Primary Notables

A Tribune columnist noted something interesting in an article today that I should have noted in this item below:

The 2020 Election, Part 9

Except. . . .maybe it really isn't noteworthy.

Some other things about the primary were, however.

So what was that noteworthy thing the columnist wrote an article on and I didn't note at all?  Well, the headline for the article probably aptly states it (although it should be noted that headlines are not written by the author's, but by separate writers):

Here's A Shock--Women' Top November's Ballot.

Shocking. . . um. .  . not.

In fairness to the author, she didn't say it was shocking, but rather unprecedented. It probably is, but not in a way that's really newsworthy anymore.  Like so many stories that get reported in the press as really amazing developments, the real story broke eons ago.

Women in politics is now such an accomplished fact that the only people who find a woman running for any office amazing are members of the press.  There have been lots of female members of Congress, legislators and Governors in the United States. Women have been Secretaries of State.  It's just not news.

Indeed, locally, Wyoming has always had female suffrage, so even the recent anniversary noted here of the 19th Amendment didn't do anything in Wyoming. Women could already vote.  Nellie Tayloe Ross became our Governor in 1925 and then went off to be Director of Mints for the Roosevelt administration.  She was the first female Governor in the United States and while she is, so far, the only woman to be elected to that office the well respected Democratic contender in 2018 was a woman.  The state's had two women Secretary of States, the office next to the Governor, and the last one was widely mentioned as a probably unbeatable gubernatorial candidate should she choose to run.  Cynthia Lummis was the state's first female Congressman and the current congressman, Liz Cheney, is obviously also a woman.  We haven't had a female Senator but up until the Tribune mentioned it, it didn't even occur to me that we were about to achieve that first.  That's because that first is, frankly, no longer notable.

If that sounds harsh, pointing this out would be similar to pointing out that, at this point in time, it looks as if Joe Biden is about to become the second Catholic President in the country's history, although observant Catholics would note that he unfortunately seems to fit the "Catholic on Sunday" standard set by John F. Kennedy (without, of course, Kennedy's alley cat morals). This hasn't been noted, however, as it isn't interesting to anyone except observant Catholics.  Nobody believes that being a Catholic bars a person from office in 2020.

Being a woman doesn't even really figure into Presidential weights and measures in 2020 either, except in the eyes of the press.  2016 proved that women don't vote for women because they're women.  If Kamala Harris becomes the first female President of the United States, and she now stands a good chance of achieving that, it won't really be that notable.

When we passed this bar isn't exactly clear, but I'd argue that it was as long ago, if not longer, than when Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the UK. That's a different country, of course, but trends of our fellow English speaking transatlantic neighbor aren't irrelevant here, just as ours aren't irrelevant there.  By that point women were clearly advancing in all sorts of politics and law and by the 80s, it really wasn't novel.

Indeed, again locally, we have a female majority Supreme Court, near parity in new law school graduations for women, we have a female Federal District Court judge, and a female state attorney general.  

Indeed, I'd frankly find it to be much bigger surprise if Canada had a female prime minister, as Canada seems a lot more prone to box checking than the United States, and it hasn't achieved thaat.  Here in the US the topic just gets a big yawn from everybody but the press.

This is, I'd note, true of racial categories too, in spite of the times we're in, with some slight exceptions, which is the real story that's being missed here.

First, on race, ethnicity and related topics, we've had a black President, as we all know, and after that, the "first (fill in racial category here)" just doesn't matter.  When we have the first Hispanic President, and we will (and nearly did in 2016), the only ones who will find that noteworthy will be the press.  The first Jewish President, which we haven't had either, won't be noteworthy.  We nearly had a Mormon President, who followed the Kennedy discounting of his religion when he ran plan, and nobody really found that very interesting.  We had a really conservative candidate running in Tusli Gabbard, who is Samoan ethnically and Hindu, and both of those topics hardly came up in the press.  In order to really get people to notice in this area we'd have to have a serious Muslim President, which I think most voters wouldn't support, whether they'd admit it or not.  Muslim legislators at the state or national level. . . well we already know that in a lot of places that's not noteworthy.

Which takes us to some noteworthy items.

The first is that the state Democrats are running Lynette Grey Bull for Congress. She's a Native American and that really is noteworthy here.  American Indians are a massively disadvantaged demographic and have not really had much of a political presence in Wyoming in spite of being a fairly large minority group.  The fact that she's a woman isn't notable.  The fact that she's an Indian woman definitely is.  Indeed, while she will not win, she puts in sharp contrast Cheney's claims last election to be a Wyomingite, which she isn't.  Grey Bull is a native Wyomingite with ancestry so far back in the state it predates any other claimants.

That takes us to the Senatorial race where University of Wyoming professor Marev Ben David is running.  Ben David wasn't born in Wyoming, she was born in Israel and she's a Professor of Zoology and Physiology.  

UW hasn't sent a professor to Washington since Gale McGee, and Ben David won't win this go around. But she is notable as she's a scientist, not a lawyer.  And that brings up this point.

For the first time in a long time the Democrats are really sending candidates into the fall who should be viable in normal times, and they may actually prove to be here.  In picking Ben David, the Democrats picked the most serious candidate in the entire election locally, and rejected Ludwig, a candidate who virtually defines the unelectable, unrealistic, left that the Democrats have been mired in for the past fifteen years.  While the GOP is having squabbles with its extremities, the Democrats this year firmly pushed the eject seat on them and hurled them into the stratosphere, picking instead really solid candidates.

The press isn't, frankly, good at picking up on trends.  And it is too early to tell what's going on here.  But whatever it is, the story isn't "gosh, women are running for office here".  That's old news.  What might be the trend is that the Democrats are actually getting their act together in the State just as the GOP become really mired down in an internecine battle that regular voters don't want a part of.  Wyoming may be solid "Trump Country" in the eyes of the press, and he will do well in the fall, but GOP candidates basking in the warmth of a Trump Sun are going to be disappointed after the general election and feel like they're under siege.  If the current fights keep on keeping on, lots of regular voters are going to be looking elsewhere, and the Democrats are starting to give them a place to look.