Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, said she doesn’t believe everyone who voted against her candidate did so because Clinton is a woman.
“I want to be clear that while misogyny and sexism were a problem on the campaign trail, I don’t believe everyone who voted against Hillary did so for sexist reasons,” Palmieri writes in an excerpt of her new book Dear Madam President, published by Time magazine.
“But I do believe we encountered an unconscious but pervasive gender bias that held Hillary back in many ways,” she continues. “I think it’s that subtle gender bias that made people find her so vexing. I think it comes from her being someone who pushed the boundaries of roles held by women for 40 years.”
During the presidential campaign, Clinton infamously said half of Trump’s supporters could be put in “the basket of deplorables.”
“Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it,” she said in September 2016.
More recently, while on book tour in India, Clinton said she believes that some women voted for Trump over her because the men in their lives pressured them to do so.
Palmieri also wrote that it felt like Clinton had four men running against her for president: President Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and former FBI Director James Comey.
“I don’t believe it is a coincidence that the first woman nominee of a major party ended up being hounded by four men, all taking actions that would influence the campaign in ways never before seen in our country’s history,” she writes. “Maybe that’s just how presidential campaigns are in the 21st-century. Or maybe there was just something about her the four of them didn’t like.”
