It's time for a good woman to trump a dumb man

I WAS THINKING of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama a few weekends ago, when my husband and I spent an afternoon biking around Washington.

"Y'know," I said as we pedaled along the Potomac, "if Hillary wins, I really want us to come back here for the inauguration, the way we did for Obama."

We had taken our then-young daughter and her friend to Obama's first inauguration on Jan. 20, 2009. We practically lost our fingers and toes on that frigid day as we jammed onto the National Mall with more than a million others to witness America's first African American president taking the oath of office.

I'll never forget bursting into tears when Obama finished. My husband and I grabbed the girls in a jumping, jubilant group hug.

I figured my husband would feel something similar about the inauguration of America's first female president.

"I don't know," he said. "It wouldn't feel as special. Obama was the first African American president. That was a huge deal."

I was so stunned, I almost fell off the bike.

My husband is the most decent, fair man I know. He's the first to cop to the obliviousness of white guys like him about how hard it can be to be a female or a minority in this country. He likes and admires strong, confident women and is doing a beautiful job of helping our daughter become one. I love him for it so much.

Yet somehow, the possible election of America's first female president did not occur to him as "a huge deal."

I just looked at him.

"You're kidding, right?" I asked.

"Oh, wow," he said slowly.

"You're right. Geez, I'm such a guy. . . ."

I sighed. When someone like my husband doesn't get the significance of Clinton's nomination and potential election, you know what it means?

That America's default button has been set to "male" for so long that even the good guys don't remember how hard women have had to work to be taken as seriously as men.

So on Thursday night, it will be a stunning moment when Chelsea Clinton introduces her mother as the Democratic presidential nominee.

Can you imagine what that'll feel like for the former first lady and her daughter, who are as close as a mama and her girl could be? The pride and love in that moment will be spectacular.

But the feelings won't be as spectacular for me as the realization, all over again, that for the first time in more than two centuries, a woman has a chance at the White House. I am as blown away by that possibility as I was when an African American was nominated for president at the Democratic National Convention in 2008.

But it's no surprise that it took so long to get here.

We needn't dig deep into the past to talk about how women didn't get the right to vote nationally until 1920. And how boardrooms and corner offices and college admissions didn't open to women until the '60s and '70s. And how wives were subject to their husband's sexual demands until 1980.

We need only go back to - sigh - Wednesday.

That's when, as reported by fusion.net, many of the country's news outlets chose an absolutely, unbelievably dismissive way to report Hillary Clinton's historic moment as the first female presidential nominee from a major U.S. political party.

They printed big headlines of her win on their front pages - atop photos of her husband!

The papers included big guns like the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle, Wisconsin State Journal, and Wall Street Journal.

When even these publications - some of them with liberal-leaning editorial pages - didn't think twice about using a photo of a candidate's husband to trumpet his wife's victory, well, America, it's time for a change.

For Clinton haters, of course, her gender has nothing to do with their vote of no confidence. They say things like, "Yes, we need a woman in the White House. But we need the right woman."

(As if this country hasn't willingly voted a lot of very wrong men into office, with no consideration of his gender. Remember Dubya, anyone?)

And they tick off the reasons why this "pretender in a pantsuit" isn't worthy of the historic moment she's stealing from a more deserving woman in the future.

Except, after 240 years, the future is finally here. Clinton has won her party's nomination, making her the right woman at the right time.

Because she's eminently qualified, I think she is exactly the right person at the right time.

The fact that she's also a woman, well, that's a bonus we've needed for a long time.

215-854-2217N>@RonniePhilly

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