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In fact, Destruction reads more like an exercise in public relations. Clinton is not a representative of the establishment, Bordo argues, but has consistently been a progressive. If conservatives hadnt vilified her in the 90sif Bernie Sanders hadnt run against hershe would have defeated Donald Trump.

Its a fragile argument that relies heavily on scapegoats. Chief among them are Millennials. Young women disliked Clinton, Bordo argues, because they werent around for the GOPs character assassination of her in the 90s, and did not realize how unfairly she had often been portrayedor understand the sexism she had to overcome. They hadnt experienced a decade of culture wars in which feminists efforts to bring histories of gender and race struggle into the educational curriculum were reduced to a species of political correctness, she insists. They didnt witness the complicated story of how the 1994 crime bill came to be passed or the origins of the super-predator label (not coined by Hillary and not referring to black youth, but rather to powerful, older drug dealers).

This is interesting language. Bordo does not attribute the crime bill to Bill Clinton; its as if this legislation appeared out of the void. And though Bordo is right that Hillary Clinton did not coin the term superpredator, she doesnt mention that Clinton certainly did use it to refer to children. Via Politifact, heres Clintons full quote: We need to take these people on. They are often connected to big drug cartels, they are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called superpredatorsno conscience, no empathy.

Bordos revisionism is evident in her fixation on Bernie Sanders. According to Bordo, Sanders unfairly maligned Clinton for her establishment tendencies. Bordo does not acknowledge, however, that Clinton campaigned as a pragmatic realist and consciously sought the support of conservative defectors from the GOP, while Sanders ran as a more idealistic democratic socialist. This conflicts with Bordos portrayal of the candidate as a true leftist.

So do Clintons policies. Bordo insists that Clinton supported universal health care in 2016, which is only partly accurate. Clinton supported Medicaid expansion and the public option, but these policies arent as expansive as Sanderss commitment to Medicare for All. On the federal minimum wage, welfare, and foreign policy, she sat to Sanderss right. She supported a $12 minimum wage, with the small proviso that cities should be able to raise it higher if they choose. And she had a long-standing record of support for American military intervention abroada tough sell to young voters jaded by endless war. These are facts Bordo chooses to ignore.

Bordo commits the same error in her treatment of the Monica Lewinsky affair. Lewinsky, she writes, has steadfastly insisted that there was nothing abusive (or even disrespectful) about Bill Clintons behavior. This misconstrues Lewinskys statements. In a 2014 piece for Vanity Fair, Lewinsky called the relationship consensual but also wrote, My boss took advantage of me. These assertions arent contradictory; many women could apply the same language to their own experiences. But Bordo twists Lewinskys words in order to cast both Clintons as victims of a rabid press. In reality, both retained substantial influence and privilege while Lewinsky suffered lasting vilification. Power protects itself. Bordo, who teaches gender studies, must know this.

But shes uninterested in interrogating the implications of Clintons power. Her argument that Clinton is a consistent progressive cant survive the admission that Clinton has made many missteps in her long career and has had to own, as she put it herself, many hard choices. Its incompatible with the fiction shes created: Hillary-the-revolutionary, to counter Hillary-the-establishment-elitist. The result is incoherent. Clinton is either a uniquely qualified candidate, or an easy target for uninformed millennials. She cant be both.

In the process of canonizing Clinton, Bordo infantilizes her. As first lady, Clinton obviously did not pass the crime bill or welfare reform, but she publicly supported both. Was she Bills puppet? Thats an unlikely role for an intelligent and accomplished woman. We should instead assume that Clinton said what she said because she believed it. Opinions change, but if would-be presidents choose to evolve they must expect to do so in public. Voters were right to question her about her old statements. They werent wrong to find her wanting. They were forming their opinions of the candidates by learning about their political commitments. Bordo does not.

But Bordos book is useful in one sense. It crystallizes an emerging tendency in liberal discourse: the notion that critics of Hillary Clinton are either trolls or naive children. Bordo makes much of Bernie Brosloud, male Sanders supporters who, she says, harassed Clinton supporters at rallies and abused female reporters on Twitter. The examples she cites are certainly rude (one allegedly called a Clinton supporter a lying shitbag) but this is a thin argument weakened further by her revisionism. She slams Sanders himself for his uncharacteristically mild response to the tweets. He never criticized the misogyny in their attacks on Clinton, she writes. This is flatly inaccurate: Sanders called them disgusting and told the press, Look, anybody who is supporting me that is doing the sexist things iswe dont want them. I dont want them.

To Bordo, rude Twitter users prove Sanderss inadequate commitment to the left. Bordo never asks if her one-sided framing is evidence that she lives in a bubble, and what a telling oversight. Female Sanders supporters would have told her that Clinton backers are also guilty of online harassmentand that the label Bernie Bro has been deployed to erase the very existence of left-wing women, drowning out valid critiques of Clintons platform. Its red-baiting by another name.

Millennials are not children, either. Ranging in age from 18 to 35, many recall Clintons tenures as senator, 2008 candidate, and secretary of state with clarity. Many fought in the Iraq War she supported. Others demanded marriage equality long before her political evolution on that matter. Still more struggled to afford education and health care while she cast herself as the great pragmatist in 2016: Single-payer health care, she told voters, will never, ever come to pass. Nevertheless, most millennials voted for her last November. If this does not satisfy the nations Susan Bordos, they are not to blame.

Bordos objection seems to be that anyone opposed Clinton at all, even from the left. What she does not graspand is seemingly not interested in graspingis that Clintons critics from the left were not opposing a caricature of her as some kind of right-wing political operator. We opposed Clinton-the-hawk and Clinton-the-means-tester. Our objection was about politics, not personality. Similarly, we do not reject the feminism of Bordo and Clinton because of its ideological rigidity, as Bordo suggests. We reject it because it is insufficient. America was not already great. Our lives are proof.

Destruction offers no real lessons for Democrats. Its a hagiography, written to soothe a smarting party. That is precisely why they must ignore it: There is no path forward that does not account for past mistakes. Hillary Clintons destruction was at least partly her own making, and if Democrats want to start winning elections its time they saw the truth.

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The Deification of Hillary Clinton - New Republic