Problem was Clinton was a "qualified" candidate. Something that incidentally can be disputed, as being elected with in your own party is prerequisite of being "qualified" to be president (for all intents and purposes).

As with many positions and things in life, simply being tenured isn't enough, it's what you can do for the job you are seeking, not necessarily for the one you had. You have to draw those comparisons.

And its not always a miscarriage of gender justice if the guy wins out. Sometimes (hell, frequently) in all levels of a job search, election, etc., qualified people by definition have to lose. And sometimes lack of experience makes you MORE qualified for something, and the president we need might benefit more from less experience in some ways. McCain seems to me like someone who is always going to apply old solutions to new problems. Hillary certainly strikes me as the same way, just from a different political perspective. Are they more "qualified" than Obama, when they would bring the same old, same old? Probably not. Is Hillary more or less qualified because of her baggage. Experience is also measured by failures too.

I think this argument would have had a lot more merit if it wasn't specifically Hillary. Problem is Hillary and her supporters thought and campaigned like she was a shoo-in, and since she is clearly not, that represents a big miscalculation to me, and makes me wonder if she was indeed the best person for that job.

Gender equity in situations like this DOES NOT mean all ties go to the female. Furthermore, you can't assume a situation is even a tie in the first place, as the situation may be (well, definitely) was misread. She had every advantage going in, and she has no one to blame but herself for that loss. She needed to put Obama down quick and didn't.

could someone explain just how Clinton's defeat symbolizes gender inequalities. I'll concede that sexism exists in America, but I dodn't see how her failure is necessarily attributable to it. What part did chauvanism or misogyny play in Clinton's defeat. I'm wary of any argument that takes discrimination as a given - reasoning that starts and ends with the mere facts that she's a woman and she lost. What exactly is it that is being alleged? Did men refuse to vote for her in the primaries mainly because she was a woman? How do we know this?

When the Diamond Backs defeated the New York Yankees, I recall the host of the Daily Show at that time commenting "Well, I guess that means the terrorists won." (I can't remember if it was John Stewart at that time yet or not)

We have a tendency to wrap up a great deal of symbolism in things that have nothing to do with the events we think they symbolize.

All but for the sake of a nail, Hillary Clinton would be the nominee and the likely President of the United States right now.

Her defeat has no more to do with sexism than Barak Obama's win has to do with an end to Racism.

Both as issues are alive and well, but it makes a statement that they have moved to our past enough that we could have this Historic Campaign where regardless of who won the nomination it would have been someone unlike any who held the office of the president before them.

Certainly there is sexism in our world, but to think that there will ever be a time without sexism, racism, or any other form of tribalism is to expect far too much from the Human Species.

Hillary Clinton made some mistaks early on in this campaign and perhaps made more throughout. Those early misteps lead to her defeat, and what a far more sexist society we would be if a poor candidate rises to office despite her mistakes just to prove a point about how non-sexist we are.

People will rend their garments and moan for what might have been because of Hillary's second place finish in the primaries (she didn't exactly lose, any more than a silver medalist loses) but that is not seeing the forest through the trees.

I am still hoping to see Christine Whitman on the McCain Ticket, and her own run in 2012. Again I hope she is beat by Obama, but one triumph at a time.

She lost because enough of the electorate chose somebody else. It's called Democracy in action, get over it already. This has nothing to do with her being a woman, it has everything to do with not wanting to see the same 2 families living in the White House for 24 years.

Faludi's Backlash taught me a lot and made me proud to call myself a feminist. On the other hand, even in that tome, she was not above mischaracterizing anyone whio disagreed with her or anythign that got in the way of her pet ideas. (I wonder if I can dig up the paper I wrote about it- that would be a fun read!)

Perpetuating the bulshit that 'girls gone wild' is the cureent brand of empowerment - or sex positivism - or whatever is just another ugly, stupid straw-woman. Please, we deserve better quality of thought and should demand more of thinkers like Faludi.

Nancy Pelosi was quoted yesterday to say that "victim politics" are not the magic bullet, as some among the old guard PUMAs still like to pull it...

From the cited article:

The proportion of female state legislators has been stuck in the low 20 percent range for 15 years; women’s share of state elective executive offices has fallen consistently since 2000, and is now under 25 percent. The American political pipeline is 86 percent male.

That's the first thing to fix, and there's no need to wait until the next presidential election cycle. It's hard to pick a winning candidate out of a small field.

In most countries the leader of the House of Commons is the Prime Minister of that country.

In that sense as the leader of the Congress for the past couple years has been a woman the fact that an individual woman didn't rise to highest office in another branch of the Government seems not a big thing to worry about.

The Speaker of the House is an exceedingly important part of the legislature, essentially entrusting right to write the laws to be written to one singular individual.

That individual is a woman in the United States, and no one seems to be all that excited about that fact. I know it's not fun to get one major victory and not follow it up with another, but politics takes time and the will of the people. It wasn't Clinton's time but it could have just as easily been so, and likewise could have been another woman, like Ms. Pelosi, whom I would have loved to have seen run.

yes it would be nice to have a female president, but short of Ms. Pelosi Impeaching Bush and Cheney (which would put her in the office, no end of controversy there) it seems we will have to wait 8 short years for that honor.