I’d say a good strategy for the Dems at this stage in the 2016 presidential race would be to just keep asking Rand Paul to talk about women. Here he is attempting to brush off the significance of potentially electing a woman to the presidency for the first time in this nation’s history.

Rand Paul says the election of a female president would not be a huge achievement, in his estimation, because women are already “kicking butt.” People don’t want to be judged on the basis of their sex, he told The Associated Press in an interview. Asked whether it’s time for the U.S. to have a woman as president, he said: “I think that’s a sexist comment, and shame on you for being so sexist.” He quickly added that comment was “facetious.” [...] Interviewed Saturday by two female AP writers, Paul addressed how he sees the position women in politics and society evolving. He said women are already “involved at every level and in everything now,” reducing the urgency of electing a woman to the White House. And he predicted that, in his lifetime, women will achieve parity in politics and the workplace. “I guess what I don’t like is, oh somehow, you know, ‘Poor, woe is me, women aren’t doing well,'” he said. “I think women are kicking butt.”

What a condescending and manipulative answer. The fact that women are “kicking butt” does not change the fact that for over 200 years, the president of the United States has been a man — until 2008, a white man. It is not whining “woe is me” to point out that while women may be “involved at every level and in everything now,” they still make up only 20 percent of Congress. And it does not amount to judging someone on the basis of their sex to acknowledge that sending a woman to the White House for the first time ever would be a big deal.

As Kate Harding wrote recently, whatever you think about Hillary Clinton, her gender is a perfectly legitimate reason to vote for her — far more legitimate than the “ludicrous notion that 226 years of male rule have somehow left us in a position where gender is immaterial.”

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