Primarily Speaking

[Content Note: Misogyny.]

Welp, that was quite a night!

On the Republican side, Donald Trump won four out of five: Florida, Illinois, Missouri, and North Carolina. John Kasich won Ohio, the state of which he is governor.

After failing even to win his home state of Florida, Marco Rubio suspended his campaign.

🎶 Goooodbye Rubio Tuesday... 🎶

And then there were three.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton swept the night, winning all five: Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio. A really extraordinary result.

And a historic one! In 227 years, there has never been a woman who's accomplished what Clinton has. Not that you'd know it from the coverage of her win. Most news outlets haven't even bothered to mention she's the first woman ever to win these primaries. And on a night where she swept five states, they were still peddling the "no enthusiasm" narrative.

Because how else to delegitimize such a commanding win, except by saying that millions and millions of voters only begrudgingly support her?

Naturally, there was plenty of misogyny from male media commentators, too, with Joe Scarborough taking the fucking cake for telling her to smile.

I did a little tweeting last night, and I've Storified those tweets. There are additional examples of misogynist garbage there, along with my commentary.

Relatedly, I wrote this piece for BNR last night: "Study: Sunday Shows Overwhelmingly White, Conservative, and Male." And that published was before white male political commenters directed the most basic, demeaning misogyny at a formidable presidential candidate. Welp!

Last night, I also contributed to this piece by Peter Daou: "Hillary's Moment Is Our Moment."

This is Hillary's moment. It is the moment when her decades of dedication, her indomitable spirit, her wisdom, her steadiness, her compassion are brought to bear to lead Democrats to victory in November.

When the 2016 campaign began, the conventional wisdom was that Hillary had all the advantages. She had name recognition, connections, the support of the party, the upper hand in fundraising. All of these things were true, and they were invoked on a loop to suggest that securing the Democratic nomination would be a walk in the park.

But what the "inevitable" narrative ignored was Hillary's four-decade deficit of harshly negative messaging and a 227-year shutout of women from the office she is seeking. The narrative suggested that her winning was no big deal, because of all her advantages, when the truth is that she has fought her way through an unfathomably mountainous heap of personal attacks and institutional gender bias stretching back to the nation's very foundations.

Yes, this is Hillary's moment. And as Democrats and progressives, this is our moment as well.

Some of us actually give a fuck about the history being made.