You’re missing the point if you just view it as a gender issue. HRC may be wearing a female body, but she tried to avoid offending her big donors at every turn and resisted anything that wasn’t pure neoliberal establishment policy. This was poisonous in an election where voters wanted anything but the establishment and another sold-out-to-corporate candidate. HRC took forever to say anything about opposing the exceedingly unpopular TPP, and then it was half-hearted. She told people that we didn’t need to make America great again, because in her view everything was fine, even though we have probably the worst child poverty among developed nations, a bigger percentage of our population incarcerated than ANY other nation, and growing income inequality. When a reporter asked her what of Bernie’s progressive ideas she was adopting, she said, “none.”
That’s not to mention that she had shown herself to be extremely hawkish as secretary of state and, in a debate, named Kissinger as her mentor in a nation tired of war and regime change that ends in disaster for all involved. People would have happily voted for a woman of a different sort, and many did, by voting for Jill Stein.
Trump may not be the brightest bulb, but he was sharp enough to take a stong stand against the hated TPP, and as time wore on, he started sounding more like Bernie, sympathizing with workers and talking about big changes. He probably grasped how remarkable Bernie’s rise was, from almost unknown to much of the country to a contender against one of the biggest political machines ever. (In a fair election, Bernie would have won.) So never mind that Trump was fake as can be, he said the words and some believed him. Trump lied like crazy, but he did manage to present himself as outside the establishment. He also did lots of big rallies that were free to attend and welcomed the crowds, unlike HRC who did a few tiny rallies (often with handpicked people), and lots of events that you had to be a donor to attend. She totally failed to even bother to campaign at the end in rural Pennsylvania and the Rust Belt states that handed the win to Trump. Even hubby, Bill, thought she should have visited these places. Arrogance, hubris and being unbelievably out of touch lost the election for the DNC and their candidate, not the million excuses they have made ever since.
