Like most Americans, I like to think I’d vote for the right person for President. Indeed, the record is incontrovertible; in every single election since I turned 18, I have, without exception, in retrospect picked the best candidate.

The factors I use to choose my candidates for President (indeed, for every office) are the ones I wrote here, and they always will be.

“Gender” and “Race” are not two of them. I will vote for a black handicapped lesbian conservative over a white male liberal weenie, early and often, every time.

Now, as it happens, most female politicians are Democrats – DFL in Minnesota – and ergo unacceptable. Not because they have ovaries, but because their politics weaken the nation, the economy, the culture and the family.

I suspect Lori “DFL Flak” Sturdevant will read that and find a sexist under the rock. To Lori, writing on behalf of the masses of “feminists” who want a woman, any woman, in office, gender is the subject.

(Provided the woman is suitably left of center):

Aviva Breen, the former director of the Legislature’s Commission on the Economic Status of Women, grimaced when asked about the presidential race. Her expression better matched the reality of Clinton’s situation than did the candidate’s own bravado after winning the meaningless West Virginia primary the night before.    

“This was our chance to vote for a woman for president,” Breen sighed, sounding resigned to the nomination of Barack Obama by the Democratic Party. Clinton “was the only one from our generation to come so far. … There’s no one else in the wings.”

And why do you suppose that is?

Why is it that after a generation of female pundits exhorting (liberal) women to run for office (as liberals), we are down to one female contender – and she’s just a legacy, to boot?

Why, oh why?

The answer is closer than you think:

Moments later, as if in response, trumpets sounded the “Rocky” fanfare, and the annual event’s traditional march began.

Into the cavernous hall processed female elected officials, each of them the recipient of campaign cash from the organization formerly called the Minnesota Women’s Campaign Fund.

It was an impressive assembly — both the several score elected officials on the stage and the 750 supporters who cheered their arrival. Perhaps more notable, however, were some conspicuous absences. Minnesota House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, Senate Assistant Majority Leader Tarryl Clark and several chairs of key legislative committees couldn’t come to Minneapolis that noon. They were embroiled in negotiations in and around the governor’s office at the Capitol.

In other words, they were right where the feminists who founded womenwinning 26 years ago always hoped elected women would be — in the thick of the making of state government’s biggest decisions.

Sturdevant is a fossil from the age when there were two parties in Minnesota – DFL and DFL-Lite – so we can forgive her the omission; that last bit should have read “they were right where the feminists who founded womenwinning 26 years ago always hoped elected women would be — carrying water for the nannystate.”

There are are, and have been, scads of highly capable female politicians, of course; in Minnesota…:

• Joan Growe – “moderate”, to be sure, but a highly capable politician
• Carol Molnau – partisan bickering about MNDoT aside, a highly accomplished political fixer in her own right, who’s held up her end of a Pawlenty Administration that has been like the 101st Airborne at Bastogne; holding out against incredible odds, giving much worse than it gets.
• Pat Pariseau – one of the best trench-fighters in the Minnesota Senate. Indeed, many of the GOP’s notables in the Senate are women. 
• Of course, Michele Bachmann, after a disproportionally-successful career in the Minnesota Senate, went on to win by the biggest margin of any winning Republican during the slaughter of ’06, and will likely do even better this year – against a full court media press.

Nationally?  Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Condi Rice got farther on the basis of their accomplishments than any other women in American history.  Alaska governor Sarah Palin is on the fast track to bigger things; in ’12 or ’16, she is a solid contender to be on the top of the ticket.  And while Christine Todd Whitman is far from a conservative’s darling, she wasn’t chopped liver, either.  There are more, of course.

Of course, womenwinning doesn’t want to think about any of them.  They’re conservative.  And so even though each of those women has a better story to tell the young women and girls of America than virtually anyone in the womenwinning camp, to them (and to Lori Sturdevant) they don’t exist. 

Indeed, I’ll stand by my prediction from 2002; the first female president of the United States will be a conservative Republican. 

Gender parity is still a long way off at the Capitol. The state has yet to elect its first female governor. But the 2007-08 Legislature is 34.8 percent female. That’s a respectable fifth-highest such percentage in the country.

If gender-based bean-counting (and strict adherence to the DFL’s audaciously-hopeful statism) is the biggest measure…

I’m not be obtuse in saying that, by the way.  Note Sturdevant’s next bit:

With swelling female ranks came more female clout. That’s particularly evident in the House, where a woman has the top job and women head 12 committees.

So what is “female clout”?

I’ve noticed this from any number of female DFL pols, including my own state legislative reps, Alice “the Phantom” Hausman and Ellen “womynandtheirchildren” Anderson; the notion that females are a unified, monolithic bloc with female issues and a female agenda.

Of course, when pressed to name a “female” issue other than abortion – which is far from monolithically decided, even among women?  During the ’04 campaign, polls showed that while the pro-“choice” position dominated among unmarried women and women with no children (the core of the liberal feminist vote), among married women with children it was a decided minority position.

So – are women a “special interest group” based simply on their gender?

Is this a good thing?

If so – should men start voting based on gender issues?