While not succumbing to or fully recognizing the “inevitability” of Hillary Clinton as the Democrats’ pick for US presidential candidate, I do think it’s fair to dig in to see if I can at least extend the benefit of the doubt to her, as an entitled and “moderate Republican” Democrat.

After all, if she is ultimately the nominee, what alternative is there? Certainly not a Republican, probably not a third-party candidate … not voting at all?

I read an article about women around my age, who fall into the gap between the over-45 women who support Hillary and the Millennial women who overwhelmingly support Bernie. A Gen-X Hillary problem. As the writer points out, people our age think “Hillary is fine” without being particularly interested or in support of her. Her biggest, loudest supporters, though, tend to be rabidly loyal assholes, to put it mildly, who don’t inspire confidence or support for Hillary in others. (And this, coupled with loads of historical reading that make Clinton seem testy, secretive and non-collaborative, for example, in designing and trying to implement the universal healthcare plan in Bill Clinton’s administration, makes me cringe.)

We also have felt safe and distant from the kind of broad and loud feminism that women of Hillary’s generation had to champion. We have not been subjected to the same kinds of workplace humiliation (most of the time – and I know this article, and my thoughts now, are written from a particular perspective under layers of privilege, so I won’t pretend that everyone has it so easy). We, on the whole, can make the choices we want, have the careers we want and generally do not run into the same conflicts Hillary ran into as First Lady during Bill Clinton’s first term (i.e., widespread media opinion that Hillary should be more of a “housewife” with a gentler image). Needless to say, this was the beginning of Hillary’s national-level pandering and image “crafting”, trying to spin herself into something the American public could like (as the article points out, she published a cookie recipe in a popular “women’s” magazine). She’s been shape-shifting her way through her career ever since.

The fact that this is necessary (and this touches on the heart of the article), this is just sad. We never demand that men do anything like this. Hillary’s every action, every word, was questioned and analyzed through the “woman” lens and the expectations (spoken or not) that society has for women. The article’s writer questioned the insidiousness of hidden sexism – she believed that we were beyond a point that we should vote for a woman just because she is a woman. But then heard a man ask Hillary a question on the radio, and she was struck by the tone – condescending.

“It was subtle, but there was something in his tone I recognized. It was not a tone you would use to speak to someone who was a former secretary of state and senator. It was the tone you reserve for that dumb chick in your meeting who probably doesn’t know what she’s talking about. It was a tone I’d heard countless times over the course of my career, and in that moment I suddenly saw Hillary Clinton in an entirely different light.”

She recognized it from her own experiences – just so well-hidden in her daily reality that she had never stopped to think about it. Everyday conversations that inherently undermine the woman’s qualifications and abilities. Maybe she is just overly sensitive, but in truth, it happens all the time. There is a wall that you never quite scale as a woman (and this is not always true, but is frequent enough that it is troubling and needs to be acknowledged), and the wall is built with bricks of condescending and/or backhanded praise.

Even acknowledging this, though, and feeling like maybe I could take a second look and view Hillary through that lens, there always ends up being a stumbling block.

Every time I try to look beyond the Clinton fatigue, the Wall Street connections, the lip service and her moderate Republican record, with which my beliefs do not align, some new evidence bubbles up that shows this disingenuous nature and snippy impatience and temperament that I feel form the basis of Hillary’s real personality. We all have bad days, we all lash out and get snippy – but unless you are an orange Teflon ape – politicians on the stump, trying to get into the land’s highest office, cannot afford to let the mask slip. A recent clip of Clinton talking to a Somali-American woman, basically making her standard speech (and not making eye contact, you notice), shows Clinton lose her cool and tell the woman to “go run for something yourself then”! Naturally, she almost immediately tried to fold herself neatly back into form, pretending like the comment was actually one of encouragement, as though she wanted the woman to stand up and be more civic-minded and involved, but the fake pasted-on smile and dying-hen/witch cackling that followed the encounter were telling.

Ah, America, you get what you deserve.

Whatever the outcome of the election, there’s always Canada.