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"I'd win." That's how Hillary Clinton responded when asked at Wellesley College what she would do differently in her failed run for the presidency in 2016. She's deceiving herself.

The Clinton candidacy suffered from many things, but nothing more so than a self-imposed feeling of invulnerability and inevitability. Just do a random search on YouTube if you don't believe it and watch how all the soi-disant experts yammered on and on about how Hillary couldn't lose, Trump was already finished, the election was over.

And her appearances at the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia last summer, which IBD attended, seemed more like coronation events than an actual election battle.

Of course, we know how that turned out. But now, inher talk at Wellesley, Hillary suggested not only that she would win if the election were rerun, a bit of wishful revisionism, but that her actual defeat might have been because of her gender sexism.

"You know you're going to be subject to unfair and besides-the-point criticism," she said about being the first woman nominated to be president by a major party, and broadly hinting that this is what brought her down.

But, as investigative reporter Amber Athey at the Campus Reform website reported, two New York University professors tried to show just how bad the bias against Hillary was. They created an experiment to "reveal bias by re-enacting the presidential debates with the candidates' genders reversed."

It was an intriguing and creative idea. What the two impeccably progressive professors expected to find, of course, was that if Hillary were a man, she would be embraced and loved; and that Trump, as a woman candidate, would be despised. Gender bias, proved.

Boy, were they surprised.

"The two NYU professors who designed the experiment were 'unsettled' to discover that audience members actually found Trump's style more endearing when it came from a woman," Athey wrote of the NYU "Her Opponent" project. "One female audience member even remarked that she found the male version of Clinton 'very punchable' because he smiled so much."

Ouch! So much for the postelection notion of Hillary as a feminist victim of all those angry white men in the Midwest. What Democrats, and the Clinton camp, have trouble recognizing is she was simply an unpopular candidate with an unpopular message, beaten by an unpopular candidate with a more widely popular message.

Lest you think this is making too much of just one little experiment, a new poll out by Suffolk University shows that Clinton has left a bad taste in the mouth of much of America.

In July 2016, 53% of those polled held favorable views of Hillary Clinton, while just 42% rated her as "unfavorable." But in the poll's most recent sounding taken this month, Hillary Clinton's unfavorability rating had soared to 55%, while her favorability had plunged to 35%. Her favorability fell sharply among both Democrats and independents.

Yet another study, this one from the Wesleyan Media Project, found that Hillary Clinton's campaign was, in the words of Heat Street, "without a doubt one of the worst-run political operations in years."

The study itself didn't mince words, calling her campaign "devoid of policy discussions in a way not seen in the previous four presidential elections."

The truth is, as the saying goes, Hillary's support last year was a mile wide and an inch deep. Nor did she lose because she was a woman; that's a cop out, a cheap bit of undeserved victimhood that no doubt makes her feel better about losing to the big bully Trump.

No, in the end, she lost because voters across America found her profoundly unsympathetic and out of touch. Her proposed policies doubling down on ObamaCare, increasing Dodd-Frank financial regulation, higher taxes, more federal spending, attacks on coal country workers and industry through strict climate-change rules, not to mention nonstop gender, class, culture and race warfare reeked of a continuation of the failed Obama years.

Oh yes, and did we mention the lies then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made about her illegal home-brew email server and about what happened at Benghazi, where four Americans were killed? Those didn't help a bit in Middle America.

Contrary to what Hillary Clinton might believe, sexism had nothing to do with it or at least, very little. Hubris and an overweening sense of entitlement did. Voters were tired after eight years of Obamaism, and didn't want a reprise. They wanted deep changes to Washington, D.C., and its corrupt, cozy culture.

In short, they went looking for a wrecking ball that would knock the whole corrupt mess down. And they got him. His name is Trump.

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Sorry, But Hillary Clinton Didn't Lose Because She Is A Woman - Investor's Business Daily

In an article for the Women section of Huffington Post, writer Emma Gray asks Can We Finally Admit It Was Always About Sexism, Never Emails? She was talking, of course, about former presidential candidate Hillary Clintons use of a private email server to conduct government business while she was secretary of state.

