Count the Battle Victories, but Prepare for Senate War….
December 10, 2009
by Amy Siskind
|It’s been a good week for women.
- We can notch a victory for the Mammogram Coverage Amendment sponsored by Senator Mikulski (D) Senator Snowe (R).
- We can celebrate AG Martha Coakley winning her battle to become the Democratic nominee for Ted Kennedy’s open seat in MA. Given that MA is heavily Democratic, Coakley looks to be a shoe in to become that state’s first female senator AND raise our count of women in the Senate to 18!
- Those of us that are pro-choice can be proud of the women of BOTH parties in the Senate that voted together to keep Senator Nelson’s language out of the healthcare bill.
- We can celebrate the two women who won this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine spoke out and called for gender balance in the sciences.
But as women awaken and start to demand change, a big battle lies ahead: the 2010 elections.
A major shortcoming of many of existing women’s organizations is their failure to back women candidates of both parties. That myopic view could significantly hurt our representation in 2010.
Women are diverse just as are our political points of view. In 2000, the “Soccer Moms” delivered the presidency to George W. Bush. In 2008, women delivered for the Dems with 56% voting for Obama. So women, yes, come in every political ideology.
When our women’s groups are only set up to cultivate women who are Democratic, we lose out. Here’s the problem – the exogenous factors – we can’t control the winds of politics.
And 2010 is a prime example of the shortcoming of some women’s orgs who continue to serve as appendages of the DNC. Once they take off the party hats in Boston, they better take a sobering look into 2010 and the existing 17 senate seats held by women.
And it’s not the women senators fault. Look what just happened in VA and NJ. Look at Obama’s poll numbers drop to 47% (making history as the lowest number of ANY president at this point in an administration) – this is not only about Obama – it’s a building anger with how our government is running our country. And if things don’t improve in the first half of 2010, voters will exact revenge at the polls.
And here’s why it matters to women in the senate:
Of the 10 seats in the senate that are most vulnerable in 2010, four are held by women: Lincoln in AK, Landrieu in LA, Gillibrand in NY, and Boxer in CA. On the face of it, if things don’t change our count in the senate could move back to 14 (assuming Coakley wins, 13 if not).
But here’s the potential mitigating factor: women running in the Republican Party. If Boxer loses, it will be to Fiorina. Of the 10 most vulnerable seats, one is Reid in NV and he is well behind Sue Lowden (who one blogger referred to as a Nevada version of Sarah Palin), potentially the Republican candidate there. Same for CT and Dodd -also a vulnerable seat – where Linda McMahon is one of three Republicans looking to face off against him.
Lesson learned – we need qualified women in all parties. And if some of us don’t agree with their every ideology that’s just fine. Let’s work with them on the commonality and communicate why our position might be important for women’s well being. But if we only work to promote women of one party, then the winds of politics will literally blow our hard work away….
Thanks for this sobering and true assessment, Amy. You as usual are right on. We women have failed to move forward, beyond that 17%, because we have allowed ourselves to be divided by the two parties. Many times we are divided just because we buy into some rhetoric that isn’t even true about a candidate in “the other party.”
It reminds me of Viet Nam in a way. When that country was divided into North and South during the Viet Nam War of my youth, those two nations fought bitterly against one another. No one thought that the two nations would ever be able to reconcile once the war was deemed over. But you know, the two parts of the whole came together as one because of their stronger commonalities of nation, culture, and humanity.
This paradigm is continually played out through history. We demonize one against the other, and then when the war is over (and remember—politics is war without weapons)we miraculously are able to unite.
Well, we women have so much in common—-much more than our party differences. And we are facing treacherous times for our causes. We must take responsibility for bringing women together to advance our interests—despite our party differences. There is much more that unites us than that which divides us.
And for those of you who no matter what just can’t support all women, how about this—–the THREE M STRATEGY. What the THREE M STRATEGY means is that if most of the women vote for most of the women most of the time, we women will destroy that glass ceiling once and for all. Now that’s a formula that just about everyone can sign on to!!!!
