Well it's been a while since I've offered my thoughts on the Democratic race for president, but since it has intensified of late, I thought I'd offer my own opinions on some of the recent developments:
As we all know, the dialogue on the Democratic side has descended into character attacks to a very significant degree. This said, however, some of these have been much more valid than others. I hate to validate the idea that Republicans have been forwarding this whole time about the Clintons being dishonest, but frankly there is a lot more intellectual honesty to Sanders' criticisms of Hillary Clinton speaking fees than there is to the accusation that Bernie Sanders is personally responsible for most of the gun violence that takes place in New York and that he plausibly has something to hide in his income taxes, for example. The Clinton camp's lines of attack are broadly, obviously invalid and seem characterized largely by that "desperation" they accuse Sanders of acting upon, given that the New York primary, to say nothing of national polling, has tightened a lot over the last month (more than even I thought it would!) as the result of a whole wave of Bernie Sanders victories.
These sorts of clearly desperate lines of attack and the lack of honesty behind them frankly do go a long way toward explaining Hillary Clinton's plunging favorability numbers. It is worth adding though that they don't explain everything. For example, why does BILL Clinton enjoy a 58% favorability rating while his wife's is only 32%? In point of fact, just about all prominent Democrats currently have a net positive likeability ratings except Hillary Clinton: Bernie Sanders is currently viewed favorably by 48% of Americans, President Obama by 56%, Vice President Biden by 57%, and Bill Clinton by 58%. What this concentrates is that prominent Democrats across the board are currently popular regardless of their race, political views, or ethical history...except the woman. In this connection, I'm not so much suggesting that Hillary Clinton should be more popular, but that some of these others (namely and in particular Bill Clinton) should be less if we are to attribute this dramatic difference to something other than indeed sexism. So yes, the general sexist attitudes of the public -- the general revulsion that both men and women tend to experience when they perceive a woman as pursuing power (I would highlight that 2010 study by Yale University on this subject) -- are, I would say, a factor.
The thing is though that one can hardly say Bernie Sanders is playing to these sentiments. The most sexist thing Sanders has said or done in the campaign so far has been his allegation in the first Democratic debate that Hillary Clinton was "yelling" at him when she was, in fact, speaking in a normal tone of voice. (Ever heard anyone complain about a man yelling in a political debate before, even when it actually happened?) There have been some other sexist lines of attack against Hillary Clinton (e.g. her supporters are apparently "$#@!s", and yes throwing money at a woman does have implications that go beyond critiques of ties to Wall Street), but you'll notice that these line of attack are not coming from the candidate himself, who describes himself as a feminist. Bernie's character attacks continue to revolve around Goldman Sachs speaking fees and the Clinton campaign's use of dark money Super PACs, which frankly are valid lines of criticism.
The only real valid line of criticism that Hillary Clinton has leveled against Bernie Sanders so far in the course of the race for the New York primary has been the argument that Sanders is only raising money for himself, where Mrs. Clinton is also raising money for other Democrats down the ballot. The Sanders campaign's initial response to that line of criticism was to proclaim that Clinton had access to financial avenues "that we're not even interested in," as if her connections to Wall Street explained the difference. In reality, of course, the Sanders campaign has been out-fundraising the Clinton campaign for the last three months in a row and thus has had more resources, yet opted to focus them all on Bernie's presidential bid, where Hillary had divided hers up more. More recently, the Sanders campaign has marginally switched tactics and started also raising money for a very selective pool of Democratic officials: the three who have endorsed him. Now they proclaim that Hillary Clinton's method of fundraising for other Democrats is illegal.
The most disturbing thing to me about the heated battle for New York though has been both Hillary and Bill Clinton's attacks on major activist groups one the left like Greenpeace and Black Lives Matter. Hillary Clinton has claimed the allegation false that she's taken money from the fossil fuel industry. They have shown otherwise. Bill Clinton, meanwhile, has adopted a particularly disturbing tack in opting to defend the racist term "super-predators", going as far as to claim that Black Lives Matter activists are supporters of gang violence for objecting to that term. And no, an "almost apology" tour doesn't make up for that blatant display of racism. Racism is the most disturbing aspect of the Clintons' political career to me. Another example of it was on display in the recent Democratic debate when Hillary could not be bothered with the lives of Palestinian civilians because they're just not as important as Jewish ones to winning the New York Democratic primary.
That is my commentary on recent developments in the Democratic race for president.