With Hillary Clinton less likely every day to be the Democratic nominee for president, the guessing game is to try to predict when the first American woman will serve as commander in chief.
I have seen much more of this discussion lately, wherein feminist commentators discuss when we will see the next woman to run for President, and whether or not it will be another "generation" till it occurs like the 24 years between Ferraro and Clinton.
I have several issues with this discussion. First, dabbling within the identity politics kiddie pool, this commentary seems to almost lament the fact that Clinton's not getting the nomination is going to set women back for another generation. How this operates I do not know, and is rarely explained. This line of commentary does not assess real factors, like the differences in the numbers of women politicians in 1984 and 2008. I am assuming that there has been a real increase in the number of women politicians holding potentially presidential springboard offices since 1984. In the specific article above, the author describes a hypothetical next woman presidential candidate with the admonishment that "she might not even exist." I am sorry, but Kathy Sebelius, Janet Napolitano, and Claire McCaskill are all future potential presidential candidates for the Democrats. At least, they should consider themselves such.
Another issue I have with this feminist handwringing is that, again playing identity politics, blacks have NEVER gotten as close as Ferraro did in 84, or as Obama has now. A fair question is who would be the next black candidate in the position of Clinton or Obama? To be fair, I would say Deval Patrick and Harold Ford might be in that position, but I think neither are as close as the three women I mentioned.
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