Twenty years ago, while indulging my penchant for on-line surveys (I love knowing my less-than-conventional answers skew the results), I was faced with the question of voting for female candidates. The survey apparently assumed that women would always vote for another woman in order to support some misguided version of feminism and to upset the male dominated political scene. The questions did not consider ideological viewpoints, competence, experience or character, only gender. It saddens me greatly to see large swathes of society still stuck in that mindset.

Listening to the howls of rage from the disappointed Hillary supporters has been stupefying. These self-described feminists seem to believe anyone without a Y chromosome should fall in, lock-step, with any female candidate who files a petition. What happened to the quite reasonable expectation of being hired based on qualifications, not sex? How did feminists lose sight of their goals of equality (remember the ERA?) to demand an ill-logical preferential treatment over a level playing field? And yes, the same questions could be asked of racism and the Civil Rights movement, and blacks voting for Obama..

To blame the media for Hillary’s demise is disingenuous at best. Character assassination is part and parcel of today’s political machine, unfortunately, and the Clintons sling mud with the worst of them. And now, as usual, Hillary and Biden, the lame appeasement addition to the Obama ticket, must retract the nasty things they said about the party’s candidate during primary season in an effort to show solidarity against the evil GOP. Hillary’s faithful continue to wail and some even threaten to vote for McCain to show their independence. Elect another Bush caricature who will continue to bloat the military and gut social programs and civil rights - that’ll teach ‘em!.

Before I, too, am slapped with a dismissive label, no, I am not a Republican. I am not a Democrat either, actually. This primary, for the first time in 10 years, I grit my teeth and registered as a Democrat in order to have a say in selecting a candidate in Ohio, but I identify with neither party to any great extent. My voting record since I turned 18 – Carter, Carter, Reagan (ouch), Dukakis, Perot, Clinton, Hagelin (Natural Law), Kerry – shows a decided Democratic bent, but on far too many occasions, those votes were against a candidate rather than for a party platform. The two-party system in this country is broken, but that is a topic I have addressed in other writings..

The standard argument for affirmative action programs states that there is no level playing field, that we must provide a head start for those victims of past abuses (generationally past, in most cases). When can we stop allowing victimhood of ancestors from affecting actions of today? Such behavior only perpetuates the divide by setting up a new class of victims on the other side of the coin – white, male, etc. – and exacerbates hostilities. It’s a vicious circle that must be stopped to be cured..

Until society can move beyond treating individuals as sexes, colors, faiths, etc., and start interacting as human beings, each with unique preferences and ideologies, we are doomed to repeat these futile machinations and posturing. No, I will not vote for Hillary because we are both women; I believe she is patently unelectable, too polarizing to be effective in the White House, and too much an insider to ever really work for the common good. Obama is only marginally ahead on those counts, but again, I am faced with voting against a candidate (McCain) rather than for someone in whom I can truly believe. Sex – and race – have nothing to do with it.