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The tragedy of Hillary Rodham Clinton The failed presidential candidate was a victim of America's misogyny

Credit: Alex Wong/Getty


July 28, 2020   5 mins

There are two pieces of art on Hillary Clinton, in time for the November election. She deserves them and we need them. One is seemingly true, the other just feels true; or, rather, I want it to be.

The first is Sky’s four-part documentary, Hillary, on her life and 2016 run for the presidency. It is a sad affair, with villainous Hillary sitting in a chair, a victim of everyone, especially herself. She is over-dyed and over-tidied, like a woman trying not to make Donald Trump throw up, though she doesn’t know why. She has been shouted at so long she is shriven.

Does camera-ready mean sex-ready? The way American women dress for television cameras is heavy with self-disgust and shame. Why isn’t she wild-haired and in rags, like the brittle intellectual she is? Here I impose my own narrative on how Hillary should look but this story is full of women who internalise their own misogyny and talk about not trusting Hillary Clinton because they don’t trust themselves.

“I’ll try not to move so much,” is her first apologetic line to camera. She is angry too – that an imbecile beat her in a competitive exam without answering any of the questions; without actually entering the examination hall. She is shouting at the interviewer, but I doubt she is aware of it: “People feel, ‘that you are not authentic’. What is this about? When people say I’m not authentic. I’m sorry if I’m not brilliantly charismatic on TV,” – she isn’t sorry, and why should she be? — “But I’m the same person I’ve always been.” She isn’t. How could she be? What woman is the same at 72 as at 22? Why must a woman apologise for seeking power?

She knows the answer. The young Hillary is doughty; and needs must. Girls, she says, “didn’t want to get better grades than their boyfriends”. She ran for the presidency of the student council, lost to a man, and did all the work anyway, because he asked her, and “because I was interested”. I wondered if her marriage was no different.

She describes the entrance exam for Yale law school. She sat down and, “These guys started harassing us. ‘What are you doing here? You don’t belong here. You can’t go to law school’. Or my favourite: ‘If you get into law school and take my place and I get sent to Vietnam and die it’s your fault’.” He thinks she is a witch: a witch with a pen. If she succeeds, he will die.

“In those days,” she says, “you got no points for being emotional. You get no points for trying to fight back or defend yourself. When you train yourself like that and then you fast forward into an age where everybody wants to see what your emotions are and how you respond….” She trails off into — “it’s really a different environment”.

She was the first female lawyer at her firm: “When I was going to court as a young lawyer it was a spectacle. These good old boys would say, ‘oh gosh’. It was like the talking dog. ‘She can not only stand on her hind legs she can clap her front paws’.”

A judge said to her: “Miss Rodham you just look so pretty, stand up there and show us how pretty you look today, just turn around.” The judge sounds like Donald Trump; quite a lot of people in this story sound like Donald Trump, because he is on television, which seems to be the American dictionary. But the child who had screamed at her Republican father, “When I grow up, I’m going to marry a Democrat!” had already gone.

Someone shouted, “Hillary, iron my shirt!” to her at a rally; did he speak for All Men?  “If there is anyone left in the auditorium who wants to learn how to iron his own shirt, I’ll talk about that,” she said. He did know how to iron his own shirt. He just didn’t want to and, as a man, he felt a future Secretary of State should do it for him, if she is female. Men are allowed this kind of entitlement is the moral of the story: women are not. We must be likeable, like kittens. We must save men by ruining ourselves.

She is still intensely female: she blames herself. “I was too quick to be defensive,” she says, “I didn’t play the game well enough”. I would say the game was unplayable; and that she cannot bear that she lost makes me love her.

The second piece of art is a long dream sequence, or a novel: The West Wing with less shouting, and fewer men. It is Rodham: What if Hillary Hadn’t Married Bill? by Curtis Sittenfeld. It is Hillary’s imagined memoir and the reading of it is an urge for possession. Pageant queens are divided into constituent body parts. Female politicians are divided into constituent character defects and foul passions.

Here, without flourish, in the clear, unworldly style of a second-wave feminist don — the archetype Hillary most resembles, a woman whose dark secret is a passion for paperwork — Sittenfeld imagines a Hillary Rodham who never became Hillary Clinton.

“I was,” her Hillary writes, “a hardworking and not beautiful middle-class Midwestern girl with a mean father. I had never believed the world existed for my enjoyment”. This Hillary is endearing: an innocent. Her idea of flirting is to give a man a Reinhold Niebuhr biography.

Bill Clinton, a charismatic with a Don Juan complex, is vain enough to seek a clever mate; he courts her. But in fiction, he is self-aware. He knows he will ruin any woman: the Don Juan is not a lover but a thief. He tells Hillary, “the thing that’s wrong with me is incurable”. I have never heard selfishness framed this like before: as a disability. Is that how he won two elections?

Fictional Hillary leaves Fictional Bill, who is corrupted by the absence of her love. They become political rivals, and Hillary’s only moral error, quickly learned from, is a failure to embrace intersectionality as quickly as she should.

Rodham is amazingly plausible until the end. It is a novel about a woman who assumes a mask because she knows she will not survive without it; and then she is hated for the mask she is forced to wear. This dynamic is familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of the witch trials: if you drown, you are innocent. If you do not drown, you are guilty and can, for variety, be burnt.  She knows it is a lie for they will hate her anyway. It is also a novel about media stupidity – I cringe at the journalists seeking drama before truth – and the electorate’s decadent confusion: does it seek a competent administrator or a narrative to appal them?

