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No. It was just Thatcher and her handbag. And yet Margaret Thatcher was one of the greatest leaders Britain has ever had (second only to Winston Churchill, if you ask me), in a country where chauvinism toward women — despite the lip service to the obligatory pieties — was as rich and deep as anywhere in the Western world. The ceilings crashed by Meir and Thatcher weren’t glass — they were reinforced concrete. But these two — and there are other examples — set real milestones and earned their status based on their own efforts, their own skills and their own daring.

Nonetheless, the pretense continues that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is a milestone for women in general. Yet her victory, which is now taken as a given by most of the U.S. media elite, will not send the message to young girls that if they work hard enough, they can become president of the United States. It will send the message that if they marry well enough, they can become president. Not exactly a feminist message.

It is arguable that, aside from the tumult inspired by Donald Trump’s singular presence — and that’s a Grand Canyon of an aside — what wind there is at Clinton’s back comes from the idea that her campaign can claim that it is historically significant. What U.S. President Barack Obama was for race, she is for women. The claim is empty — as I think the examples of Meir and Thatcher both exuberantly demonstrate. Yet it continues to provide some distinction for her otherwise undistinguished candidacy, and her utterly derivative career.

Bernie Sanders was a milestone candidate for the Democrats, but the Clinton machine was too much for him. Despite his mass rallies and the pulse of national enthusiasm he excited among the young and disaffected, he fell — and, it seems, has largely disappeared. Which leaves the field to the professional insiders of Clinton Inc., straining to find a reason beyond “it’s her turn,” to justify another run of politics as it has always been, and as it appears it will continue to be.