Who's On First?

Earlier today Dana Goldstein of TAPPED spoke for a lot of people (based on number of links) when she said of the recognition Hillary Clinton's ground-breaking campaign has brought to women in politics.

Over the course of this historic, thrilling, aggressive primary election, we’ve seen more female pundits than ever before writing and speaking about presidential politics. We’ve experienced unprecedented interest from male politicos in women’s participation in the electoral process. And demands for women’s leadership have been given their fairest hearing to date in the United States, with Democrats nationwide expecting Obama to give close consideration to female vice-presidential prospects — not only because there are a few wildly successful and talented women who would be great at the job, but also as a gesture of good will toward the feminist energy that animated so many Clinton supporters.

Goldstein said it here.

As Neil Sinhababu of Political Animal points out that it's a good time to pay attention to some important people who've been dismissed or otherwise inappropriately taken for granted.

It'd be a mistake to think that the loyalties some women feel to Hillary Clinton are immediately transferrable to other female politicians. We've seen all sorts of misogyny thrown at Hillary over the last 16 years, and that's the sort of thing that bonds you to a particular individual.

But when this primary is far behind us, I hope that people looking for awesome female leaders will start paying more attention to Nancy Pelosi.

In 2005, Pelosi inherited a House Democratic Caucus in shambles. Her predecessor, Dick Gephardt, was probably the Democrat most responsible for the Iraq War. Bush had been re-elected, and Democrats were completely demoralized.

Read the quote in context here.

Y'know what's cool about Pelosi? As Speaker of the House she's arguably institutionally the second most powerful politician in Washington. Pretty cool. She's not the only overlooked woman in positions of power. Who's your favorite? Who else has been rising steadily but too slowly through the ranks in the House? The Senate? Who's been snubbed or passed over for Federal judicial or appeals-court nominations? Who's ready for promotion or appointment to significant Cabinet and Department positions?

For that matter how about rising state and local stars? Howard Dean's 50-state strategy is poised to really take off. Barack Obama, a gifted activist/organizer, invested tens, maybe even hundreds of millions of primary dollars in permanent party building. It's a good time to start asking who's in the pipeline, who's recruiting young people into those pipelines and are women (just for instance) being recruited in proportion to their potential impact in the years and decades to come?

And lest I sound too partisan (I am but I try not to sound it) with Republicans kind of out of gas as far as ideas, credibility, and candidates are concerned, what *authentic,* non-wingnut, non-McSame conservative women, and men, are being recruited into *their* farm teams? In a lot of ways they actually have a jump on things -- Elizabeth Dole was seriously considered for the nomination track, though ultimately dropped, by Republican power brokers back in the 1980s and 1990s. Christie Todd Whitman, Kay Baley Hutchinson, Condoleeza Rice, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and others with no-kook gravitas come to mind, though I'm not sure how many more credible women have been coming up behind them after the fiasco of the Gingrich, Hastert, Lott, and Bush years.