Fictional Hillary is not saddled with Bill’s legacy, and she does not benefit from it: “I was not responsible for his behaviour, not even by extension. This absolution was my reward for losing him.” So, the essential conundrum of the real Hillary Rodham Clinton — did she betray feminism with her marriage to become Trump’s “crooked” witch? — is removed. I am glad, because when you bluntly ask the question, you realise how silly it is. This is a better question: Is Hillary qualified to be president, no matter who she is married to? A better question still is: can you define someone by their marriage and call yourself a feminist?

Hillary Rodham Clinton — the synthesis, both married and talented — is a paradigm, which is why it is essential to look beyond her to all women, which is, you will realise if you read about her work, all she ever wanted. What a shame it is that it couldn’t be done; but no surprise.


Tanya Gold is a freelance journalist.

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Mark S
Mark S
4 years ago

This is a silly article. Clinton was foisted on voters over and above a much more popular man who wasn’t considered electable by the Democratic Party’s elite. In the end she wasn’t electable either; she had nothing in common with traditional Democrats or swing voters in rust belt states. There are lots of popular woman leaders around the world. Clinton just isn’t one of them.

Dennis Boylon
Dennis Boylon
4 years ago
Reply to  Mark S

This doesn’t go far enough. The Clinton’s foisted themselves on the public by raising large amounts of money through the Clinton foundation and taking over the DNC. She would have won if she campaigned harder in the “flyover” states but she couldn’t be bothered. She didn’t think the unwashed mattered anymore. HRC was a Senator and Secretary of State. She had been seeking and wielding power ever since her husband left the oval office. Hardly anyone to feel sorry for. Lol.

timothy.j.clarke01
timothy.j.clarke01
3 years ago
Reply to  Mark S

He wasn’t electable.

Auberon Linx
Auberon Linx
4 years ago

There has been misogyny around Hillary Clinton, but that is not the reason her presidential campaign failed. She was a flawed candidate with numerous missteps on her record, and over-inflated claims to competence. Also, she was definitively not what the electorate at the time wanted or needed – her Republican counterpart Jeb Bush got a similar unceremonious dispatch despite being, well, male.

She lost an election, which is how typically elections go for all candidates but one. She did not even lose it that badly, in fact she won the popular vote. Still, this is seen as an unheard of humiliation, which is a sign of monstrous entitlement – why could not the people understand that she was meant by providence to be the president? Well, people had different views.

Finally, in certain circles, which includes Ms Gold, Hilary is seen as a wronged woman, who has suffered terrible injustice and now has to bravely live in hardship for the rest of her life. But even in her diminished state she hobnobs with the great and the good, gets fawning press and is rather influential. I am sure she has her trolls, but don’t we all? There is no particular reason to feel sorry for her.

I think I am right in saying that most of us just see a rich, privileged person who is still receiving corporate largesse earned while working for the government in practices that should be recognised as corruption. Good riddance.

john.mchugh02
john.mchugh02
4 years ago
Reply to  Auberon Linx

Why no mention of her up and coming trial in September with regard to her emails, alleged links to child trafficking, especially Haiti, and her part in illegally selling off 25% of the countries Uranium to Russia (look up Uranium One) . How about the revenues going into the Clinton Foundation (millions) on the back of alleged favours when Secretary of State in the Obama administration. All coinciding with after dinner speeches. I mean who pays $3 million for a speech (allegedly with the exception of World banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley of course) ?

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
4 years ago
Reply to  john.mchugh02

Her record as Secretary of State shows her incompetence and twisting of the truth. Benghazi was a disaster as her talking points tried to blame the “riot” and killing of 4 Americans, including the US Ambassador, on an obscure video. The disaster of what is happening in Libya right now leads back to her policies. Also look at Travel Gate and you lose all trust in such a crooked politician. Has nothing to do with her being a woman. Thatcher had to deal with much worse.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
4 years ago

Yup – and do remember the Benghazi episode if Susan Rice gets the VP pick. Rice did the Sunday rounds of interviews, blaming a non-existent ‘video’ for riots, which just did not occur. Then Rice subsequently turned around and her own book, blamed Hillary for ‘forcing’ her to do the interviews that Sunday. These people are despicable.

culloty
culloty
4 years ago
Reply to  john.mchugh02

You’ve repeated almost every lie used against Hillary in 2016. Except you forgot to blames her for Bill’s behavior. That one always amazed me – it was insane, but it somehow worked. If Hillary was guilty of any of the things you listed Sessions or Barr would have indicted her, or at least launched a very public investigation. But even though they would have loved to do so, they couldn’t. Lies work great on the internet, not so well in American courts.

Terry Needham
Terry Needham
4 years ago
Reply to  culloty

Good grief.

john.mchugh02
john.mchugh02
4 years ago
Reply to  culloty

Wow. Do you not know she is in court this coming September.
Some people are untouchable …. until now.
You obviously don’t know anything about Uranium One. When you have read up on it come back to me. In the meantime start using something factual rather than your opinion.
I gave you details of her involvement. I suggest you research. I didn’t even mention the Clinton body count. 37 at the last count, if memory serves me right. Most of them died of suicide. Same m.o. – shot to the temple. When they dug up the bodies one had his throat slit. The other was stabbed in the back .
Oh by the way the same pathologist performed the autopsies on all these bodies from all over the country. Amazing, that he happens to be working where these bodies are found.

