Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Voting For Women

You can believe, if you so desire, that Republicans have some "thing" against voting for women.  I can't understand why believing that makes some people feel good about themselves, but apparently it does.

I'm happy to vote for women--because I don't care if they're women or not.  I care about what they think, not whether they have interior or exterior personal plumbing.  As a result, I didn't vote for Hillary Clinton, and I have never voted for Senator Barbara Boxer--who, incidentally is probably one of the dumbest people ever to sit in the Senate--or Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is not.  I did, however, vote for Meg Whitman when she ran for governor 6 years ago.  Are those who didn't vote for her misogynists?  The only two politicians to whom I've ever donated money were women, and they both lost their elections.  Heck, I've even voted for a woman who was a Democrat--March Fong Eu, when she was California's Secretary of State.  Her office made sure I had my election materials well in advance of elections when I was away from California in the army, why mess that up?

As an aside, I've voted for many Democrats over the years.  How could I not, when here in California we know the political parties of even those who run for supposedly non-partisan offices such as Secretary of State, Superintendent of Public Instruction, and Insurance Commissioner?

But back to women.  I'd have been happy to vote for Governors Susanna Martinez or Nikki Haley or Sarah Palin, or Congresswoman Mia Love, had I lived in their states.  And I'd be happy to vote for Kristi Noem if I lived in her state:
Rep. Kristi Noem (R-S.D.), just reelected last week to a fourth term, announced Monday she will run for South Dakota governor in 2018.
So you see, it has nothing to do with a politician's sex for me, it has to do with their views and capabilities.  It doesn't have to do with their ethnicities, either, as Governor Martinez is an American of Hispanic heritage, Governor Haley is an American of (East) Indian heritage, and Representative Love is an American whose skin is black.  And I wouldn't vote for them because of ethnicity or race, although I like to point it out to lefties because, for some reason, they like to talk a lot about such things.

The American Left likes to treat women like its own little voting bloc, one to simultaneously stir up and pander to for its own devices.  Maybe, hopefully, that tactic won't work so much going forward:
Sisterhood is dead. If the left learns nothing else from this election, perhaps they should understand that there’s no such thing as female solidarity — not, at least, as they envision it...

When women were genuinely oppressed — before they could vote, before they could own property, before they could have the same access to education or the same opportunities in the workplace — it might have been possible to appeal to them as a bloc, even as a movement.

But in an era when women get a greater percentage of the college degrees and women without children earn more than their male counterparts, most women don’t see themselves as victims, let alone ones who need to join hands in solidarity.
Let's hope.

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