Women aren’t just marching. They’re running. And it’s about time.
The failure to tap a vast pool of American society, whether because of sex, race, sexual preference or any other irrelevant criterion, has deprived all of us of contributions that could make us a better, smarter, stronger nation. And finally, women are going for it.
“Call it payback, call it a revolution, call it the Pink Wave, inspired by marchers in their magenta hats, and the activism that followed,” Alter writes.
“There is an unprecedented surge of first-time female candidates, overwhelmingly Democratic, running for offices big and small, from the U.S. Senate and state legislatures to local school boards.”
This is a great thing, even if Charlotte Alter doesn’t quite understand why. First, it’s easy to throw stones from the shore to make tiny, self-serving ripples in the huge and complex pond that comprises the running of government. They may start out as single-issue candidates, one-trick ponies, but the demands of office aren’t limited to the problems they feel most strongly about.
Coming up with hard solutions that not only address one’s personal issues but the good of one’s constituents is hard, sometimes impossible, work. Women who win elections will have to face this task. And they will soon learn that screaming into the abyss isn’t the same as public service.
Second, government has been dysfunctional for a very long time. One of the reasons we ended up with Darth Cheeto in office was to break the logjam, to disrupt the normalization of ineffectiveness that came to characterize 535 elected officials. New blood was needed, even if this was the price we needed to pay to learn that the myth that anybody could do better wasn’t necessarily true.
So this tidal wave of women candidates promises to provide another opportunity to infuse government with different ideas, different views, maybe even solutions where there was paralysis. This is a great thing, and I’m all for it.
“In 2016, they were ordinary voters. In 2017, they became activists, spurred by the bitter defeat of the first major female presidential candidate at the hands of a self-described p—y grabber. Now, in 2018, these doctors and mothers and teachers and executives are jumping into the arena and bringing new energy to a Democratic Party sorely in need of fresh faces,” the piece reads.
But there’s the rub. A wise nation will vote the best candidate, the one whose policies and positions best serve what the electorate supports for the good of the nation. A foolish electorate will vote genitalia. Presenting this paradigm shift of women candidates as the Democratic alternative to the “self-described pussy grabber” offers no clue what they stand for, what they will do in office, why they deserve our vote other than they’re not Trump.
Vote the best person. Vote the person you support. Vote for that person without regard to their genitalia, skin color, sex partner or heritage. We’ve tried stupid, and it didn’t serve us well. A new stupid is still stupid. In 2018, let’s try for better. Vote for women, if they reflect the positions you support and will best serve their constituents. All their constituents.
So what if they have vaginas? So what if they don’t.
Women of middle age in the bureaucracy tend toward misandry — they do vote their genitalia and they do close ranks for “the womanhood.” Judge Aquilina’s power-tripping is just one example. Diane Wood undermining Richard Posner behind his back (and driving him to retire) is another. Wasserman-Schultz manipulating the primaries in favor of Hillary Clinton is another. Once they are “in charge”, they are going to wield their power and they are certainly not going to let a man — even a senior federal judge or senator — get in their way. Examples abound, but few are looking as most are focused on the wonderfulness of “diversity.” Men generally do not understand how women think, and thus men (especially those who have not experienced it) tend to not recognize misandry until it is too late.
You’ve got to stop. As we went through yesterday, one side’s idiocy doesn’t make the other side’s idiocy better. No more comments like this or they get trashed.
I guess we can look forward to more Sara Palins, Michelle Bachmanns and Liz Cheneys then. Won’t that be fun.
Funny how the assumption is that all women are inclined to be on a particular side. Women have their own minds, despite what other women may assume.
“Vote the best person.”
It shouldn’t even need saying. Yet, somehow, it does. Many people vote for the person that they’ve heard of the most. Locally, we have a guy who is almost certainly a shoe-in. I think that it’s very likely that he’s a swamp creature. That tends to happen in rural Texas.
He has creepy eyes. Thus far, I’ve resisted the temptation to launch a spoiler campaign, along the lines of “You wouldn’t want to leave him alone with your kids, would you?” To do so would be despicable. And yet, it might keep a bad actor out of office.
It would be easier if the other candidates were not mere ciphers, with nothing to offer. When one is faced with a choice between useless and malignant, that’s a bad place to be.
Regardless of whether it’s women or not, “vote the best person” has always plagued this republic.
Why don’t you enlist the aid of your neighbor, Bush #43? He needs something productive to do in his retirement. He’s an *experienced* campaigner and *knows* people, not to mention *name-recognition*. Those are pluses!
Alternatively, there are four neighboring states you can move to, not to mention Mexico. We predict the time will come when some Texans will be clamoring to climb over the wall to get into Mexico [if things keep going the way they’re going]. The vast right-wing conspiracy is doing a number on the Lone Star State, we hear, John Cornyn-breath. (You voted for him.)
Maybe a billboard asking “Would you buy a used car for this man?”
You can’t be that young. Remember the year of the woman? We got Feinstein, Boxer, Murray and Braun. Not a lot of “new ideas” in that crowd.
True. It’s not as if this wasn’t tried before, and look how well it turned out.
Scully for President 2020!
I, for one, welcome our new overlords. Why should they miss out on the fun of trying to please everyone.
Remember how much fun it’s been trying to clean up after the War on Drugs?
How dare you conflate women and persons with vaginas? You are knowingly enacting violence.
Damn. I keep doing that.