If Barack Obama were a woman, we wouldn't see her as presidential material.

Says Gloria Steinem in a NYT op-ed:

The woman in question became a lawyer after some years as a community organizer, married a corporate lawyer and is the mother of two little girls, ages 9 and 6. Herself the daughter of a white American mother and a black African father — in this race-conscious country, she is considered black — she served as a state legislator for eight years, and became an inspirational voice for national unity.

Be honest: Do you think this is the biography of someone who could be elected to the United States Senate? After less than one term there, do you believe she could be a viable candidate to head the most powerful nation on earth?

Vivid. But on paper, Barack Obama doesn't look like a viable candidate either.

Anyway, Steinem is supporting Hillary Clinton, because, she says, "she has community organizing experience, but she also has more years in the Senate, an unprecedented eight years of on-the-job training in the White House, no masculinity to prove, the potential to tap a huge reservoir of this country’s talent by her example, and now even the courage to break the no-tears rule."

An unprecedented eight years of on-the-job training in the White House? Ahem... Gloria? Can you say anything about the feminist issues entailed in a woman running for the presidency on her husband's accomplishments? If not, you're speaking as a Clinton partisan and not as someone who wants to seriously engage with feminism.

ADDED: Andrew Sullivan: "Clinton is comfortable aroound this kind of victimology. Obama transcends it."

AND: Ed Morrissey: "Steinem shows everything that's wrong with identity politics. It's crass, it's irrational, it assumes that people should get "turns", and in the end it's anti-democratic. Obama hasn't played that game like Hillary has — and that may be why Obama's beating Hillary like a bongo drum in Iowa and New Hampshire."