I've learned that whatever I say, there are those who only will read the nouns and thus go off on their own tangent. So, even though I'm putting up a disclaimer here I expect it to be ignored.
I think all the Dem candidates (including those who have dropped out) would make fine presidents. I think any of them would be better than any from the GOP. I also think the differences between them are smaller than their partisans understand. We are not voting in American Idol, we are voting to pick someone to try to steer a huge, slow moving social system with lots of entrenched interests.
So, here's my argument and it has nothing to do with the capabilities of the candidates. The majority of people in this country are women. I'll repeat that the majority. Women didn't even get the vote until early in the 20th Century. Since then the discrimination has continued. There are only a handful of top CEO's who are women. The same goes for senior positions in major law firms, hospitals and political office.
Now there is a similar discriminatory state for those in ethnic minorities as well, and especially with blacks. But blacks are only about 12% of the population, and half of them are women as well.
It is time to elect a woman as president, because it's past time. We cannot be a moral force in the world and claim to be promoting the American ideal, that anyone can succeed if they just work hard enough, if we don't live up to our own creed. This is not an appeal to sexism. This is a claim that the majority of the country deserves to be represented.
The US lags behind many developed and developing countries which have had women leaders. Most of them did as good a job as the men who preceded or followed them. Did they contribute anything special by being a woman? I don't know, but they certainly didn't work against women's issues.
This is an issue of equity, not competence. Will I be upset if some other Dem wins? No. Will Obama's win also address an issue of equity? Yes. I just think that the group with the larger constituency should go first.