CAITLIN FLANAGAN: The Anger of Amy Klobuchar: Don’t sell cruelty and pathological behavior as a feminist victory.

Her problem is rage, easily uncorked, and directed not at the various forces that might thwart the needs of her constituents, but at the people—many of them young—who work for her. During Klobuchar’s first senatorial campaign, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees decried her “shameful treatment of her employees” in the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office; in March of 2018, Politico reported that she had the highest staff turnover in the Senate. But it has been the recent reporting of BuzzFeed News, HuffPost, The New York Times, and others that has provided the vivid and ugly details of what apparently lies behind those facts. Although many of the staffers and former staffers provided their reports anonymously, the senator has mostly not disputed the specifics, instead seeking to frame the behavior as part of the high expectations she has of herself and her staff. . . .

As dawn must follow dusk, any unpleasant revelation about a successful woman must be immediately plumbed for any possible hint of sexism, and so it has been with the Klobuchar news. If a man threw a binder at his employees, he’d be appointed president for life, is the thinking. An American city would be renamed for him; women would compete to bear him sons; his picture would be printed on currency. Certainly a kind of sexism has accompanied the incident, and the proof is that Klobuchar seems to be surviving these reports., while a man never would.

Well, we expect less of women, apparently.