Susan Bordo is right about one thing: Sexism is real and Hillary Clinton has been subjected to it. The spectre of Hillary-the-nasty-woman is persistent and familiar—but it’s only one of the many reasons Clinton lost her latest White House bid. The story of her defeat is a complicated one, encompassing rising anti-establishment fervor, campaign error, and yes, prejudice. But you wouldn’t know it from reading Bordo’s new book.

THE DESTRUCTION OF HILLARY CLINTON by Susan Bordo Melville House, 272 pp., $24.99

In The Destruction of Hillary Clinton, the feminist scholar seeks to absolve Clinton for her loss to Donald Trump. To do so, she presents a raft of justifications: James Comey, Wikileaks, conservatives, Bernie Sanders, and dumb young people. There is scarcely a mention of policy positions Clinton took during her campaign that were less than inspiring, or of moments when the candidate seemed to misread the public mood—such as her repeated claim that “America is already great.” Any rational analysis of Clinton’s career and campaigns must include an examination of her mistakes, but Destruction is not rational. Bordo starts from the conviction that Hillary Clinton, as “the most qualified candidate in history,” should have won. Clinton’s actions interest her less than what she deems as Clinton’s greatness. It’s not an investigation but a deification.

This is personal for Bordo, who admits as much in her introduction. Clinton reminds her of the subject of one of her previous books, Anne Boleyn—another woman she sees as a victim of “nasty caricature,” “factually loose biographies,” and “sensationalization.” Bordo herself and Hillary Clinton are also a bit alike, she tells us. They share a “generational” bond and faced similar decisions about their professional lives as women. This observation has merit, but Bordo weights it more heavily than it deserves. She takes Clinton’s suffering on herself.

“This book is hard to write as it requires revisiting events that caused me pain, anger, and frustration,” she writes, adding that though some may mock her for calling her feelings “trauma,” she spent 2016 “in a state of perpetual fury and helplessness.” She adds, “I often found myself waking up way too early, then falling asleep at unexpected times, not because I was sleepy but because consciousness felt like a burden.” Recall that this is a book about a politician, not a memoir of post-traumatic stress or bereavement.

In fact, Destruction reads more like an exercise in public relations. Clinton is not a representative of the “establishment,” Bordo argues, but has consistently been a progressive. If conservatives hadn’t vilified her in the ’90s—if Bernie Sanders hadn’t run against her—she would have defeated Donald Trump.