Hillary has had a tough week.  Falling poll numbers, falling flags and more importantly a loss of her sense of invulnerability.  For weeks her attitude and that of many has been that she is the inevitable candidate.  Now suddenly she is just another candidate.

The reasons is that the other democrats are actually treating her as a front runner, one whom them want to stop, which means when she waffles in the debate as she did recently, her behavior is fair game.

And her reaction?

Clinton Regroups As Rivals Pounce

After a rare night of fumbles by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination rushed to maximize the damage yesterday, even as her advisers argued that the “piling on” engaged in by an all-male field of opponents will ultimately drive more female voters into her camp.

Clinton strategists grudgingly acknowledged that the performance in Tuesday’s debate in Philadelphia was not her finest and they sought to contain the fallout. They worked to clarify her muddled response to a question about whether she supports giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants — she backs it, they said — and quickly produced a video, titled “The Politics of Pile-On,” splicing together in rapid-fire fashion her rivals’ attacks from the event.

She is playing a dangerous game.  She is carefully walking the line of using her gender as a political tool as she and her husband make comments about “the boys” who are out to get her.  She needs to transcend her gender and make it not an issue, and become the best candidate, not the best woman candidate.  What’s more, if she claims to be more qualified being a woman but attacks claims she is less qualified being a woman she straddles hypocrisy.

As Sister Toldjah notes:

There’s been some diversity amongst the reactions amongst liberal feminists as to whether they consider her a victim of a “boys-club” attack or if they view her playing of the victim card as a setback of sorts for the feminist movement. Ben Smith and David Paul Kuhn at The Politico reported yesterday on the mixed reaction from feminists to Hillary’s victim card defense: