Hillary Clinton Just Proved Michele Bachmann's Point

Hillary Clinton’s sartorial choices are once more in the news.

As has been pointed out numerous times online, and late Friday afternoon in an article by The Hill, the yellow jacket she wore during Thursday night’s Democratic debate is the same one she wore during her much-ballyhooed speech at Goldman Sachs.

The reason that this is news -- to the limited extent that it can be described as such -- is because Clinton is currently taking heavy heat for those Goldman Sachs speaking fees. And wearing the same outfit there that she did on Thursday is ... ironic? Poorly timed? Politically tone-deaf? All of the above?

It’s tough to say.

But whatever you want to call it, the reaction to Clinton's jacket is very much an affirmation of something ingrained in our political culture, something that former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) touched on in her interview with "Candidate Confessional." Women running for president (which Bachmann once did) are held to higher, more superficial standards than their male counterparts.

(The relevant part comes at about 19:50.)

“I really do have great empathy for what Mrs. Clinton is going through, because the hill that she has to climb on — appearance — it's just a different hill than men have to climb," Bachmann told us. "I'm not whining about it. It's just reality. It is what it is."

To be sure, the reason Clinton is receiving attention for this story is not simply because she committed the fashion faux pas of wearing the same outfit twice. But at the same time, a male candidate would never even have to worry about this type of incident occurring. As Lucia Graves of The Guardian pointed out, “guys wear the same thing every damn day” -- present company excluded.