What dues has Hillary Clinton paid again?

I've been reading a lot of articles lately about Obama's VP selection. In most of those articles, there's some version of the idea that Hillary Clinton's supporters are pissed off because their candidate was snubbed after she "paid some serious dues". My question is, what dues? She married the most savvy politician in the last few decades and rode his coattails into the white house without getting elected on her own merits. Isn't that the exact opposite of paying dues?

I'm sure HRC did pay some dues before that, and since, but how is that different than any of the other thousands of politicians who labor away on a local or state or small national level but never become President? What about Bill Richardson? What about Wesley Clark? What about anybody else? Did they get "cheated" out of the Presidency by the rise of Obama? Or in their case, was it just a case of someone coming along that more perfectly captured the mood and flavor of the rising generation? How come Hillary is the only one who got "passed over"?

Maybe I'm just a misogynist, but a lot of feminist griping about getting passed over strikes me in this way. One article I read said that Clinton's supporters were so die-hard in their anger because the way that she was slighted reminded them of how they had passed over in their own lives by "men they had trained as Junior Executives who became the CEO."

It's hard not to feel that a lot of these complaints are just that, complaints. It's very easy to say that someone got a promotion ahead of you because they were a man - It's an impossible charge to disprove. It's also a much easier pill to swallow than admitting somebody passed you up because they were more talented.

I'm not suggesting for a moment that sexism isn't real. Of course it's real, but it's overblown in today's society. I'm 25, and in my life I've perceived more disadvantages than advantages from being a white male. Nobody has ever handed me anything because of my color or gender, but when I applied for college I didn't get to check any of those nice boxes that let everyone know how disadvantaged I've been. I don't discriminate against people because of their gender or race, but as a white male I get to fight against the assumption that gender and race factor into my every decision.

The one real advantage I've gotten from being a white male is that I grew up in a supportive home with plenty to eat and good parents who valued education. But guess what - So have a whole lot of women, including Hillary Clinton.

When a woman executive is passed over by someone younger for the CEO spot (or whatever spot), it's easy and nearly universal to blame sexism on some level, but they should remember that there are white men passed over for CEO's jobs all the time in favor of younger candidates: They just don't have a ready-made excuse for it. In fact, men, including me, from the time they become teenagers, learn to shrug off rejection without looking for excuses...That is to say, they start trying to get dates.

Hillary Clinton didn't lose the primary campaign because she's a woman. She lost because she allowed Mark Penn to terribly mismanage her campaign, she made false assumptions about an early end to the Primary process, and because Barack Obama ran a disciplined, tenacious campaign and did a better job connecting with the voters. Some media pundits made sexist remarks, but some made racial remarks about Obama. Overall the coverage was consistently crap, as it has been for a long time and still is. Clinton and her supporters should stop moaning about how unfair it all is, and face up to reality: If John McCain wins this election, Roe v. Wade is going to get overturned and abortion is going to be made illegal in this country. Wake the fuck up and watch out for the real misogyny that lurks just around the corner.