A Woman and A Jew Run For President

When I was little, my Grandpa told me that I could be anything I wanted to be.  "This one," he told my parents, "this one will go far. Even to the White House."

Patiently, I explained to him that there were three very good reasons I never could become President: I was poor, I was Jewish, I was a woman.

Poor is still an issue, were I to run for public office.  The only way Michael Bloomberg can say that he'll join the candidates if Trump and Sanders are the winners is because Michael Bloomberg wants to die broke, and he has $33 Billion to burn through before that happens.  He's the 8th richest person in the USofA.  That might trump the fact that he is a Jew.

I've enjoyed this election season immensely, for no reason other than the fact of Bernie Sanders's religion has not been the subject of a single editorial, op ed, news report, or protest... at least that I have seen.  He looks like all my Jewish great-uncles. His repartee is straight from their mouths.  He's disheveled, like a Wandering Jew, I suppose, but no one makes the connection.

Perhaps my Grandpa was right; I could be elected as a Jew.

But I am still female, and that's another matter entirely.  Princess Myrtle directed me to this feminist blog post at Shakesville, which says it all clearly and profoundly.

To continually assert that she is representative of "the establishment," into the highest echelons of which women aren't even allowed, is a neat way of obfuscating the fact that she is, in her very personhood, a challenge to the establishment.

Let me say that again, plainly: Sanders calls Clinton emblematic of an establishment that has never even allowed a woman to be seated at the head of the table.

Hillary is many things, and certainly she was on the edges of power while her husband was The Most Powerful Man in the Free World.  She was a Senator, following in the footsteps of women who had been elected before her.  That, in itself, is a powerful thing.  Aside from Olympia Snow, I had no such role models as a child.  The path that Mrs. Clinton is plowing is even more rutted and muddy.

... paths littered with obstacles are always easier to traverse if someone has tread them before.

 Sarah Palin and Geraldine Ferraro don't figure into this equation, although Ms Ferraro was eminently qualified for the post to which she aspired.  Being handmaiden to the Man In Charge is something with which women have been relegated forever.  Taking on the challenge itself, knowing that you are capable, putting yourself out there in front - those are things which Feminism touts and which America seems to have a hard time embracing.

There are, as Shakesville points out more eloquently than I do, many ways in which Bernie Sanders could run against Hillary.  By ignoring the fact that The Establishment does not now and never has before allowed a woman to assume the mantle of the presidency without trying to bring her down by critiquing her hair, her clothes, her mannerisms, her tone of voice.  As Shakesville notes, Bernie's disheveled appearance is considered adorable by the media in a way that would never been condoned regarding Hillary.

Doubt me?  Think back to Pant Suits.... hair styles.... makeup.....

I suppose that I could be thrilled about a Jew nearly winning the Iowa caucuses... if he didn't do it by stomping on a woman.

Grandpa, not that much has changed, it seems.