A quick note on Marie Cocco's column today on the sexism in the campaign. Judging by the number of comments on the piece - 354 and counting - Cocco obviously touched a nerve, and rightfully so.

This past Sunday I was on Bruce DuMont's radio show, Beyond the Beltway, along with Democratic strategist Eric Adelstein (an Obama supporter), State Rep. Jack Franks (a Clinton supporter), and Judy Baar Topinka (a McCain supporter). During the show we touched briefly on the subject of sexism in this year's campaign and the amount of sexism (often underappreciated and/or commonly accepted) that Clinton has had to put up with throughout the primary season.

Topinka was the first to bring it up, and she spoke from experience: as State Treasurer from 1995-2007 she's one of the highest ranking and longest serving female elected officials in Illinois state history, and she fell short of her bid to become the state's first female Governor in 2006, losing to Democrat Rod Blagojevich.

Topinka recounted a couple of brief anecdotes of the sexism she encountered on the trail and said, quite interestingly, that in her experience women were "much worse" than men when it came to being guilty of sexism.