“It’s not her success that seems to arouse ire, but the act of campaigning itself.”

Quartz: America loves women like Hillary Clinton–as long as they’re not asking for a promotion. By Sady Doyle, February 25, 2016.

“It’s hard to remember these days, but just a few years ago, everybody loved Hillary Rodham Clinton. When she stepped down as US secretary of state in January 2013 after four years in office, her approval rating stood at what the Wall Street Journal described as an “eye-popping“ 69%. That made her not only the most popular politician in the country, but the second-most popular secretary of state since 1948.

The 2012 “Texts from Hillary“ meme, which featured a sunglasses-clad Clinton scrolling through her Blackberry aboard a military flight to Libya, had given rise to a flood of think pieces hailing her “badass cool.“ The Washington Post wanted president Barack Obama to give vice president Joe Biden the boot and replace him with Clinton. Taking stock of Clinton’s approval ratings, Nate Silver noted in a 2012 piece for the New York Times that she currently held “remarkably high numbers for a politician in an era when many public officials are distrusted or disliked.“ “