2016 Postmortem

With Trump's racism and sexual assaults reinforces the author's argument. That's the sort of false equivalency in which the media engaged.

The media, candidates on the left and right, and some voters degraded an extremely qualified woman candidate. They decided she was dishonest and untrustworthy, not based on evidence but prejudice. I interpret as sexism the fact that so-called progressives held her responsible for her husband's policies and didn't care enough to as much as look at hers. Certainly most conservatives were never going to vote for her, but elements of the white male "left" made her destruction their mission. That they are now using her defeat to argue for the primacy of GOP voters, to the point they argue that abortion rights and "demographic wars" should be abandoned in favor of their interests shows that their concern has never been about progressive policies, which they don't even name, but instead about elevating themselves. They have even posted OPs demanding that those who don't subscribe to their narrow and ahistorical world view leave the party. That some of them ignored policy in favor of their hatred for Clinton, prompting them to vote against the very policies they claim to support, is difficult for me to understand as about much other than sexism. The way in which they transformed campaign finance from a policy position to personal attacks against Clinton and that they see Trump's victory as some sort of triumph in that regard is so devoid of logic that it is impossible to understand without considering sexism.

As for the rest of the Trump voters, a vote for him demonstrated that they were willing to accept sexual assault and racism as the norm. Their votes validated it. This was an election about the restoration of white male supremacy, as we have seen in the rise of hate crimes in its wake.