Clinton's left critics would often comment that she'd lucked out in her draw of opponents, that she'd won--and then blown--a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to run against such a cartoonishly awful man. What this view failed to acknowledge was that it was the opposite of both luck and accident that this man had been summoned, elected by his party to face down the first woman who was running to be president, the woman we'd been assured would be president.