Grays evidence of sexism being the reason for the intense scrutiny of Clintons emails was the fact that Vice President Mike Pence also used a private email account to conduct official businessan account that was hacked in 2016yet Pence has not received anywhere near the amount of scorn that Clinton did. Pence is a man, and Clinton is a woman. Therefore, sexism!

A few paragraphs into Grays piece, she acknowledges that these two incidents were not exactly the same and links to a Washington Postpiece explainingthe differences, but then proceeds to ignore all of themexcept mentioning that the State Department explicitly discourages the use of personal email accounts.

Gray even cites some of President Donald Trumps advisers use of email accounts through a private Republican National Committee system as further evidence that Clinton was treated differently. At no point does Gray offer evidence that it was Clintons gender that caused the disparate treatment. Indeed, she mentions Kellyanne Conway as one of the Trump advisers who used an RNC account. It seems a more believable claim forthe differing treatments would be Republican vs. Democrat, though that would be difficult considering the political slant of most newsrooms.

But the comparison to Pence was even more strained, since the Washington Post explainer Gray links to goes into great detail about how Clintons email scheme was different. First and foremost, its legal in Indiana for government officials to use private emails to conduct official business. Its not illegal for State Department employees to do so, but its strongly advised against. Clinton herself sent staff an email saying not to use personal email for day-to-day business, even as she used exclusively a personal server to conduct business.

The Posts Amber Phillips wrote that Pence may have needed a private account since its illegal in Indiana for a government official to use her or his official account for political business.

Pence alsoaccording to Penceis preserving his emails consistent with Indiana law. Clinton, by contrast, destroyed some 30,000 emails she and her staff deemed personal, even though thousands of recovered emails revealed work-related content.

Further, as Phillips notes, the FBI launched an investigation into Clintons emails and her mishandling of classified information. No investigation has been opened into Pences emails. FBI Director James Comey spoke at length of Clintons extremely careless treatment of classified information, but ultimately declined to prosecute her, citing a nonexistent intent provision of federal law. In the end, Comey made it clear that Clintons use of a private email server was borderline incompetent, but that same incompetence got her off the hook.

Clinton also lied repeatedly after her personal server was discovered. She claimed she used the server for convenience and so shed only have to carry one device for my work and for my personal e-mails instead of two. Clinton would go on to admit to having a Blackberry, an iPad and an iPhone. She also claimed that no classified information was sent over her private server, but FBI investigators found 110 emails that contained classified information when they were sent or received.

So far, Pence doesnt appear to have lied about his emails, while Clinton lied repeatedly.

Theres also the glaringly obvious difference that the secretary of state would have a lot more sensitive emails than the governor of Indiana.

If Pence is discovered to be using a private email to conduct official government business while vice president, things will certainly be different. He would then have been putting our national security at risk, which is what Clintons server did. Though Comey said it was possible that hostile actors gained access to Clintons private server, no such hack has been proven. Pences email account was hacked, which prompted him to close it and open a new AOL account (AOL? Seriously?).

The bottom line is that the situations are completely different, and thatnot sexismis why they have been treated differently. Even though the situations are not the same, it was still dumb for Pence and other Republicans to criticize Clinton for using private email accounts while they used one themselves. Even the appearance of hypocrisy should have been avoided.

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It Wasn't Sexism That Caused Concern Over Hillary Clinton's Emails - Observer

A lot of attention in the next few weeks will be focused on the Senate Judiciary committee as it considers Neil Gorsuchs Supreme Court nomination. But the Judiciary committee also performs other important functions, including one subcommittee that can wield great power in rare cases.

Birch Bayh and Lyndon Johnson

The United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice is one of six committees within the Judiciary committee. The Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice shall have jurisdiction over the following subject matters: constitutional amendments, constitutional rights, Federal civil rights, claims against the United States, non-immigration private claims bills, ethics in government, tort liability, including medical malpractice and product liability, legal reform generally, other appropriate matters as referred by the Chairman, and relevant oversight, the Judiciary Committee says on its official website.

The job of originating and crafting amendments in many ways is the ultimate constitutional power. There is also a parallel committee in the House, but in several past cases, the Senate committees leadership made several constitutional amendments a reality.

