Ezra Klein hits the nail on the head with this one. Hell, I’ve had the feelings he’s talking about here, and I’m not even old and disgruntled like most Hillary supporters (Too soon?). Running for offices like Third Grade Mission Money Collector had proven to me one universal truth: “Boys vote for boys because they are boys, and girls vote for boys because they like boys.” Regardless of how much experience I had rolling pennies and sending them to the Mission of the Sisters of Saint Joseph in Ethiopia, it seemed a charismatic guy always stood a much better chance of being elected than I did. When Hillary Clinton showed signs of being at least able to get her fellow girls behind her, I felt the battle was already half won.  A year and a comatose campaign later, I feel a little sheepish about that. Klein is right to point out that: 

When one of the underlying presumptions becomes that she was somehow owed this office, it creates a false sort of “equality blackmail” at the center of this election — vote Clinton or you’re fitting into a long history of misogyny. But there is nothing misogynistic, or unfair, about choosing the candidate whose politics you find most appealing, and whose political approach you find most compelling. That’s how this presidency thing is, in theory, decided.    

A quick look at some exit polling data makes it obvious that women as a group don’t really need me or anyone else to tell them to vote their conscience and not their identity, but third grade (or corporate board room) observations on gender bias die hard. One big reason I voted for Obama, despite abhorring his rhetorical hope obsession and his Little Red Riding Hood-worthy blindness to the evils of widespread non-partisanship, is that he seems to be inspiring more groups of people, especially smart young women (like the great Eva Lam over at Demapples), than any candidate ever has. We’ll have a woman in the Oval Office someday, but not until she’s politically appealing enough that we would’ve voted for her even if she’d been a man. Plus, she’ll probably have voted for Obama.