That’s a lot of pancakes.

I remember thinking that when the nice person on the bus with me told me she had been to 86 pancake breakfasts during her first run for office. So, she had to eat a lot of pancakes.

The place of my epiphany was onboard a nicely appointed campaign bus, rolling through Fremont County as we headed along the backroads of Colorado for a campaign stop. As I was the area’s congressional candidate in that 2008 election, and – more importantly – because Colorado was perhaps the swing state that election year, I had been invited to hop onto an “Obama Campaign Bus” for the ride from Cañon City to Buena Vista. There were, I believe, several of these fancy buses with Mr. Obama’s picture and quotations driving around swing states, filled with people whom the overall campaign felt were good surrogates for Mr. Obama himself. Thus, on this particular October day, I found myself on the bus with former Gov. Roy Romer and the new senator from the great state of Minnesota, a very impressive person named Amy Klobuchar.

Now, while I was the guy running for Congress in the 5th district of Colorado, I was also a former teacher at the Air Force Academy, where I taught courses on American politics as well as on the U.S. Congress. So, for me, a couple of hours on the road was a wonderful opportunity to talk with actual policy makers about the process of governance at the state and national level. For a policy nerd like myself, it was a real treat.

Which is how I learned about Sen. Klobuchar’s first run for the Senate in 2006, and how many pancake breakfasts she attended. I was being schooled in the inner-workings of retail politics – when you attend local events to connect with local people. Sen. Klobuchar won her election the old-fashioned way, reaching out personally to voters, and it really paid off. Now, of course, the question is about whether her natural skills on the campaign trail can be scaled up for a national campaign. We’ll see where that goes.

But as we get ready for the upcoming presidential campaign season (now apparently a three-year-long process) we see quite a few folks already declaring for the office, with others (cough…Hickenlooper… cough…Bennet…cough) waiting in the wings for the right time. But even a casual look at the Dem field thus far shows something that I find very encouraging: the number of women running, and how little the issue of gender is likely to ultimately impact the election, I hope.

Recall please that just two years ago, Hillary Clinton was breaking glass ceilings, and came very, very, VERY close to breaking the very last pane. I remember thinking in that election about whether there was still enough misogyny left that some voters (enough to make a difference) would cast votes based on bigotry and not qualifications. Yes, it turns out, was the answer.

So why am I at least somewhat optimistic about 2020? It goes back to my time in the Air Force, while teaching at the Academy. I can’t remember which mandatory training, I mean educational opportunity, it was, but I recall the instructor, when talking about female cadets at USAFA, stated that when a “minority” group gets above roughly 30 percent of the larger population, others tend to cease seeing them as a minority and more as a part of the larger group. This year, if the population is the group running for president and are getting at least some national buzz, we find that well over half the people running are women.

Now, the president continues his tweet attacks on his potential opponents, and he continues to be sexist, of course, when he does, but otherwise most commentators are talking about the ideas being offered, and not the gender of the person pronouncing. That, I think, is a very good sign.

As an aside – President Trump called Senator Klobuchar a “snowwoman” after her out-door announcement. In response, she questioned whether the presidential pompadour would have survived in cold weather.

So, let’s think a little bit about this upcoming campaign, and maybe give ourselves a checklist to see if people are, in fact, treating the female candidates equally. Watch for questions to them about why they don’t “smile more.” And be on the lookout for characterizations of them as “working moms” unless the reporter also refers to working dads. Is the candidate referred to as “shrill” if female, but “forceful” if male? There are many, many more.

We have an opportunity in 2020 to see how grown up we are as a nation. Do we still giggle at the “girls” or have we turned the page, at least part way, on political misogyny?

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.