Senator Birch Bayh served as the subcommittees chair for nearly two decades and he drove the process that resulted in the 25th Amendment and the 26th Amendment to the Constitution. A third effort championed by Senator Bayh, the Equal Rights Amendment, was approved by the House and Senate, but it fell three states short of full ratification.

The most recent amendment, the 27th Amendment, was ratified in 1992 but it was part of the original Bill of Rights introduced by James Madison and sent to the states for approval in 1789. (There wasnt a Senate subcommittee in place to review it.) It wasnt ratified in 1791 with the original Bill of Rights, but no deadline was attached to the ratification process. In 1984, more states began to ratify the amendment, which defines how and when Congress can control its own compensation.

In Bayhs case, the subcommittee had considerable work to do on the 25th Amendment, a version of which had been under consideration before President John F. Kennedys death in 1963. Since 1841, when Vice President John Tyler boldly claimed the title of President after William Henry Harrisons death, the Tyler Precedent allowed Vice Presidents to assume the full powers of the presidency after that office became vacant despite the lack of a direct constitutional power to do so in the Constitution and its amendments.

The 25th Amendment also dealt with other potential constitutional crises: the inability of a President to perform his duties in office due to illness or other reasons, and the replacement of a Vice President no longer in office.

As a young attorney, current Fordham Law professor and former dean John Feerick worked with Bayhs subcommitee to draft the language that eventually became the 25th Amendment. He recounted the arduous process in a 1995 law journal article, The Twenty-Fifth Amendment: An Explanation And Defense.

Bayh introduced Senate Joint Resolution 139 in December 1963, just months after replacing the late Estes Kefauver as subcommittee chair. (There was reported talk that the subcommittee would be phased out until Bayh, a freshman Senator, asked for the assignment.) Kefauver also had championed an amendment dealing with presidential disability.

Feerick recounted that initial committee hearings in 1964 called leading historians and experts to testify about different scenarios about the inability of a President to perform duties and the process of filling an in-term Vice Presidential vacancy. The Senate approved the subcommittees recommendations in September 1964, but the House didnt act during the election year and out of respect to Speaker John McCormick, who was next in line to the presidency with no sitting Vice President in office.

In January 1965, Bayh reintroduced the bill in the Senate, with support from the newly elected President Lyndon Johnson. After a debate between Bayh and Everett Dirksen, the bill was modified and approved again by a unanimous Senate. In the House, Feerick said more than 30 possible versions of the amendment were before its Subcommitee on the Constitution. Bayh and future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell (as president of the American Bar Association) testified in the House. The House version passed by a 386-29 vote.

The bills were sent to a conference committee that worked out drafting differences. According to author James N. Ronan, Bayh turned to Powell to intercede with the conference committee to work out disputes about the drafting language. The revised amendment was passed by a House voice vote and a 68-5 margin in the Senate and sent to the states for ratification on July 6, 1965. Nevada became the 38th state to approve the amendment on February 10, 1967, completing the process.

The Twenty-fifth Amendment is the product of extensive debate and discussion, in which full account was taken of the history of presidential succession and the many worthy suggestions offered for improvements in the succession framework. The amendment provides an approach to presidential succession which allows for an effective transfer of power in all cases of presidential inability, Feerick concluded.

Bayh also advocated for a lower voting age for Americans while he was a state legislator. The 26th Amendment came about quickly and through a much-different process. Congress decided in 1970 to lower the national voting age from 21 to 18 during the Vietnam War through an act of legislation. However, the Supreme Court in December 1970 decided on a challenge to the law, in Oregon v. Mitchell, Congress only had thepower to change the voting age in federal elections. With a presidential election on the horizon and election officials facing the costs of accounting for two sets of voting ages, Congress acted in record time getting the 26th Amendment in the hands of the state to ratify.

Bayhs subcommittee worked on drafting language after the Court decision and by February 1971 it had issued an 81-page report recommending the amendment. There is no basis in logic, in policy or in practice for denying 18-year-olds the right to vote in state and local elections when they may vote in federal elections, the subcommitee concluded. Within six weeks, the House and Senate approved the amendments language and send it to the 50 states for consideration. The 26th Amendment was ratified about three months later the quickest ratification process ever when North Carolina approved it.

