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At a breakfast this morning sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested that Hillary Clinton had to deal with sexism during her failed bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

"My impression is, yes, there was sexism. My knowledge is, yes, there is sexism because there has been," Pelosi said, with a laugh, according to the New York Times. "I myself find that I get a tremendous upside being a woman, and I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about sexist remarks that people make.”

“I’m a victim of sexism myself all the time,” Pelosi said.

Clinton and her supporters have suggested that media coverage of the race reflected a sexist attitude on the part of the press, and some in the media – including CBS "Evening News" anchor Katie Couric – have backed up that claim.

“Like her or not, one of the great lessons of that campaign is the continued, and accepted, role of sexism in American life, particularly in the media," Couric said in a Web video, contrasting the coverage of Barack Obama to that of Clinton.

Pelosi did see positives in Clinton's run, saying this morning that "Senator Clinton has advanced the cause of women in government and her candidacy has been a very positive tonic for the country and had a very wholesome effect on the political process.”

She added that Clinton benefited from women being “wildly enthusiastic” about her run, according to the Times.

On Friday we mentioned a pair of op-eds, including one from former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, suggesting that sexism has been directed towards Hillary Clinton during her presidential run.

Now Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean has taken up the argument, twice this weekend alleging sexism in coverage of the New York senator. Here's Dean – never, it's worth pointing out, much of a fan of the fourth estate – at Saturday's Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting:

Over the course of the primary there have been some tough disagreements and some ugly moments in this campaign. On the blogosphere, and the airwaves. Emotions have run high and heated discussions have led at times to blatantly racist comments and, blatantly sexist comments particularly by some members of the media. We know that those comments have no place in our society and certainly no place in our party.

And Dean on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, after being asked about Ferraro's op-ed:

There has been an enormous amount of sexism in this campaign on the part of the media, including the mainstream media...there have been major networks that have featured numerous outrageous comments that if the words were reversed and they were about race, the people would have been fired....What you don't get over is deep wounds that have been inflicted on somebody because they happen to be a woman running for president of the United States.

"How much anger is there among women about how Hillary Clinton has been treated during this campaign?," E. J. Dionne Jr. asks in his Washington Post column today. "Some of the nation's leading female politicians will tell you: quite a lot."

Perhaps the most voluble of the lot is former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, who offers up an op-ed in the Boston Globe this morning that references "Democrats' sexism" right in the headline.

"... neither the Barack Obama campaign nor the media seem to understand what is at the heart of the anger on the part of women who feel that Hillary Clinton was treated unfairly because she is a woman," Ferraro writes, adding: "We feel that if society can allow sexism to impact a woman's candidacy to deny her the presidency, it sends a direct signal that sexism is OK in all of society."

Ferraro resigned from her fundraising position with the Clinton campaign in March after suggesting that Obama would not have gotten as far is he did in hte presidential race if not for his race.

"Since March, when I was accused of being racist for a statement I made about the influence of blacks on Obama's historic campaign, people have been stopping me to express a common sentiment: If you're white you can't open your mouth without being accused of being racist," Ferraro writes in the op-ed. "They see Obama's playing the race card throughout the campaign and no one calling him for it as frightening."

Dionne writes that the female politicians he spoke to "know that Clinton is on the verge of defeat because of her campaign's organizational mistakes, its failure to take Obama seriously early on and the difficulties created by her husband's presence." But, he suggests, many take what they see as Clinton's unfair treatment personally.

"It's a campaign, someone wins, someone doesn't win, that's life," Maryland's treasurer Nancy Kopp told him. "But women don't want to be totally dissed."