I will give Hillary Clinton credit for some things because I’m not a complete asshole. First and foremost, people hated her in 1992 and hate her still because she’s a woman. It’s as simple as that. What I hate, and what no Democrat wants to acknowledge, is that the Republicans spent Bill’s eight years in office acting as though his entire administration was illegitimate for many, many reasons. They’ve done the same with Obama’s two terms. And they sure as fuck are going to do it to her with a vitriol that makes their enmity towards Obama pale in comparison. It is impossible to understate how few women there even were in national politics in 1992. There are more than ten times as many female Senators and several times more Representatives in office than there were then. Reality aside that Nancy Reagan was running the White House at the end, First Ladies and politician’s wives were there for the sole purpose of being seen and not heard. And for as misogynistic as the GOP is now, it was even moreso then and had the public more on its side then. The fact that she was a lawyer, the rainmaker partner at her firm even, was evidence of her being a traitor to her gender. She had the temerity to have an opinion and desire to influence the President, her husband, on policy issues and the shitstorm that produced was massive. How dare this un-elected woman have a voice (Let’s completely disregard to thousands of un-elected men shape policy for, with, and at time contrary to their President on a daily basis. This one has a vagina!). She was a bitch. She was a lesbian. She was a murderer. She was an attack dog. Think of the meanest thing you’ve ever seen or heard a woman attacked for being and she’s been hit by it. I will never forget the NRA cartoon where Bill is saying he didn’t have to worry about the assault weapons ban because he had his own, and it was Hillary with her hand around some guy’s throat and stopping on another and it was just the laziest, most obvious shit.

One could say that, it’s been a quarter century and she’s running as a former Senator and former Secretary of State. Let it go. The problem is that a lot of those assholes who were attacking her then are still around and attacking her, and in many cases have more power than they did then. So of course she’s going to be in a perpetual bunker mentality.

Her failing ultimately comes down to the same one Obama had about being a black man. They are so desperate to be loved than they cannot take a firm stance and really impose their will on their policies and against their opponents because they see it as succumbing to the very attacks they’ve been subjected to their entire professional lives as a woman or African-American respectively. But here’s the thing: IT DOESN’T MATTER. They’re going to lose that fight every time, but at least if they stood on principle they could overcome the attack. Instead, they let it continue because they don’t want to address it directly.

So I guess that’s really my biggest problem. If she isn’t willing to transcend this ground-level combat and stake a clear position from which she is willing to fight with passion and principle, then why not support the guy who actually does stand on some kind of principle no matter how stupid it is?

And that’s why Trump and Sanders have lasted this long.