Since 1796, the year George Washington vacated his post as the nation’s first president, presidential elections have had winners and losers, (and now and then more one or more loser per cycle,) all of whom were left feeling depressed by the outcome, and many who felt it unfair. Until 2016, none had thought to make it an issue of gender, largely because one gender had been shared by all comers. But in 2016, that was changed by the serious entry of Hillary Clinton, who managed to lose to Donald Trump against all odds. Afterward, she blamed her female sex for the loss, after first blaming FBI Director James Comey.

Clinton claims in her memoir and has said in various forums that men have it easy. She seems never to have heard of the names Adams and Jefferson called one another; of the names Hamilton and Jefferson called one another; of James Callender, the scandalmonger for hire of the early Republic, who exposed Hamilton and Jefferson in their out-of-wedlock activities, or of the campaign of 1828, which was so nastily personal that Andrew Jackson blamed it for the death of his wife by a heart attack after his election, but before his inauguration took place.