Convention Briefs

We've come a long way, baby.  Kamala Harris' gender isn't a liability. Polls show American are fine with a female commander in chief. (Pew poll). Most of Trump's fire against her so far, is more racist, questioning her ethnicity and falsely demeaning her intelligence. ( J.D. Vance made his inane charges several years ago about "childless cat ladies" leading the Democratic party.) 

Some bedwetters forget that Hillary Clinton won the 2016 popular vote by more than two points. With a couple different campaign decisions and without FBI director James Comey's last minute interference about a faux scandal, she would have been elected. There certainly still is more than a little sexism.  But most of those voters are with Trump anyway.

This is a lot different than a half century ago when Connecticut's Ella Grasso was the first woman elected to the executive post of Governor in her own right.  The few previous women Governors followed their husbands, Noteworthy was Texas' "Ma" Ferguson who won after her husband, Pa, was impeached.  She campaigned on English only in schools: "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it ought to be good enough for the children of Texas."

In the Grasso race, pollster Peter Hart found that men were less hostile to a woman candidate for an executive post then almost four dozen women have been elected Governors. Today there are a dozen female Governors, eight Democrats and  four Republicans.