Jimmy Edwards
Jimmy Edwards
4 years ago
Reply to  culloty

And certainly strong evidence to actually blame her for Bill’s behavior, if not the cover-up, being complicit, victim blaming and shaming, excusing… that she did for so many years. If she had any character she wouldn’t still be Mrs. William J Clinton

Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
4 years ago

Utter, utter nonsense, along with everything else TG writes. If you watch the #WalkAwayFromTheDemocrats videos – of which there are thousands – you will learn that countless women of all colours and creeds simply refused to vote for Clinton because she was and is a corrupt Wall St shill. And that’s before you get on to the corruption of the Clinton Foundation, the long trail of dead bodes etc etc.

Jonathan Marshall
Jonathan Marshall
4 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

That hits the nail right on the head. Well said.
It’s almost inevitable that whenever a woman fails (in whatever endeavour) people like Ms Gold always scream “Misogyny!”.
It doesn’t seem to occur to them that women – just like men, oddly enough – might fail because they are corrupt, “entitled”, incompetent, unpleasant or a combination of any of these.

Andrew Best
Andrew Best
4 years ago

1 problem with all this that you fail to mention is she is a
Corporate shill
Out for herself
Unpleasant
Corrupt
Deeply unlikable
Apart from that she also believes she deserved to be president because she is worth it!
But again Tanya it has to be sexism and every man keeping her down apart from the fact she is a multimillionaire, neoliberal who just comes across as unpleasant
Sounds like someone you should vote for it’s not like she wanted to help the deplorables

John Nutkins
John Nutkins
4 years ago
Reply to  Andrew Best

Indeed. More insufferable feminist out-of-this-world so-called analysis of a woman presidential candidate who lost out for the reasons you succinctly and precisely assert, her biggest and most deplorable blunder calling millions of Americans ‘deplorables’. From the horse’s mouth!

Dennis Boylon
Dennis Boylon
4 years ago
Reply to  Andrew Best

She was unapologetically war mongering in her campaign too. Trump at least campaigned on getting out from all the wars.

Claire D
Claire D
4 years ago

I wish I could say that it’s always interesting looking at the world through feminist eyes, but I just can’t, it never is, it’s all convoluted distortion.
Hillary Clinton did’nt get elected because she was not what the majority of Americans wanted; neither her politics, her history or her character, not surprising in the least.

Kathryn Allegro
Kathryn Allegro
4 years ago
Reply to  Claire D

Actually the majority of Americans did want her, but the electoral college system got in the way

Shane Dunworth-crompton
Shane Dunworth-crompton
4 years ago

That is the American system

stephen f.
stephen f.
4 years ago

Subtract 4 NY city boroughs and her “majority” goes away.

sheena gilby
sheena gilby
4 years ago
Reply to  stephen f.

Why do these votes not count!!!

nigel roberts
nigel roberts
4 years ago
Reply to  sheena gilby

Because the president is not elected by the people, he is elected by the states. And the states cast their votes according to how each state’s people instruct its electors.

Jonathan Marshall
Jonathan Marshall
4 years ago
Reply to  nigel roberts

Quite right. As a Brit I find it an odd way to do things, but it’s how your electoral system works. You might think ours is odder!

Dennis Boylon
Dennis Boylon
4 years ago
Reply to  sheena gilby

Because the rest of the country does not want to be ruled by Los Angeles and NYC. The “flyover” states want nothing to do with the coastal self described “elites”. Trump was a protest vote. A huge middle finger to the elite.

rjplasse
rjplasse
4 years ago
Reply to  stephen f.

Subtract Los Angeles County all by itself and her “majority” goes away.

steviej757
steviej757
4 years ago

Which if you understood electoral politics, you would be cheering for…

Bill Gaffney
Bill Gaffney
4 years ago

Actually, the DemocratSlaveryParty fixed (cheated) many votes to make it appear this mean person got a majority of the useless popular vote. States elect a president. Not The Mob. The Founders who came up with the EC were brilliant and wanted a Republic and not an evil democracy.

alex bachel
alex bachel
4 years ago

That is not the way the US electoral system works. They use electoral college votes, so that the larger states (California) cannot dictate to the smaller states. You know this but chose to pretend you don’t.

chrisjwmartin
chrisjwmartin
4 years ago

You don’t know what a majority of Americans wanted. Voting behaviour is skewed by the electoral college.

bocalance
bocalance
4 years ago

That damnable Constitution! Foiled again.

sheena gilby
sheena gilby
4 years ago
Reply to  Claire D

Actually she got almost 3m votes MORE than Trump …. which shows she was what more Americans wanted!!

Claire D
Claire D
4 years ago
Reply to  sheena gilby

That’s not the way it works though.
She did not get enough votes in the right places to win, so she lost.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
4 years ago
Reply to  Claire D

Notably, Hillary neglected to visit Mid-Western states, supposedly even upon the advice of her husband, but rather spent three weeks in August on the beach in the Hamptons instead of campaigning. Hillary did not win to win bad enough.

nigel roberts
nigel roberts
4 years ago
Reply to  sheena gilby

Well, you might further adjust for the fact that millions of conservative Californians (and New Yorkers) didn’t bother to vote because casting a conservative vote in California (or New York) is a waste of time out of your life that you can never get back.

