Sen. Hillary Clinton and her supporters are absolutely correct when they claim sexism has played a role in this campaign. So has racism. Both are rampant in our society, although incidents of racism and sexism tend to be far more covert than they were in the 1960s. Clinton has been quite willing to complain about sexist treatment by the media, by debate moderators, and others. However, one of my many disappointments with her is that she did not give a speech about gender comparable to the one Barack Obama gave in Philadelphia to raise awareness of the racial divide in this country.
My hope, as Clinton continued to campaign when the electoral math turned against her, was that, having nothing to lose, she would talk about how being a woman would inform her presidency, or about why women feel it is so important to have a woman break this particular glass ceiling. Instead, she talked about the importance of having someone who knows how to "clean house" after the Bush administration. The failure of her candidacy will not be that a woman was not elected president, but that she did not use the long, closely watched primary campaign to raise awareness about the gender divide in this society in such a way as to help all women, regardless of who is in the White House.