Regarding Mammography coverage, I understand in my state that they will no longer cover mammograms for women under 50 starting Jan 1, 2010. Previously, the governator tried to eliminate funding for women’s shelters. Always on the backs of women and children.
I hope that the California readers will raise hell about this diminished coverage because as we go, so goes the nation. Shameful!
Virginia Foxx? Michele Bachmann? Marcy Kaptur? Marcia Blackwell? Examples of women voting for women? Am I missing something here? It appears as if these ladies are somewhere around the ground level and not aiming toward the breakage of a “glass ceiling”.
Cynthia: well said
It doesn’t matter, Pat. We don’t have the luxury of picking and choosing.
ANY female candidate, no matter what her positions on issues are, no matter how conservative, will be ceaselessly, relentlessly mocked, degraded, humiliated, subjected to ridicule, sexual viciousness, and verbal assault. No, it’s not a matter of “well, it tough for men, too.” NO MAN ANYWHERE ON EARTH no matter how controversial his politics, has EVER been subejcted to what both Hillary Clinton and Saragh Palin have been subjected to. EVER.
And when the whole globe watches a woman candidate being threatened with “hate fucking” and having sexc toys made of her (or nutcrackers) — no matter what her opinions are — that does infinitely more damage to women and girls all over the world than she herself would ever do politically. Period.
Michelle Malkin isn’t what I’d call a good role model. Neither is Nancy Pelosi. But watching the first woman threatened with a hate-fucking and the second all but called “pussy” by major media and political forces will harm women more than either of them will do themselves.
That’s where it begins and ends. Period. Unless you want to get into the old chestnut that feminists have been complaining about for generations that society has to find out who the rape victim was before they can say whether the rape was wrong.
ALL WOMEN must be defended against this garbage — and when it comes to a politician, the way you defend them is to vote for them. If you find more satisfaction in watching the “wrong sort” of woman being sexually humiliated than you find in punishing her humiliators … well, then we have little more to say to one another.
I used the analogy of polio before. Jonas Salk inoculated everyone, not just his friends. He may even have supported the inoculation of people who opposed polio vaccines! Why? Because he knew that you eradicate it everywhere, or you fail in your efforts. Allowing some people to be victimized because they “deserved it” only allows the visur to survive and thrive … so it’s there to come around and put your kid in an iron lung, too.
I’m sorry, but you have to look beyond the traditional female desire to take pleasure in the punishment of a female you don’t like or one who isn’t in your tribe. If you can’t do that, and if most women can’t do that, there is truly no hope at all.
I know this is about senate, but there are few females running for governors: Meg Whitman in California and Nikki Haley in South Carolina. I don’t know if these women are officially running yet but they are talked about nevertheless. Very interesting times.
Meg already is running ads here in lotus land- we can have a two bagger next year, a woman governor and a woman senator( Carly or Barbara)
Bruce, I am waiting. I may actually vote despite my firm belief that it won’t be counted. (Although I think that the presidential election is the only one that’s a complete farce; state/muni ones seem on the up-and-up relatively thus far.)
I’ll be happy with Fiorina as well, but given Boxer’s behavior of late, I’ll be a lot happier with her.
BTW, I want to make clear that I have a great deal of respect for your opinions; after years of watching feminist blogs though, I’m very wary of being too approving. I’ve seen it happen too many times that men who post on them get women falling over themselves fawning on them saying, “Oh but not YOUUUU! Oh, if only more men were just like YOUUUUUU!” whoever the male commenter may be. Like I said, you’re it in terms of men who don’t make me roll my eyes or whip out the sniff tester, but I am very wary of assigning too much approbation. Partly because of the fawning tendencies I’ve seen in every other instance, and partly because a big part of me feels that the most important marker of a male feminist is that he doesn’t need the applause of women to think correct thoughts. It’s a bit like being expected to applaud for someone who thinks 1+1=2.