Jimmy Edwards
Jimmy Edwards
4 years ago
Reply to  nigel roberts

Sad but true. I live in a very blue state… WA. Haven’t had a Republican governor for 35 years. In fact, in the very recent primary election (Aug 2020) Inslee received more votes than his 12 or so Republican opponents did combined. Sometimes it’s like why even bother… I know which way this state is going.

Bill Gaffney
Bill Gaffney
4 years ago
Reply to  sheena gilby

Ah sheena, believing the lies of the DemocratSlaveryParty media.

alex bachel
alex bachel
4 years ago
Reply to  sheena gilby

Of which 4.5 million came from California, a situation the founding fathers wanted to prevent, hence their electoral college system.

Robert Lush
Robert Lush
4 years ago
Reply to  sheena gilby

I would have preferred a hole in my head.

Brian Dorsley
Brian Dorsley
4 years ago

What put me off her, and eventually the Democrat party, was the smug assumption that she was going to become President because she was a woman. It just seemed all so childish to me. I also remember the 2016 elections coinciding with a slew of articles condemning those who were against her as misogynists which didn’t help her case either.

I didn’t vote, but when Trump won I was relieved (not happy). I had a distinct sense of history correcting itself. The way the Democrat party and its supporters have purported themselves since the last election has solidified my political views. I was at best politically indifferent before but the Woke Cult that infests the Democrat party is a poison that needs to be publicly repudiated and purged. As long as the Democrats remain ‘woke’ they will continue to turn off intelligent voters. When it come down to it, back in 2016 many people were faced with a difficult choice: vote for a man everybody hates, or vote for a party that hates everybody.

jmitchell75
jmitchell75
4 years ago
Reply to  Brian Dorsley

I’ve always found it quite a phenomenon that feminists can turn almost any debate into a feminist issue. It’s amazing they can frame everything around this incredibly narrow ideology.

I’m writing as someone traditionally on the left, who finds this convoluted, counter-factual narrative incredibly frustrating.

Clintons campaign did focus heavily on the mantra ‘vote for me because I’m a woman’, so why should it be any surprise to the writer that people rejected the idea that just because someone is a woman means that things are somehow going to be better? I’m sure, like me, we have all had experiences of bad women leaders and bad male leaders. Apart from feminists, and they account for 7% of the popluation (UK) last time I looked, noone actually sees a distinction between males and females when putting their cross on the ballot paper, and to ask them to vote on a simple fact of gender ranges from the unpalatable to the ludicrous in most peoples eyes. No wonder there was a kick back, especially from white males in the rust belt who generally feel they have been forgotten both economically and socially.

Put simply, the left needs to drop this crap, fight for greater equality for everyone, or never be taken seriously again.

Terry M
Terry M
4 years ago
Reply to  jmitchell75

And that is being replaced (or compounded) by turning every discussion about race and racism. We deplorables are now apparently unrepentent racists.

Jimmy Edwards
Jimmy Edwards
4 years ago
Reply to  Terry M

Amen. Had a great opportunity in recent months to have productive discussions about race and make some real changes. Instead, no one can think through all the decibels of megaphone cussing and accusations. I sense another “enough is enough” backlash is coming. This might be 2016 all over again

John Nutkins
John Nutkins
4 years ago
Reply to  jmitchell75

Well said.

Dennis Boylon
Dennis Boylon
4 years ago
Reply to  jmitchell75

She also campaigned on wagging more war in the middle east for a country tired of war. Trump at least gave lip service to that.

Lee Johnson
Lee Johnson
4 years ago

Maybe Tanya Gold needs to be reminded that 50% of the US electorate are…

women

LindsayFan
LindsayFan
4 years ago
Reply to  Lee Johnson

IMO, it’s just the feminist version of “implicit bias”, which is also crap theory made up out of whole cloth by fifth-rate “social scientists”. As Tanya Gold proves, third wave feminism is toxic.

LindsayFan
LindsayFan
4 years ago
Reply to  LindsayFan

Yes, and the “hard work” of exploring your “white supremacy/fragility/toxic masculinity” is never over, because you can never not be” racist/fragile/whatever.” Lots of circular arguments and begging the question.

chrisjwmartin
chrisjwmartin
4 years ago
Reply to  LindsayFan

Yes! To anyone reading this who hasn’t heard, “implicit bias” has been comprehensively debunked. The science behind it has failed replication, and it produces bizarre results whereby the less racist an individual’s behaviours, the more “implicit bias” they score.

chrisjwmartin
chrisjwmartin
4 years ago
Reply to  LindsayFan

You are told by a soul doctor of the psychotherapeutic variety that your soul harbours hidden prejudices which they understand but you do not.

A more socially acceptable version of Scientologists auditing away your thetans.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
4 years ago
Reply to  Lee Johnson

And 63% of white AMERICAN women voted for Trump….rather damning for the Hillary….but then she turned around and insulted them AGAIN, by saying their husbands made them do it. SO who is the misogynist?

fetterleigh
fetterleigh
4 years ago

“She is still intensely female: she blames herself. “

How much longer do we have to pretend that such nonsense is worthy of print and criticism, rather than remaining in therapy, or café terraces, from where it comes, and where it belongs?

Meghan Kathleen Jamieson
Meghan Kathleen Jamieson
4 years ago
Reply to  fetterleigh

In any case, nothing she has ever said makes me think she does blame herself in any realistic way. The whole book she wrote in the aftermath of the election loss was about deflecting blame.

