Every few days I get to read a viewpoint that challenges the basic narrative on leftist media. The steady and at times, very ugly, dialogue that has developed into the Hillary Bad/Bernie Good freelance industry has been pulsing through the op-eds, comments and punditry on our side of the internet media since late last spring. The dialogue is mostly, like political journalism across the left/right media spectrum, a conversation among men (mostly white).

Mostly men predict the elections, they dissect the elections, they comment on the debates, they read us the news, they break down the candidates styles, they offer snarky ‘advice’ to the campaign staffers and they get widely shared on social media and into first the phones and then the minds of all kinds of Americans. There are brilliant women who offer fresh and insightful perspectives literally everywhere. Yet leftist political analysis is rarely 50% female on TV, the web or print. There is no need to bring up the way we treat our prominent female political journalists again, no one seems to actually care.

This election cycle, the women who present another side to the endless, cliche-ridden critiques penned by men are all dismissed as Hillary’s squad. Their take doesn’t get 700K shares in the Bernie Sanders Dank Echo Chamber so I can only conclude they aren’t seen as valuable to editors. As readers shoot down support of Hillary on the web, across comment sections one and all something becomes clear. Trashing a perceived or declared Hillary surrogate doesn’t give off the warm buzz that hating directly on the neo-liberal corporate feminist sellout herself does, but it apparently feels really good to a whole lot of people.

When something I relate to pops up in my feed, like this sobering critique of the “Gleeful Liberal Takedown of Hillary Clinton and how it is Affirming Institutional Sexism” I feel joyous for a moment, until I realize what I’m celebrating is someone pointing out the over-the-top, really gross rhetoric that chips away at her chances of representing me, for once, in the White House.

The author writes what’s on my mind as I comment on a variety of sites about the sexism inherent in the pile-on attacks from the left:

….Hillary Clinton is indeed, as her critics claim, part of the “the establishment.” Like all women of lofty ambition, she is keenly and woefully aware that in 2016, less than a century out from women’s suffrage, pioneering into a space formerly only occupied by men requires an acceptance that gender constrains one to work within the system, rather than from outside of it.



So the next time you say, “I hate Hillary Clinton,” ask yourself why.

I don’t find Hillary to be any more or less corrupt than our standard male politicians over the last two centuries. In fact, her voting record is much more liberal and progressive than most of them. She has a lot of senators on board for her legislative agenda, many of them left leaning women that have spent their lives fighting for people like me. We think she might just get us those things a lot of liberal men have promised in the past...like Equal Pay, affordable childcare, universal pre-k, protection from violent men and universal access to healthcare, including the reproductive kind. Our opinion, though shared by the majority of voters, isn’t heard on the left unless it is buried under a bunch of male op-eds, on the front page and then in the comments as well.

I know it can’t go without saying that there are valid reasons to critique and vet her for the job. I think that’s being done pretty thoroughly and enthusiastically. My hope is for new voices that don’t represent the male liberal traditions of movement politics, excluding women and POC as they supposedly change things for us. I’d like some more thoughtful analysis and debate from women like MHP and her guests. I would like some analysis that doesn’t set up Hillary as a The Death of Liberalism/Feminism and Bernie as a Savior to Us All.

Here are some links to some recent op-eds, all by men “covering” the primary. This sampling is from the standard sites many left leaning voters visit for politics, news and opinion. There are plenty of counterarguments to these, written by women and a few men, but they are visibly and regularly outnumbered by progressive men trashing Hill daily in my feed and everyone else’s. Sorry for the janky links I am new here.

Hillary Clinton's Lead Pipe Answer 'Made Me Vomit In My Mouth,' Flint Questioner Says

Bernie Sanders Won the Debate Because Jorge Ramos Is Right, Clinton Could Get Indicted

Hillary’s inevitability lie: Why the media and party elites are rushing to nominate the weakest candidate

Hillary Clinton Wants To Bring Back The '90s Economy. Here's What She's Missing.​