Alyssa Parker

Former Vice President Joe Biden got clobbered with a well-deserved smackdown after his vulgar gaffe last week claiming black Americans “ain’t black” if they don’t support him. The gaffe is just more evidence that Biden, and Democrats in general, view the American electorate through the prism of identity politics, lumping unique individuals into a patchwork of easily segregated demographic groups they take for granted. 

As with black Americans, Democrats like Biden believe they are entitled to the “female vote,” too, as if it were some trophy or badge to be collected. His insistence that his running mate must be a woman is just further evidence of this flawed thinking. Why not choose the best candidate, regardless of race or gender?

It’s insulting, but thankfully the tactic appears to be losing its effectiveness.

In the aftermath of Hillary Clinton‘s 2016 campaign, she famously blamed her loss on women who were unable to make their own decisions, implying women who voted for Trump did so because their husbands, fathers and sons told them to do so.

“[Women] will be under tremendous pressure – and I’m talking principally about white women. They will be under tremendous pressure from fathers and husbands and boyfriends and male employers not to vote for ‘the girl’,” Clinton said in an interview as part of a tour promoting her new memoir of the 2016 campaign.

Clinton claimed to stand for ‘female empowerment’ yet only did so in ways that benefited her campaign. But Clinton’s quote above is the exact opposite of empowering females. As a woman, I do not vote based on the male influences, I, like most women, think for myself, and I step into the voting booth armed with my own opinions.

The 2020 election had five women competing for the Democratic presidential nomination. As a young female, I was excited to see more women taking the stage and making history. However, I do not vote for any candidate simply because of gender. My vote is based on policy and leadership attributes, as it should be with all voters.

Women across party lines would likely agree that a woman in office, whether at the local, state or federal level is a fantastic progression for our culture. But only if they won because of the quality of their candidacy, not blind support based on identity politics.

A frequent and infuriating charge by liberals is that women who support male candidates are undermining the feminist movement.

“It feels like women betrayed us,” Madonna told Billboard magazine after the 2016 election.

“The triumph of President-elect Donald Trump represents the failure of many things. One of them is white feminism,” feminist author Tamara Winfrey Harris wrote on a left-leaning site after the 2016 election.

But it is the monolithic notion that feminists must also embrace liberal policy that is the true failure.

Millions of voters in Florida are conservative women. Single women and single mothers support the second amendment because they want to protect themselves and have the constitutional right to do so. Mothers are pro-school choice because they feel it is the best option for their child. These are their opinions that they take into the voting booth – not that of their husbands, fathers and sons.

To assume that women don’t make their own decisions, yet have the power, freedom and privacy to do so in the booth is illogical and undercuts these insulting feminist claims.

A woman voting for a male candidate is not anti-woman, it’s a vote cast by a woman for the individual candidate he or she thinks is best for the job. And it need not exclude the woman from the “feminist” movement.

Young conservative Michaela Hebbeler wrote a piece called Conservative Women vote too where she unpacks her opinion regarding conservative women and the feminist movement.

Women voting conservative is helping to drive the feminist movement, not hinder it. We are proof that women are courageous, independent and willing to step outside of a stereotype.

Democrats, like Biden and Clinton, are counting on blacks and women to come out big in November. But in Florida, that may not happen. We have a strong Republican slate of female leaders in elected offices: 12 elected conservative women in the state house, including House Speaker Pro Tempore MaryLynn Magar. Conservative Representative Amber Mariano is the youngest representative to be elected to the Florida house.

In the state Senate, six out of the 12 women elected are conservative, including two-term Senator Lizbeth Benacquisto, who held several key leadership roles during her time in office.

Florida’s conservative female electorate can be counted on to vote, but will never be shamed into voting for a candidate just because she is female. Democrats in Florida may be in for a rude awakening come November.

Alyssa Parker has been active in state and local politics since she was fourteen years old. She covers legislative and executive branch policy for The Capitolist, and is currently working on her Masters degree in Applied American Politics and Policy at Florida State University. She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and history.