But either way, I want to make clear that I respect your opinions on their own merits, because you are absolutely up front about them and because you never waver. And because you don’t sugarcoat things to make other people or yourself feel better vix. “vote for women only because that’s the only solution.” I see no other male commenter anywhere with the guts to just dump that on the table on its own merits.
Thanks Janis it is very much appreciated…I do not seek cudos, had enough of those in hollywierd to last a lifetime…the only approval I seek is from my bride of almost 27 years and my lord…I have been called frank and blunt…that to me is a form of integrity …no bs. what you see is what you get. I will continue to speak out for the injustice perpetrated by gender against yours and to promote ideas to rectify it…but like with the boxer discussion we may not always agree but you will know where I stand
“I’m sorry, but you have to look beyond the traditional female desire to take pleasure in the punishment of a female you don’t like or one who isn’t in your tribe. If you can’t do that, and if most women can’t do that, there is truly no hope at all.”
What if it isn’t traditional female desire but female desire to be included in the men’s business? Divide and conquer. Men tell the women, but it’s because she’s -that- woman, and -that woman- changes every time…but the women still fall for it.
“Whatsoever you do to the least of my people, that you do unto me”
I think when we achieve parity we can start discussing women’s individual politics, but I’m also fed up with the hypocrisy wherein the women do not trash a man with similar politics but are all too happy to jump on a villifying band wagon of woman hatred, because the politician is female.
Men have got women so starved, in fact, that I have figured out the basis of love in women. Once a man treats her with even an ounce of decency, she falls in love with him. Men starve women psychologically in the media, focusing on her appearance, ignoring her achievements, focusing on men’s achievements as doers that once a man maybe looks at her as a human being, if only once, she is in love.
Meanwhile I think every man suffers from varying degrees of what I think should be coined “Adam Syndrome”. Some men have it worse than others; the percieved lack of completeness as a man and the need to find his role because of his percieved incompleteness, since he is not a woman. Anytime a woman does something that he has sequestered as his (man’s role) alone, she becomes a threat, and the threat is her femaleness.
Ann you lost me in all the Freudian stuff- but we do seem to agree on the issue of parity. What Janis was speaking of was my suggestion that we should vote for women over men period until parity is acheived. That agendas and issues ought not divide this resolve. That this means yes to Pelosi and Bachman and HRC and Palin and Whitman and Coakley etc. My thought was that if you let issues ddivde you( ie abortion) you will never acheive parity as you will remain divided. I suggested that Palin and HRC have much more in common then they are different and that is true of all women…I honestly dont have the foggiest what an Adam complex is but I recall all sorts of Freudian mumbo jumbo I slept through at UCLA and perhaps that was one of them
As it was raining today and thus no filming, I had occassion to run several errands including the tire store. While there I spoke with several conservative white males…the ones who you would think would never even dream of a woman president- all support Sarah for president- so whether or not you agree with her politics it is clear that the glass ceiling may finally get broken a woman and will be in the white house in 2012- if the good old boys dont have a problem with it clearly the times have changed- and we can thank HRC and Sarah for the attitude adjustment
[...] here’s the other aspect: We cannot control the political climate around us. Four of the 10 most vulnerable Senate seats in 2010 are held by Democratic women: Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), [...]
[...] dimensional. It’s a losing proposition. We cannot control the political climate around us. Four of the 10 most vulnerable Senate seats in 2010 are held by Democratic women—Lincoln-AR, Landrieu-LA, [...]
Leave your Response
Supporting women.
Ending sexism.
Finding common ground.
We’re in the Media »
Click to see our latest stories in the media
More Stories »Recent Comments
The Latest from our Blog
Archives
Blogroll
Find the New Agenda Online
Subscribe Entries (RSS) | Comments (RSS)
The New Agenda is a 501(c)(4) organization dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls by bringing about systemic change in the media, at the workplace, at school and at home. More...