I realize not everything Mark Penn wrote in his book Microtrends is, or ought to be considered, a political statement on behalf of Hillary Clinton. On the other hand, he’s her chief campaign strategist, and it’s tough to imagine he would have written something in his book that completely contradicted her message or beliefs — for example, Penn never would have written, “any Democrat who voted for the Iraq war is incapable of leading the party.”

So as I read through Microtrends, I wonder if anybody else on Hillary’s campaign read the manuscript. Like, say, this section on “Unisexuals”:

In 2004, the International Olympics Committee ruled that transsexuals can compete as their new gender, so long as it’s been at least two years since their surgery.
While such Unisexuals are few, some say they’re the next wave of the civil rights movement. How long until the U.S. Census, too, has a third-sex category beyond male and female – much like in 2000 when it allowed us to check “multiple” races. How long before it’s considered impolite, or illegal, to ask a child’s gender on an application for school?
Will we stop separating men and women in the military, in public restrooms, in hospital rooms, in prisons, and in the clothing departments of Wal-Mart? Will there be a Boys and Girls – and Other – Club of America? …
To my mind, the key reason Unisexuals are interesting is not so much that they blur gender lines – gender-bending has been around, of course, since Hermes and Aphrodite were joined in a word. What’s so interesting to me about Unisexuals is that they may be the ideological heirs of the feminist – and revolutionary – principle that biology need not be destiny… Public policymakers, architects, and fashion leaders beware – it ain’t so simple as boys and girls anymore.

Um…

Penn isn’t exactly loudly cheering this trend, but he sure as heck doesn’t seem to have much critical to say of it, either. He didn’t have nearly as much hesitation about criticizing what he calls “immigration opponents,” casually ignoring that the focus of their ire is illegal immigration.

I would note that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act is running into trouble, as some gay Democrats wonder if it’s worth scuttling the bill – and federal protection for gays and lesbians – if it doesn’t include protection for transsexuals. Some gays and lesbians are asking, “wait a minute, we’ve been fighting for ages to get this protection; now we’re expected to give it up in protest if the same protection isn’t extended to transsexuals, a population much more alien and strange to Middle America?”

(And as a political analyst, Marc Ambinder is second to none, but I’m scratching my head at what seems weird to me – the immigration stuff and now this – didn’t jump out at him when he scoured the book for political insights.)

Did the phrase, “Boys and Girls – and Other – Club of America” not make anybody on the Clinton campaign wince?