The Role Gender Played in the Presidential Election

The sickening realization came on suddenly, like a norovirus. All day long, Hillary Clinton’s close friends and wider circle of supporters had been cautiously optimistic about her chances in the general election. Earlier in the day, a gaggle of friends from her high school in Park Ridge, Illinois, gathered for lunch in New York’s Harlem, where a special three-course menu by chef Marcus Samuelsson was headlined “Hillary’s Election Celebration.” Everyone took home a tiny commemorative ceramic tray embossed with Clinton’s favorite saying from Methodist theologian John Wesley, about doing all the good you can, as long as ever you can. On the bottom was the phrase “To Commemorate the Presidential Election 2016 Hillary Rodham Clinton.” That nice little memento had a shelf life of maybe eight hours.

At about 9 p.m. Eastern time, those gathered to celebrate a Clinton victory—from the cavernous Javits Center in Manhattan to private parties across the nation—turned somber, then funereal. Worry turned to shock as newscasters stood before maps of a nation turning blood red, trimmed by thin bands of blue along the coasts. By midnight, Clinton supporters had moved past disbelief to horror and grief as they realized Donald Trump was going to be the next president of the United States. At one tony Manhattan party involving some of her biggest donors, the assembled wandered through art-filled rooms with eyes as