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For different reasons, Kim, I, too, have been utterly mystified by the phenomenon of the Angry White Women, the "feminists" who appear to be upset by Hillary's defeat, and who interpret it as some sort of blow against women. Partly this is because, as I think I've said before, I've always thought Hillary an apalling role model for young women ("Lesson No. 1: Marry the right man"). More importantly though, the last few weeks of her campaign have been not so much feminist as pathological. Why did she keep going for so long, even after it was clear to everybody else that she would lose? Because she was fighting for all the young girls who want to grow up to be president? Or because she was trying to prove something about her odd marriage—or, more likely, prove something to her odd husband? It sure seemed to me that her unnecessarily prolonged campaign had a lot more to do with Hillary's psychological issues than the country's political issues.
Besides, as I hardly need to rehearse here, it was hardly the world's most enlightened campaign. The sly, subracist innuendoes; the whiskey-drinking and allusions to a childhood fondness for guns; the attempt to get the Democratic Party to change its rules after the fact. What was all that about? Are Hillary's feminists pleased that their champion stooped that low? I suppose it's nice that she's decided to be generous and magnanimous now, but it's a bit late: She's done a lot of damage to Obama, as well as to her party. And it's not at all clear to me that her campaign did any good for women in politics, let alone women in general. The next female presidential candidate is going to have to struggle pretty hard to prove that she's not as divisive a political figure as Hillary.