Nigel Clarke
Nigel Clarke
4 years ago

…no mention of her 56 friends that have “committed sucide” over the last 3 decades…here are a few…

Vince Foster ““ On July 10, 1993, Vince Foster committed suicide by a gunshot wound to the head, ruled a suicide. Foster was the Deputy White House Counsel at law. His body was discovered in Fort Marcy Park although no bullet was ever located. An initial witness stated there was no gun at the scene though one was later found prominently displayed on the body. Foster was an associate of long-standing with the Clintons who was concerned with Clinton campaign finances, and colleague of Hillary Clinton at Little Rock’s Rose Law firm.
Seth Rich, the DC staffer murdered and “robbed” (of nothing) on July 10. Wikileaks found Assange claims he had info on the DNC email scandal:
According to the leaked emails, just before Seth Rich was murdered, the infamous Jon Podesta (President Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff and President Barack Obama’s Counselor,), wrote: “I’m definitely for making and example of a suspected leaker whether or not we have any basis for it.”
Later in the email chain Joel Benenson said, “I think we have to make examples now of people who have violated the trust of HRC and the rest of the team.”
Robby Mook also replied to Podesta’s message, throwing his weight behind the bloodthirsty campaign manager, saying “I would love an example being made.”

“Rich, 27, was shot multiple times including twice in the back. His mother Mary Rich told the local NBC station that her son was found with bruises on his face, knees, and hands ““ signs that he fought for his life.”

A list of Clinton bodyguards, all commited sucide?

Major William S. Barkley, Jr.
Captain Scott J . Reynolds
Sgt. Brian Hanley
Sgt. Tim Sabel
Major General William Robertson
Col. William Densberger
Col. Robert Kelly
Spec. Gary Rhodes
Steve Willis
Robert Williams
Conway LeBleu
Todd McKeehan

Gerry Fruin
Gerry Fruin
4 years ago
Reply to  Nigel Clarke

Strewth! Reminds me of Dr. David Kelly.

Stuart Bennett
Stuart Bennett
4 years ago

How good can you consider her feminist credentials to be knowing she stood by her husband while he serial raped and sexually assaulted multiple women over decades and used public funds to bully, cajole and silence his victims, or perhaps ‘their victims’ is more appropriate.

Mark Corby
Mark Corby
4 years ago

Why on Earth are you attempting to resuscitate the Clinton corpse?
She’s dead and buried, move on.

Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
4 years ago
Reply to  Mark Corby

Well, Clinton is not dead and buried. But countless of her friends are.

Mark Corby
Mark Corby
4 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

Good point!

Dianne Bean
Dianne Bean
4 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

Good one!!

Gintautas Australas Kaminskas
Gintautas Australas Kaminskas
4 years ago

Very disappointing that Unherd would publish this article. You have lowered your standards.

Nigel Clarke
Nigel Clarke
4 years ago

Disappointing to read for sure, and disappointing too that anyone would think that Killary (as she is affectionately known in the US) is worth the effort of an article, but Unherd should publish articles like this, if only to evaluate their readership and their views.
The comments are fun to read with articles like this.

Joe Blow
Joe Blow
4 years ago

Predictable, tired and trite.

“…why it is essential to look beyond her to all women, which is, you will realise if you read about her work, all she ever wanted.”

Yes, because, as a woman, she – of course – deserved the presidency, since a woman had never had it before. But the voter wanted to look beyond her to all Americans, men and women.

She was a ghastly candidate. Dishonest, arrogant and managed to fail despite being up against Trump. She failed – not the voters. It wasn’t the Russians, the fake news, the FBI. She had all the help a person in that candidacy could wish for. A rigged system to put her on the ticket. The full (fulsome) support of the creeping media. And yet she failed.

The Democrats, it seems, have learnt nothing, and seem to be doing their best to ensure Trump wins again.

Shane Dunworth-crompton
Shane Dunworth-crompton
4 years ago
Reply to  Joe Blow

I was interested -though not surprised – to see Hillary added her “mean father” to the list of people who thwarted her and her ambitions.

Gerald gwarcuri
Gerald gwarcuri
4 years ago

Such a misguided rant. Hillary as victim. Where will it end? Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election to a dimwit because the electorate was achingly tired of the politics of smug, elitist snobbery typified by the previous administration, and because they found her to be yet another – if more shrill – example of the same. If she was a victim, it was of her own grasping for power and glory. She lost on her demerits. She and Bill are crooks. Most Americans can see that fairly plainly. And, she is a scold. No one wants a scold for President. We learned what that felt like under Barack Obama, who at least had some redeeming virtues, one of which was a large measure of self-control.

Juilan Bonmottier
Juilan Bonmottier
4 years ago

These ‘feminist’ perspectives get more hysterically unhinged by the day…

Matthew Powell
Matthew Powell
4 years ago

Hillary Clinton was intelligent, highly qualified and capable politician but she was the wrong candidate at the wrong time. A member of the liberal establishments inner circle, campaigning for an ideology that had ruled the westerner world for the last quarter of a century but was now actively harming the livelihoods of large sections of the electorate she would rely on to be elected.

Women and for that matter men, who would rather wallow in victim hood narratives than hard face political truths, will find themselves repeating Hillary’s fate.

Claire D
Claire D
4 years ago
Reply to  Matthew Powell

I agree with the spirit of your comment but I do not think Hillary Clinton is intelligent, clever yes, but not intelligent.

Sim Bun
Sim Bun
4 years ago
Reply to  Claire D

Could you explain the difference please ?

