Opinion

Sexism did not defeat Clinton

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton delivers her concession speech on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016 from the New Yorker Hotel's Grand Ballroom in New York City, N.Y. (Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/TNS) Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton delivers her concession speech on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016 from the New Yorker Hotel's Grand Ballroom in New York City, N.Y. (Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/TNS) Photo: Olivier Douliery / TNS Photo: Olivier Douliery / TNS Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Sexism did not defeat Clinton 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Sexism defeated Hillary Clinton, or so goes the claim of some who keep the worst, most demeaning, nasty bigotry against women alive in their minds even as it has pretty much died in politics. They see a world that isn’t there, but the illusion apparently makes them feel better about a seriously flawed candidate.

Social science has something to say about all of this.

Varied studies show that, in elections between men and women, gender matters scarcely a hoot. Party affiliation matters much, much more, and when you look at results, you find that women win as much as men. Concern about sexism is apparently a force that keeps women from running as often as men do, but who is responsible for that? The ideological fear-mongers, maybe?

Just Facts, a reliable source of unbiased information on the internet, commissioned a poll in which American voters were asked whether they would favor a man or a woman as president. Some 69 percent said it made no difference, 15 percent said they would favor a woman, and 12 percent said they would favor a man. A Gallup poll showed 90 percent of voters would happily vote for a woman.

In this election year of befuddled pollsters, Trump surprisingly received 53 percent of the vote of white women.

How do you figure this? After all, there was the 11-year-old video of him crassly talking about women receptive to his sexual advances. He supposedly once called a Miss Universe Miss Piggy. Megyn Kelley of Fox pointed as a primary debate moderator to still other names he had called women, and he later responded with a comment about her menstrual cycle. A number of women came out accusing him of unwanted sexual aggression.

That’s not a little to be angry about, and Clinton, vying to be the first female president in American history, was widely hailed as a grand person about to make grand history.

She herself is pro-choice to extremes and promised a variety of benefits for women. In vicious TV ads and in her speeches, she hit Trump incessantly for misogyny. Her advantage with women was supposed to be a major factor securing the election for her. It was no such thing, and here is what happened, according to a woman writing for the left-wing website, Slate.

Considering that Trump obviously believes women to be “subhuman,” L.V. Anderson tells us, those women voting for him were guilty of the following: “Self-loathing. Hypocrisy. And, of course, a racist view of the world that privileges white supremacy over every other issue.”

So there’s part of what hurt Clinton with women - the feminist left’s hateful condescension toward other women with less money and education.

Clinton herself, of course, referred to millions of Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables,” surely understanding she was talking about women, too. Singers invited on stage with Clinton made trashy references to women, and a supermodel at a Hollywood music awards ceremony recently got endless laughter for her ugly mockery of Trump’s wife, Melania.

Did all women agree with Clinton that killing viable fetuses - babies - in partial-birth abortions was just between the mother and her doctor? No. Although health issues for the mother would be a serious consideration for anybody, some saw another entity involved, the infant.

They knew that the husband of this candidate, who also mocked Melania Trump during the campaign, stood accused of doing far worse things to women than Trump, with proof in one famous case. Not so incidental were Hillary Clinton’s corruption, her lies, her laxity with national security, her avoidance of the press, her corporate-donor coziness, her empty record and her politics as usual.

Of course, my saying all of this will also be interpreted by some as sexism, a convenient, ad hominem escape from other issues.

Jay Ambrose is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service. Email: speaktojay@aol.com.