Most of the comments have dealt with structural racism in the context of the Obama campaign. Has it been suggested that the stronger element to date in the Democratic primaries has been the "structural sexism" which has damaged Clinton? The WSJ article I posted yesterday shows there is a certain cohort of older white males who will never vote for a black man, but as I've noted previously, Obama's professional and mixed race background has, if anything, been an asset rather than a liability.
Hillary's gender has not been an asset beyond her older female peers. There are other reasons for the hostility to her, but I think in Clinton's case gender has figured more heavily than race has with Obama in shaping voters' perceptions, even though they are both of the same class and there are only nuances of political difference between them. Racial epithets may be have been driven underground, but "witch" still seems to be an accepted part of the public discourse in attacking Clinton. Given the often savage gleefulness surrounding her fall, I've become more persuaded than I once was of the sexism which has dogged her campaign.
My wife, for example, asked me the other day to imagine that Barak was a smart young freshman female Senator? Did I believe a similar groundswell for HER candidacy would have arisen at all layers of the Democratic Party and beyond?
Class backgrounds being equal, race hasn't prevented Obama from sprinting to the head of the pack; as a women, he would never have gotten out of the starting blocks. Even a hip young WHITE female Senator, fresh out of the Illinois state house, would have almost certainly ended up jostling with Kucinich at the back of the pack. Unless, that is, she had powerful family or party connections, as a small number of other female leaders have had, in which case, like Clinton, she would have perhaps stood an outside chance of gaining power.