Claire D
Claire D
4 years ago
Reply to  Sim Bun

Fair enough question.
There’s a degree of crossover between the two words but ‘clever’ is more quick-witted, creative and adroit, whereas ‘intelligent’ is more intellectual, logical and insightful.

Kate H. Armstrong
Kate H. Armstrong
4 years ago
Reply to  Claire D

I think you are being ‘too kind’. HC (whom I met) when she requested a meeting with ‘Peace Women’ in NI, is ‘clever’, but only in the cunning, manipulative, self-interested sense.

Her ‘talk’ was patronising, detached, and cold. One woman, after Clinton left, won a standing ovation on asking: ‘What in hell was she doing here?. That ‘one’ cares about nobody but herself’.

We found the answer (to her purpose) later; when the media announced: ‘Hilary C. believes her visit to NI made a large contribution to the NI Peace Process’! It was all about HIlary don’t you know.

Claire D
Claire D
4 years ago

Kate, I agree with your versions of ‘clever’ for Hillary, but I was responding to Sim Bun and wanting to give a balanced definition for Sim Bun’s sake.
I’m pleased you joined in with the more appropriate dark side of ‘clever’.

Bill Gaffney
Bill Gaffney
4 years ago
Reply to  Matthew Powell

She is a criminal. No more, no less.

unconcurrentinconnu
unconcurrentinconnu
4 years ago

Authors on Unherd should be aware that it only takes one or two stupid articles revealing their illogical take on life for their credibility to be lost forever. That’s two authors now that I won’t waste time reading in future.

Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
4 years ago

Ha ha, yes, two on here and Christ knows how many more across the rest of the press.

A Spetzari
A Spetzari
4 years ago

I really do not say this lightly as it is a bit of an ad hominem, but agree with reference to Tanya.

She seems wholly out of her depth on a range of issues and topics and so instead shoehorns those issues and topics onto something that she is familiar with; usually feminism/misogyny, occasionally Judaism/antisemitism.

I am yet to have read a good article from her. I do not rate her as a journalist, and judging by the comments I am not alone.

Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
4 years ago
Reply to  A Spetzari

Yes, her regular presence in The Spectator was one of the reasons I did not renew my subscription, although not the only reason. And that was the last entity within the MSM that I was prepared to fund. It was a shame as I had rarely missed an issue, one way or another, for 40 years.

Diarmid French
Diarmid French
4 years ago

Just another example of the many politicians who create nothing, improve nothing, help nobody but somehow achieve fame and great personal wealth on the back of the likes of the Soros’s, the Goldman Sachs and the Black Rocks among many others.
What a tough life she’s had….

Shane Dunworth-crompton
Shane Dunworth-crompton
4 years ago
Reply to  Diarmid French

You could say the same about the author of this weak predictable (from her) article. It create nothing, improves nothing but seeks to somehow achieve fame & bolster a personal career (?) on the wave of fashionable woke nonsense. Why not take a look at something real, for example the plight of “the deplorables” or the decrepit moribund state of the Democratic party and of the Republicans

aelf
aelf
4 years ago

The failed presidential candidate was a victim of her own multi-faceted failings. Claiming anything else bespeaks either a fundamental inability to observe or purposeful mendacity.

David Lawler
David Lawler
4 years ago

What a strange hill for TG to die on. Hillary is possibly the most repellant woman ever to enter politics…

And this is definitely the worst article I have ever read on Unherd.

unconcurrentinconnu
unconcurrentinconnu
4 years ago

The author has obviously never heard of hubris.

Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
4 years ago

The comment sections enabled by the digitisation of the newspapers very quickly revealed that many of the readers know more than most of the writers. Never has this been proved more resoundingly than in the response to this article.

lizzzygoode
lizzzygoode
4 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

In full agreement with you. This article is utter dross.

Wilfred Davis
Wilfred Davis
4 years ago

This is a feeble article. I visit sources such as UnHerd for enlightenment, with analysis of issues based on evidence and underpinned by logical argument. This: no more than a self-indulgent wallowing in victimhood and resentment, hosing out blame in the customary directions according to tired formulas. Little about Hillary Clinton as a politician, but much about how sad and angry the author feels about how sad and angry Hillary Clinton feels. What benefit is in this? There is more of value in the comments than in the article. Editor, please exercise more quality control.

David Morley
David Morley
4 years ago
Reply to  Wilfred Davis

Seconded – this is really poor stuff.

Nigel Clarke
Nigel Clarke
4 years ago

Would be good if Tanya could engage with one or two of the comments on this article. Or is this another one of these “hit and run” pieces where someone can say anything they like, irrespective of facts, then just write another article with the same MO…ad-infinitum.

Bill Gaffney
Bill Gaffney
4 years ago

My goodness. I did not think that Gold could write anything more ridiculous. She has exceeded all previous prattling with this piece of drivel. Hillary is a criminal. Bill is a criminal. She did not win because she was and is a terrible candidate and human.

esoteric888
esoteric888
4 years ago

So.

Nothing to do with her havingf a completely tin ear to the needs and mood of the electorate then?

A donkey with a Blue Rosette could have beaten Trump.
But no.

It’s the misogyny.

Yeah. Right…

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
4 years ago

Clinton lost because she was deeply unlikeable. She expected women to vote for her simply because she was also a woman, having made no effort to give them any better reason. She insulted half the population as “deplorables”. Smart? I think not.

