The anchor then turned to his panelist, the CNN regular Gloria Borger. “Gloria,” Blitzer said, “you saw Hillary, Hillary Clinton, deliver a very emotional, powerful speech. Clearly, it’s not something she wanted to say.”

Borger acknowledged that. And then she talked about the apology that the speech—via its line “I’m sorry that we did not win this election”—offered. Clinton, Borger said, “came out at the top of the speech and said, ‘I’m sorry. Period.’” Borger added: “That’s what women do. They apologize right away, and say, ‘I’m sorry.’”

These were striking frames. Here was the first woman to approach the American presidency, doing the crucial work of democratic reconciliation: avowing the urgency of the rule of law, discussing her continued love for the American experiment, urging her supporters to keep hoping and fighting and believing that the American future will be better than the American past. Clinton’s voice, as she delivered the final messages of her hard-fought campaign, wavered, yes, once. She included lines like “I feel pride and gratitude for this wonderful campaign that we built together” and “this is painful and it will be for a long time.” Mostly, though, she focused on the idea that “our campaign was never about one person.” She spoke of the needs of the country—and she did so forcefully. And calmly. And with conviction. Not a tear in sight.

It was in fact Tim Kaine, her running mate, who misted up and seemed to choke back tears as he addressed the crowd before Clinton made her entrance.

And yet, according to CNN, what came through most powerfully as she conceded the presidency to Donald Trump is that Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former senator and Secretary of State, the woman who by an extremely narrow margin lost her bid to become Commander in Chief, is ultimately “somebody who emotes”—somebody who, today, “said what she was feeling, and as we suspected beforehand, not just about herself, but about all the people that she clearly thinks that she let down.”

This was all, as it happened, a fitting bookend to Clinton’s second bid for the presidency. The politician, it barely bears repeating, has had a long and complicated relationship with the American media—one that has been additionally complicated by media members’ expectations of what it means not just to be a public figure, but to be a public figure who is also a woman. “Emotion,” or “emoting,” as CNN had it, is part of that.

In 2008, when Clinton was battling Barack Obama for that cycle’s Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton made a campaign stop at a coffee shop in New Hampshire. A woman there asked her a seemingly innocuous question: “How did you get out the door every day? I mean, as a woman, I know how hard it is to get out of the house and get ready. Who does your hair?” Clinton gave her response—“this is very personal for me, not just political”—and, as she spoke, misted up, very slightly. The media who witnessed the event, both in person and through other means, wrote up the incident like so: “Hillary Tears Up On The Campaign Trail,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “Clinton Shows Emotion in Final Hours,” the Boston Globe announced. “An Emotional Clinton vows to Fight On” (Reuters). “Emotional Clinton says, This is personal” (AP). “A Chink in the Steely Façade of Hillary Clinton,” the Washington Post called the event. The Huffington Post was decidedly elegant about it: “Clinton Emotional,” it said.