Still talking politics, still fascinated by the role gender bias, conscious and unconscious, is playing in this election. This is a long piece from earlier in the primary about Hillary and “The Gap” between how she is perceived and how colleagues describe her: Understanding Hillary.
One way of reading the Democratic primary is that it pitted an unusually pure male leadership style against an unusually pure female leadership style. Sanders is a great talker and a poor relationship builder. Clinton is a great relationship builder and a poor talker. In this case—the first time at the presidential level—the female leadership style won.
But that wasn’t how the primary was understood. Clinton’s endorsements left her excoriated as a tool of the establishment while Sanders’s speeches left people marveling at his political skills. Thus was her core political strength reframed as a weakness.