Since then, two other proposed amendments have made it out of the subcommittee to be approved by the full House and Senate, only to fall short in the ratification process. Bayh proposed a Senate version of the Equal Rights Amendment and held subcommittee hearings in May 1970. (The first version of the ERA had been proposed in Congress in 1923.) In March 1972, the Senate approved the ERA after it had passed in the House. At the time, Bayh thought the ERA would be ratified within two years, but it failed to get enough support over the next decade.

And in 1978, the House and Senate approved an amendment to grant congressional voting rights to the District of Columbia after hearing were held in Bayhs subcommittee. The proposed amendment repealed the 23rd Amendment and gave the federal District two United States Senators and a representative in the House. However, only 16 states ratified the amendment before its approval period expired in 1985.

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A little-known Senate subcommittee that holds great constitutional power - Constitution Daily (blog)

Turkey's Erdogan Meets With Russia's Putin to Build on Ties Wall Street Journal (subscription) MOSCOWTurkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Friday to discuss their cooperation over Syria and possible energy deals in the face of Ankara's flagging ties with the West. The talks between Messrs Putin and ...

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Turkey's Erdogan Meets With Russia's Putin to Build on Ties - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

ISTANBUL // Reis (The Chief), a heavily-hyped biopic about Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan premired with fanfare last week, but the box-office figures for the feature film proved dismal.

Only 67,000 people showed up to see the bombastic film, which shuffles between Mr Erdogans life as a child in the working-class Istanbul district of Kasimpasa and the years leading up to and following his election as the mayor of Turkeys largest city in the 1990s.

By comparison, Istanbul Kirmizisi (Istanbul Red), the latest from acclaimed Turkish director Ferhan Ozpetek, sold 160,000 tickets the same weekend, opening in 305 theatres compared to 331 for Reis.

The date of the biopics release was significant, as it came just six weeks ahead of a constitutional referendum for which president Erdogan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have been campaigning fiercely. Mr Erdogan aims to transform Turkeys parliamentary system into a presidential one, giving him more power and consolidating his already dominant role in Turkish politics.

Though a number of low-level AKP figures attended the gala premiere in Ankara, Mr Erdogan himself was notably absent, as was Hudaverdi Yavuz, the director. Yavuz has disassociated himself from the film, which was financed by a real estate investment company. He has said the shoot was beset with problems and delays and some of the crew had still not been paid. he also had to make "pointless editing changes" and is unhappy with the film.

The biopic performed even more poorly than a film released two years ago about a December 2013 corruption probe that Mr Erdogan and the AKP claim was orchestrated by followers of the cleric Fethullah Gulen to overthrow the government. Kod adi K.O.Z. was blasted by critics and holds the distinction of being the lowest-rated film on the movie site IMBD, but it still sold nearly twice as many tickets as Reis on its opening weekend.

Mustafa Akyol, senior visiting fellow at the Freedom Project at Wellesley College, said the film had flopped at least partly because people were already bombarded with so much Erdogan publicity.

"They probably know that pro-Erdogan TV [channels] would show the film in full soon. They may also be saturated by the pro-Erdogan propaganda that is in their face every day," he said. The conservative AKP base "is not typically a cinema-going crowd", he added.

Mr Erdogans rags-to-riches story, from child street vendor to the most successful and powerful politician in the history of the Turkish republic, is potentially fascinating. But critics say Reis is monotonous and overblown with heavy-handed acting, too many pointless scenes and a weak subplot. The star, Reha Beyoglu, bears a convincing resemblance to Mr Erdogan, but does not replicate the presidents distinct, resonant voice, the source of much of his charisma. All indications are that the film will have little influence on the outcome of the hotly debated referendum on April 16.

Curiously, Mr Erdogan himself has remained silent on the film in public, prompting speculation that he and his party are also displeased.

"I dont think the AKP has distanced itself, but it did not endorse it either," said Mr Akyol. "If Erdogan had seen it and liked it, he would make that clear, and it would become blessed for the AKP base."

Without that blessing, it appears The Chief is more of an embarrassment.

foreign.desk@thenational.ae

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Biopic about President Erdogan is a turkey - The National