Jimmy Edwards
Jimmy Edwards
4 years ago

Yes, never attack or insult the voters… the other candidate is your only target.

Neil John
Neil John
4 years ago

Biden’s mistaken #youaintblack shows the demonrats didn’t learn from HRC’s similar approach to women, and strong minded independent women hate other women telling them they have to vote for them because they are a woman too, especially as one American woman I work with put it “why would I vote for that dried up spiteful hag of a war-hawk who’s cost many women their sons and brothers already?”, I think she might have had a point…

Lydia R
Lydia R
4 years ago

She lost because the voters didn’t want a hand picked candidate foisted on them by the MSM and establishment. It was like it was a foregone conclusion before the contest even started.

LindsayFan
LindsayFan
4 years ago

This is what Betty Friedan said of the Monica Lewinsky affair: “enemies are attempting to bring him down through allegations about some dalliance with an intern… Whether it’s a fantasy, a set-up or true, I simply don’t care.” My how times have changed, now that we have to #BelieveAllWomen (as long as they aren’t accusing Biden, that is). Just goes to show how hypocritical feminists can be. It doesn’t matter what the lout in the WH did, as long as he/she ensures the correct policies are passed. HRC sold her soul because she needed Bill’s political coattails. Simple as that.

Giulia Khawaja
Giulia Khawaja
4 years ago

Just because a woman fails to achieve something does not mean it’s misogynistic.
Hilary Clinton was ineffectual, irritating with her constant gurning and unsuitable partly because her health was uncertain.

Jimmy Edwards
Jimmy Edwards
4 years ago
Reply to  Giulia Khawaja

Agree on health issues..glad to see the Democrats nominated a candidate this year who has the mental acuity, physical fitness, and robust endurance to thrive on the grueling schedule and challenges of the campaign trail. Oh, my bad. Maybe that’s why he’s been hiding in his basement.

thomasquinn1817
thomasquinn1817
4 years ago

I can’t help but think of a day back in October 2016 when I looked at the news stories for the two candidates. BuzzFeed covered HRC’s visit to a college town where the headline was “This girl just came out to Hilary Clinton and it was beautiful”, while CNN had Trump at a rust belt town in Ohio saying “I’ll bring jobs”.

Jimmy Edwards
Jimmy Edwards
4 years ago

That’s it in a nutshell.

Richard Lyon
Richard Lyon
4 years ago

Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat. – Hillary Rodham Clinton

Clinton’s claim, rooted in contemporary feminism’s gynocentric ideology, is repulsive and absurd for the self evident reason that the primary victims are those who are lost, not those who lose. It requires an extraordinary act of bad faith to construe rejection of the claimant and her flatulent feminist entitlement as misogyny.

stephen f.
stephen f.
4 years ago

Clearly this writer has not spent any time in the same room with this woman.

John Alyson
John Alyson
4 years ago

Hilary was only a “contender” because of her relationship to Bill Clinton. So was it misogynistic to even consider her?

Mark Tomlinson
Mark Tomlinson
4 years ago

There is no tragedy about HC. She knew what she was getting into when she struck the

janner fish
janner fish
4 years ago

The left claims to care more. When the claim isn’t trusted people vote elsewhere.

ellenoday
ellenoday
4 years ago

Thanks for clearing that up. So it was misogyny was it? Right.

Silly me I thought it was the corruption of the Clintons, Hillary’s ineptitude as a politician, her lying about Benghazi (what does it matter), her lack of real competence since she just rode into politics on Bill’s coattails and her utter disdain (the deplorables) for half the electorate that caused her to lose the election.

But now I know different. Ms Gold has enlightened me……..or on the other hand could it be Ms Gold who is so hopelessly out of touch. Why not get out of your echo chamber Tanya?

PS. When I lived in the UK I voted for Margaret Thatcher. Do you think that was a weird form of misogyny on my part. Similar to my vote for Trump over Hillary? Yeh, that’s it. I am a secret misogynist. And we all know they are the worst.

Kirk B
Kirk B
4 years ago

Right on the heels of the NYT with an op-ed declaring misogny the “real” reason Clinton lost.

Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
4 years ago
Reply to  Kirk B

So Unherd has only been with us for a few months and already it has sunk to depths of the NYT? Quite remarkable.

Douglas Roxborough
Douglas Roxborough
4 years ago

The picture at the top of this article displays one of the reasons she lost – she’s acting, and bad acting at that. Plus she’s a dishonest lawyer, and who likes those?

Karl Juhnke
Karl Juhnke
4 years ago

Ridiculous. The type of tripe which the media tried to force on the American people throughout her dismal campaign. Luckily they were not so stupid.

Laurel
Laurel
4 years ago

This article was a colossal waste of time.

Obviously the author hasn’t lived the evolution of Hillary going back to the early 70’s. Hillary lost, get over it, and realize she has no one to blame but herself.

John Snowball
John Snowball
4 years ago

Misogyny has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton’s serial failures to become the President of the USA. It’s because she is a thoroughly awful person, and most of America recognises that, – as do the majority of the Democrat Party as well now.

Stanley Beardshall
Stanley Beardshall
4 years ago

I started reading Unherd a couple of months ago because I could no longer trust the newspapers. This article is testing my faith. Is there anyone on the editorial board of Unherd who can stop this silly woman having the right to publish such drivel?

