It's fairly likely the heavyweights in the Democratic Party are aware that they lost the 2016 election because they nominated a woman. They lost because too many Democratic men suddenly decided to take Screaming Bernie seriously (after three decades of laughing him off), because too many men in the Democratic base decided to stay home rather than vote for a woman, because too many faux-liberals wrote columns about how hilarious they find it when their housemates say "I hate those people," meaning female people, of course. ("I hate those people," wow, what a witticism, Sid Caesar would be so impressed.) 

It was a mistake to nominate a woman. If Hillary Clinton had a pen!s, he'd be sitting in the Oval Office right now.