It’s difficult to respond to your hundred assertions without devolving into some kind of never-ending internet back-and-forth battle. You seem to enjoy taking a lot of very specific turns of phrases out of context, and then tearing them down without any interest in responding to their original meaning. Your Wal-Mart nitpicking is a case in point; I made it pretty clear that my dissatisfaction isn’t that SuperHillary didn’t single-handedly stop big bad Wal-Mart, but that simply, she didn’t even bother to speak up against their abysmal labor practices (and has later conveniently benefited from their growth and power in her own career.) I don’t think she is Satan incarnate; but I do think her associations, her financial ties, and the mismatch between what she’s done and what she tells us she cares about are just too blatant and rooted in things no leader of a country should be rooted in.

As for the sexism you throw around: you conveniently ignored the paragraph where I make it clear that she is as capable as any other male politician at being our president- in some cases, MORE capable. Yes, she has to deal with sexism and double-standards and other things men in her position don’t have to. That aspect of her story does earn my respect- but I’m sorry, it just doesn’t somehow justify the rest of her. You defend her Goldman Sachs money by saying everyone else is getting that kind of money, too. Yes, okay, so she’s as corrupt as her male counterparts and the system they all are benefiting from. What’s your point? None of it is okay.

I do think our country is still deeply sexist, yes, and I do think the people that want her in office purely to check that milestone off their list are making a big mistake, but that’s my personal speculation. It’s not a fundamentally sexist thought. Your assertion that a Hillary presidency would magically give us more progressive options in 8 years by virtue of her glass-ceiling shattering… now that to me is sexist and naive, similarly to thinking racism should have disappeared thanks to Obama becoming president. Yeah, right.

I should also point out that I don’t hold Obama responsible for all the Republican obstruction he’s received; I hold him responsible for what he has and hasn’t done during his 8 years here. If you actually believe that if it hadn’t been for those damn Republicans, Obama would have achieved amazing things, I’ll have to point out all the things he’s responsible for without any help or obstruction from the Republicans: the TPP, a very un-transparent administration when it comes to military issues (like his own personal Guantanamo called Bagram, or his embrace of our military drone program) and so on. Oh, let’s not forget bringing in Geitner and Summers to oversee a Wall Street bailout… are you going to blame that move on the Republicans, too?

You seem like a smart person who’s read and researched a lot of things. Yet when it comes to supporting Clinton, your research gets a lot shakier. For example, you call her the most honest candidate based on politifact’s stats. But all that proves is that she’s extremely good at double-talk; her recent anger over Greenpeace’s fossil fuel accusations is an example. She can honestly say she has only taken a small amount of money from individual contributors, say around $300k, and, it’s true- technically, she’s not lying, so she gets a golden review from the Washington Post. But that’s because the rules of the game have been written to allow people like Hillary to get another 4.5 million fossil fuel bucks from lobbyists and bundled SuperPAC donations without, technically, ever receiving the money. So when she feigns indignation at Sanders for lying about her fossil fuel ties, you (her supporters) can all pat yourselves on the back for supporting an “honest candidate.” It’s a bit like a 10-year-old boy having his sister take cookies from the cookie jar for him so that he can later assure his parents “I swear I didn’t go into that jar!” Come on, let’s drop the pretense here. The entire system has been hijacked, slowly, over time, piece by piece, in such a way that corruption just seems like business as usual to us. You’re okay with that? Do you honestly believe Hillary is going to fight on the right side of…

financial regulations

using our military indiscriminately (a No-Fly Zone? Really?)

the TPP and other Globalization / Privatization issues

fracking and similar fossil-fuel industry practices

issues like Edward Snowden / Wikileaks

Net Neutrality

Big Agriculture

Sweeping Environmental Reform

Single Payer Health Care

…just to name a few? Because if you feel comfortable that Hillary would fight for what’s right in the above issues, I would love to see the evidence that gives you such confidence. I don’t mean linking to a speech where she said “the environment is important to me,” I mean actual cases where she actually fought for such issues. Because either my concept of Hillary’s integrity is based on myth, or yours is. I don’t read Koch-Brother funded news stories, I do my own research and make judgements that way. I also have been watching Hillary since the early 90’s; her positions may have “evolved” here and there but her basic M.O. is exactly the same. She’s a politician through and through- a quality you seem to admire. I know that as first lady she pushed for universal health care (supported strongly by Bernie Sanders, I might add) but that was a looooong time ago and she has since turned her back on that fight. That’s pretty much the one genuinely progressive example I can think of with her.

Yes, there is a double-standard at work with her. A lot of Americans don’t let her get away with things they probably would were she a man- that’s probably one of the reasons why I have such little faith in her electability, not because of her actions, but because so many people unfairly categorize her as a pushy, annoying woman- which is why, strategically, I think the Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot supporting her.

But that’s a separate argument. None of that has anything to do with her integrity, which you find to be exemplary and I find to be completely lacking. Why you believe she’ll behave any differently than the last 5 presidents we’ve had, I don’t know. I’ve spent my adult life watching this political system make life worse and worse for more and more Americans. I don’t know how anyone can honestly believe a Clinton presidency would be any different. This game that we Americans play where we get all excited for someone, watch them completely betray the empty promises they made, and then do it again 4 years later is a sad joke to me, and I have no doubt Hillary is but another one in a long line of useless bureaucrats who’s real interest is furthering their own career. But hey, if she manages to become president somehow, you’ll have 4–8 years to prove me wrong. I would love to be proven wrong.