A/K/A White women flight (I wrote this and take responsibility for offending anybody who reads it):
Before the Democratic National Convention in late August, Obama held an 8 percentage point lead among white women voters, 50 percent to 42 percent, but after the GOP convention in early September, McCain was ahead by 12 points among white women, 53 percent to 41 percent, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll that was released today. Here’s a link to an article that discusses this poll and offers some insight (albeit superficially) as to why 20% of women voters shifted their support from Obama to McCain in the span of a month and just one week following the close of the GOP Convention:
http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUSN097920080909.The above-referenced article is quick to point out the two most obvious explanations for the 20-point shift, namely (1) Obama’s defeat of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, and (2) McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate (some would argue, perhaps correctly, that it’s more appropriate to emphasize Palin’s nomination over Hillary’s defeat, but there’s merit regardless of importance attributed to either event). But the article is annoying because it tepidly addresses the reasons for the switch. However, before we can fully examine the events of the past week, we have to bring ourselves back the reasons why Hillary was able to garner nearly 18 million votes over the course of the primaries.
As we saw in the Democratic primaries, Obama had a large base of support in the black community as a whole and to a lesser extent among black women (many of whom stood firmly behind Obama). And we got what we expected when Hillary lost the overall delegate count to Obama, namely a huge rift between the female base of Hillary’s support and Obama. The Democratic convention demonstrated that Hillary was willing to openly support Obama by campaigning and fundraising for him (as long as he helped to pay off her campaign debt). But if you were listening closely to the nightly news and reading between the lines of the daily newspapers from the point when Obama’s delegate count became insurmountable and the Saturday before the opening of the DNC convention, you already understood (or at least should have) all of the following, namely that:
(1) The discussion about whether Obama should name Hillary as his veep was much ado about nothing because - (a) Hillary didn’t want the job, and even if she did, Obama didn’t want her because of her negative image and his fear of making women feel what they wanted Hillary to heal, namely the sensation of being a step below men who stand on top of the glass ceiling that makes it hard for women to advance in society and politics; (b) Obama needed somebody with more experience in Washington for many of the same reasons that McCain needed a relative unknown (e.g. Obama needed experience and “Maverick” McCain needed to diminish his 26 yr. service in the Senate during which he admits to voting in favor of Bush 90% of the time by McCain’s own admission or 95% of the time if you actually tally up the up and down votes that McCain cast in harmony with Bush’s agenda over the last 8 years); (c)Conventional political wisdom led Obama and McCain to pick veeps who help to shore up the base of their parties (Biden is a “N.E. Democrat” and Palin is pro-life, pro-gun, pro-drilling and as far as anybody can tell right now essentially pro-neocon in all other areas of politics; this is true despite the fact that Palin is drawing Hillary supporters to McCain, and even though Obama never really had the chance to select Hillary as his running mate; and (d) Hillary knew that woman have been working at the highest reaches of the federal government ever since the Clinton Administration, and that their achievements haven’t been regarded - even from a contemporary perspective - as being significant, if only (and sadly) because those woman weren’t appointed by a female president (Think about it: when was the last time you heard feminists rant about Janet Reno’s service as Attorney General and Madeline Albright’s service as Secretary of State under Clinton, and Condoleezza Rice’s service as Secretary of Defense under Bush before she took over as his Secretary of State after Colin Powell resigned from that cabinet position?)
-AND-
(2) A sizeable portion of disaffected female Hillary supporters – (a) Didn’t care as much about her voting record as they did about her gender; (b) Were firm in their belief that a woman of any color deserved to be president before a black man (especially one who idiots call a Muslim and others more passively refuse to think of as being Christian, as though that should make a difference in politics; see the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment, the Equal Protection clause as effectively read into the Due Process clause of the 5th Amendment 54 years ago by the Supreme Court in Bolling v. Sharpe, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, none of which prohibits private citizens from being bigots at the ballot box, but you get the point – or should); and (c) Would sooner put aside their feministic values for a female figure than vote for a member of a racial class they asked their realtor to help them avoid when their family was looking to purchase their suburban home in a community with a “Blue Ribbon” school.
With all of that in mind, it shouldn’t have surprised anybody to read that 20% of female voters have switched – or say they will switch (hey, the election isn’t over yet) - their allegiance from Obama to McCain and his embarrassingly empty promise of change (to quote/paraphrase McCain at various points before he sealed the GOP nomination and at certain point since then, “I voted for Bush 90-95% of the time, agree with his domestic, economic and foreign policies almost entirely, share his love for the feckless and costly War in Iraq and joy in hearing Obama recently admit the O’Reilly Factor that the surge is working, and despite all of that you can trust me, John S. McCain, when I say that I’m the true agent of change.”) (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4cOwshm2tY&feature=related).
Nevertheless, I’m still hoping for a reversal of white female flight phenomenon that was inspired by the Palin nomination. I mean, if women REALLY want to safeguard their interests, they should compare the equal pay, pro-choice, healthcare and education policies being pushed by Obama with Palin’s pro-life, pro-use of Gubernatorial power to have your husband’s sister’s ex-husband fired from his Alaska State Trooper position for purposes of familial retribution (
http://www.adn.com/monegan/story/492964.html), flip-floppin’ on the use of earmarks (
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008154532_webpalin02m.html), belief that the War in Iraq is a God-inspired “Holy War” (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2ypVSYoEKA), complete ignorance of national economic and foreign policies (
http://www.bluemassgroup.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=12853), the McCain camp’s efforts to tuck her away so she can be schooled on those issues and not embarrass herself like Dan Quale did in the V.P. debates against Sen. Lloyd Benson (D-TX) in 1988 and Sen. Al Gore (D-TN) in 1992 (
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=ef856c1e-f030-4f1e-b297-5d81ad9bcc16), and obvious inability to lead our country if McCain were to die at 12:01 p.m. on January 20, 2009 (on that note, here’s what McCain’s buddy, Joe Lieberman, had to say about the Palin nomination:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHQ8PIjKhz4).
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