-hillary

And this article references the Gates' analysis within the context of 2016...

Pence can make a mistake. Trump can make a stunning array of them in the span of 24 hours. But if Clinton makes a mistake, she is critiqued, verbally abused and sent to the fictional prison that Trump and Christie and crew have erected for her in their troubling imaginations.

The disastrous Iraq vote notwithstanding — all Republicans senators but one voted in favor, and 29 Democratic senators voted for while 21 voted against — what’s noteworthy is that Hillary is not entitled to make mistakes. If this negation of the flawed human condition resonates with you, you’re probably a woman. Anne-Marie Slaughter, Debora Spar and others have written eloquently about the damaging expectation made of women to be perfect. The most successful woman in American politics is definitely not exempt.

http://forward.com/sisterhood/345928/this-is-whats-really-behind-hatred-for-hillary-clinton/