Just about every news outlet you can think of has had an opinion piece on Hillary Clinton’s new book, “What Happened”, which released this week. Many of them have headlines telling Hillary to stop the “finger pointing” already, and according to Politico.com, democrats are “dreading” this book. They refer to this book as opening old wounds. They are saying Clinton just can’t get over her loss. Let I remind you, we currently have a president who supposedly hung up a map of his electoral win somewhere in the White House and brings up the election every chance he can. What is important to note here though, is that most of those articles were written by men who thought Clinton was not likable enough and was at times over-prepared during the 2016 campaign. More than 65 million people voted for Clinton, and it is safe to bet that most of those people do not want her to go away.
Other failed presidential candidates (who are all men by the way), have never been treated this way. Bernie Sanders, for example, just released a book as well. No one has told him to go away, and he lost by a long shot compared to Clinton. John McCain has been re-elected into the Senate after losing to former President Barack Obama in 2012. Al Gore continues to bring awareness to the growing issue of climate change even though he lost to George W. Bush. Why have all these men been able to continue working, bringing awareness, and talking about what happened to them?
The answer is sexism. It is sexist if you’re okay with Gore traveling the country, telling us we are killing the planet and with Sanders’ book, which he claims is a “forward-thinking guide for the young,” but why are you are not okay with the first woman to win a major-party presidential nomination doing the same? McCain and Sanders still get to have a say in our lives as senators, and we all must be okay with that? Fine, but to be fair, the same should go for when private citizen, Hillary Clinton, decides to speak.
She has a right to express herself. She was the first woman to win a major-party presidential nomination, who lost because of the Electoral College, yet won the popular vote by nearly three million votes. There were many factors that may or may not have played a role in her loss, but Clinton herself talks about how she felt she had to act during the campaign. She had to think about how she looked, about every word she said and think about policies. After this election, it is clear that men do not have to think about any of that. So no, Clinton is not “cashing in” after this election. She is calling out misogyny in every form, prepping the stage for the next woman who wins the nomination and hopefully, wins it all.
