Back in February, former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told a rally in the lead up to the first Democratic Party presidential primary in New Hampshire, there is a “special place in hell” for women who don't support Hillary Clinton.
That same weekend, US feminist icon Gloria Steinem told a talk show that young women supporting presidential nominee Bernie Sanders over Clinton were chasing boys.
Feminists, inside and outside the US, unleashed a torrent of fiercely articulate reasons not to support Hillary: Her warmongering foreign policy record, her links to the private prison industry and mass jailings of Black people, and her support for her husband Bill Clinton's disastrously successful campaign to “end welfare as we know it”, and more.
Both Albright and Steinem were forced to apologise for denigrating young, left-wing feminists and Sanders went on to win the New Hampshire primary by a landslide. New Hampshire exit polls showed Sanders out-polled Clinton by around 60 points among women under 30.
The Clinton campaign — and, as we now know for sure via WikiLeaks, the Democratic Party machine — went into overdrive against the Sandernistas.
Celebrity millennial feminist and creator and star of hit television series Girls, Lena Dunham was recruited in January by the Clinton campaign to tour the US to get out the feminist youth vote. She published a travel blog on the Clinton campaign webpage.
“I believe that nothing will send a stronger message to America and the world at large than electing a competent, experienced, and brilliant woman to the highest office in the land,” she wrote.
“Our first female president would send a message that we are here. We are ready to lead. In fact, she has been leading all along.”
Dunham donned a series of lurid stars and stripes outfits emblazoned with Clinton's name, often in sequins, to deliver her easy, breezy dot points on why the US needs a female president to mainly campus audiences.
But by April, she was forced to respond to accusations she was missing the political point. She wrote an article for Time magazine denying that her support for Clinton was because of her sex: “Of course I recognize that Hillary's not perfect. She's been working hard in the public eye for a long time and she's made mistakes. It would be weird if she hadn't.
“She's repeatedly said that her greatest regret is her vote for the war in Iraq, and I agree that was a huge miscalculation. I believe she worked her heart out as Secretary of State to make up for it.
“Wouldn't it be cool if everyone else who voted for that war did as much to promote peace and human rights around the world?”
Actually, as Secretary of State in the Obama administration in 2009, Clinton “promoted peace and human rights around the world” by, amongst other things, legitimising a military coup against left-leaning democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya in Honduras.
Despite international condemnation of the coup against a leader whose mild pro-worker reforms had upset the interests of US corporations, Clinton refused to recognise it as such. In its bloody aftermath, she opposed granting asylum to fleeing Honduran families.
In 2014, Honduran indigenous rights and environmental activist Berta Caceres accused Clinton of legitimising and institutionalising the coup. Caceres accused Clinton of supporting, including financially, the suppression of coup opponents.
Under Clinton, private contractors with experience in “counterinsurgency” in Afghanistan and Iraq were funded to support “improved community relations” with the Honduran military. Honduran soldiers were trained by US forces to suppress dissent.
In March, Caceres, who won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize last year for leading the campaign against the destructive Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam, was shot dead in her home by US-trained Honduran soldiers.
Caceres' daughter, Laura Zuniga Caceres, spoke at a demonstration outside the July 25 to 28 Democratic National Convention that confirmed Clinton's nomination.
“We don't want the money of the United States to support this violence that is taking our lives,” Laura Zuniga said. “My mother's life is a symbol of struggle; it's a symbol of resistance. And her assassination is a symbol of the violence that we're living today.”
Twenty grassroots groups took part in the protest outside the convention under the banner: “It takes Roots to Weather the Storm”. They carried a three-metre high puppet of Berta Caceres and called for a halt to US aid to Honduras's terrorist regime.
Inside, Dunham, in glamorous white satin, was joined on stage by America Ferrera, actor, star of feminist TV sitcom Ugly Betty and the daughter of Honduran migrants. If she was aware that the ghost of Berta Caceres was haunting proceedings it didn't show.
A consummate professional and no doubt eager not to join the masses of ordinary women — in Honduras and around the world, in our special place in Hell.
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