David Morley
David Morley
4 years ago

God, it really is drivel isn’t it.

giancarlo sallier de la tour
giancarlo sallier de la tour
4 years ago

Personally, I think Hilary Clinton would have been a good president, but she was interventionist in foreign policy and she was the wife of a former interventionist president. Following the Iraq and Afghanistan debacle, under a different administration (George W. Bush started as an isolationist but had turned out into an interventionst), the American electorate was fed up with dynasties, particularly if associated to interventionist foreign policies. Of course part of the electorate is sexist, but that did not stop her winning the popular vote.

Robert Lush
Robert Lush
4 years ago

Hilary Clinton is dreadful . That is obvious. Misogyny has nothing to do with it.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
4 years ago

This entire essay is ridiculous. Hillary Clinton lost because she was a lousy candidate, which she proved herself, after the election in publishing her blame-it-all-on-others book, What Happened. It’s as simple as that. And if the author Ms. Gold and others on the Left did a deep dive analysis after the election they would realize that as well, but they continue to drive their heads in the sand.

Peter Scott
Peter Scott
4 years ago

If Hillary is a feminist, then why did she spend years – sorry, decades – enabling a rapacious sexual predator who forced himself on women and in at least one case raped them?
My advice to Tanya Gold is for her to get to know Hillary personally; and then not be hurt when Hillary gives her the bum’s rush or her trademark cold stare.

After all it is almost certainly not personal. It seems entirely possible that Hillary simply hates everyone.
Her Secret Service detail used to term her personal dedicated plane ‘Broomstick One’.

ellenoday
ellenoday
4 years ago

Perhaps there is a simpler explanation for Tanya’s risible article. Anyone who criticizes the Clinton’s in any serious way gets suicided. Tanya doesn’t want to be suicided. So she writes this silly article as an insurance policy. Given the Clinton’s track record of persons around them who have committed suicide by shooting themselves in the back of the head who can blame Tanya.

malx.friends
malx.friends
4 years ago

Hillary is a professional lawyer and politician, a manipulator, a dishonest fake. Enough!

Jimmy Edwards
Jimmy Edwards
4 years ago

The comments are far better than the article… some very smart readers on this site.

Andrew Harvey
Andrew Harvey
4 years ago

You forgot to mention her brilliant talent at trading cattle futures.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/

steviej757
steviej757
4 years ago

Where does one learn the art of the contortion of facts and actual truths that you are butthurt about, and somehow relate it to some faux sociology narrative…? Oh, College…
HiLIARy was equally despised by those who know her personally and to voters who are familiar with her toxic handiwork. She’s a mean, foul mouthed, entitled criminal whose mountain of cash, activist fawning media cabal, Clinton Global Initiative money laundering operation and paid for Russian Collusion time bomb couldn’t drag her sorry ass across the finish line to accept the ideological baton from Barry Soetoro.
So grab the popcorn, for more teeth gnashing is coming soon…
The Obama/Clinton crime organization will be laid bare in the coming months as the weaponization of Govt Spy, Police, & prosecutorial powers by Obozo to solidify political power will be exposed… And BTW, the British assisted.
There are several competent women in the U.S. who could be president, but, lol HiLIARy… No!

Ian Thorpe
Ian Thorpe
4 years ago

Was Hillary Clinton a victim of misogyny and male dominance?

Two words: Uranium One.

The only things Hillary was a victim of were her own greed and arrogance.

M Blanc
M Blanc
4 years ago

Men have caved in to every demand that women have made for the past fifty years, and yet nothing has changed. Women are as angry and demanding as they were in 1970, perhaps more so. It’s time that men wake up and face the facts: Nothing that we do is going to mollify them. So stop trying.

JEAN RANC
JEAN RANC
3 years ago

Well…to start with, how come the girl, who reportedly screamed at her Republican Daddy, “When I grow up I’m going to be a Democrat!” become a Goldwater Girl? Goldwater, who was the Republican candidate for President in 1964 campaigning to “Saw off the Eastern Seaboard!” and “Bomb Vietnam back to the Stone Age!” So when did she get to be a liberal Democrat…at Yale Law School…before or after she met Bill? Then how, as NY Democratic Senator, could Hillary vote in favor of the Cheney-Bush invasion of Iraq? And as Secretary of State under Obama, serve as the lead WarWitch…together with Samantha Power & Susan Rice…to harangue Obama into invading Libya? But where was Tanya when Hillary was caught on camera laughing and clapping her hands when she learned that Qaddafi had been sodomized with a bayonet then assassinated…and declared, “We came, we saw, he died!” And after that accomplishment, the self-crowned “Regime Change Queen”/would-be Empress announced her next victim: “Assad must go!” But when that mission failed due to Russian intervention in that American imperial war in Sept. 2015, would it be wrong to suspect that when she ran for President in 2016, Putin was at the next on her “Hit List”? So suprise, surprise! who was to blame when she lost? As we’ve witnessed the dim Dems led by Lady Hillary Macbeth accusing the Russians for hacking, interfering in “her” election and picking the locks on the Russiagate that got Trump into the White House instead of her. Did Tanya say “misogyny” did her in…or was it her own “maleogyny”: beginning with hatred of Daddy & maybe having something to do with Bill’ hiding in the Oval Office closet with Monica…and when outed: humiliating Hillary before the whole world? So why didn’t she divorce him and and run for President as Hillary Rodham…or adopt her mother’s maiden name to avoid being inaugurated as her “father’s daughter”? (from a psychologist, who was clinically trained in the psychoanalytically-oriented Dartmouth Dept. of Psychiatry 1979-81)