Some of the answer is surely rooted in gender. None of the other near-miss candidates bore the burden of being the first woman ever to run as a major-party nominee. Since the beginning of her public life, Clinton has served as a prism through which America has refracted its social anxieties. Critics branded her a radical feminist and left-wing agitator in her husband’s state house and White House – a cutthroat opportunist when she ran for the United States Senate – a woolen, “likable enough” alternative to Barack Obama – and, finally, a millionaire denizen of Wall Street. Each of these caricatures reveals distinct ways in which gender proxies for a broader constellation of social concerns. That dynamic did not magically recede once the election was over.

In this sense, it’s unsurprising that many of the pundits quickest to share their latest hot take about Clinton’s failure as a candidate (or human being) are men, including CNN’s Chris Cillizza, Business Insider’s Josh Barro or the ever-irascible Charles Krauthammer. To be sure, the pundit’s stock and trade is contrarian snark. It’s not that they aren’t hard on men, too. It’s that it seems outside their experiential ability to consider that gender might have played a determining role in how the public perceived – and the press treated – the first female nominee.

There is also the coarsened state of our politics. American elections have always been rough and tumble. Andrew Jackson’s opponents openly accused his wife, Rachel, of bigamy. When he ran for re-election in 1864, Abraham Lincoln withstood brutal attacks from his Democratic opponents, who coined a new term, “miscegenation,” to describe Lincoln’s alleged plan to enforce the compulsory mixing of the races – an electric charge in that day and age. But what happened to Clinton was profoundly different.