According to a piece in New York magazine, Bernie Sanders’s campaign manager’s suggestion that Hillary Clinton is trying too hard was — you guessed it! — “sexist.”

“Don’t destroy the Democratic party to satisfy the secretary’s ambitions to become president of the United States,” Jeff Weaver said, in response to a question from CNN’s Jake Tapper about Sanders’s critics.

That may seem innocuous to you, but to the author of the New York piece, Rebecca Traister, it seemed more like something so horrendous that she just had to spend nearly 1,600 words (!) condemning it:

The line, which overtly cast Clinton’s political ambition as a destructive force and framed her famous drive and tenacity as unappealing, malevolent traits, played on long-standing assumptions about how ambition — a quality that is required for powerful men and admired in them — looks far less attractive on their female counterparts, and especially on their female competitors.

“Weaver seemed to be suggesting that the argument against Clinton has come down, in part, to this: She’s Tracy Flick,” she continues. “And no one likes the woman who tries too hard, who competes with too much intensity, who applies too much focus to her own advancement.”

Sorry, but, nope.

#share#Believe it or not, there’s something that separates what’s seen as “good” versus “bad” ambition that has nothing to do with gender: There’s ambition motivated by a desire to improve the world (good) and ambition that’s motivated by a desire for your own success (bad) — and there’s a lot of evidence suggesting that Clinton’s falls into the second category. I mean, she has radically changed her stances on seemingly every issue under the sun, from criminal-justice reform to gay marriage to how to treat women who claim to have been victims of sexual assault, depending solely on what happens to be politically popular. This could easily lead someone to believe that she’s more concerned with being politically popular than she is with than anything else — that is, that she displays the kind of “ambition” worth condemning, regardless of her gender.

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There’s something that separates what’s seen as ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ ambition.

Oh, and not to mention — this is a candidate who is definitely, objectively trying too hard. Honestly, I haven’t seen someone trying so hard to be liked since I looked in the mirror in high school. I mean, selfies with Kim Kardashian? Trying to act like she knows how emojis work so the young kids will like her? Chasing down every celebrity in town the way I used to chase popular kids with offers to let them copy my homework? Oh, and let’s not forget that oh-so-desperate attempt at getting people to think she was a “regular gal” by riding the subway!

Yes, Hillary is a woman. That’s true. But you know what else is true? Her brand of ambition is a negative, and she is trying too hard in this race — and neither of these assessments has anything whatsoever to do with her gender.

— Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review Online.