The NYT’s latest “week in review” column is entitled “The Invasion of the Alpha Male Democrat.” Here is one chilling excerpt:
“Presidential politics, but also the rest of national political leadership, has a lot to do with the understandable desire of voters for leadership, strength, clarity and sureness,”says Jim Jordan, John Kerry’s first presidential campaign manager.”Frankly, in the post-Vietnam era, Democrats have come up short by those measures too frequently.”
Adds the Democratic strategist James Carville,”The fact that the party has come across as less : I don’t want to say less masculine : but certainly less aggressive than Republicans, is true.”
But there may be serious risks for the Democrats’ embrace of an electoral philosophy based less on bold ideas than on bold biography. For one, the Macho Dem strategy is inherently pro-male. And Democrats have historically relied on a gender gap advantage : with women. If they tilt in the other direction, does that gap disappear?
As Tom Edsall recently pointed out in a guest column on The New York Times Op-Ed page, despite Ms. Pelosi’s historic ascension, 2006 was a bad year for Democratic women. Nine of the party’s top 11 male House candidates won, while only 1 of the organization’s top 11 female candidates prevailed.
It’s a paradoxical conclusion to an election that was followed by Ms. Pelosi’s ascension to speaker and Hillary Clinton’s dominance of presidential political predictions. Just as these female faces are solidifying the perception of the Democrats as the party of women : the gender gap still exists : the Macho Dems are adding a dash of testosterone, which could add some cultural frisson to the party.
Sure, some Macho Dems express support for, say, abortion rights but one gets the sense that ensuring Roe’s preservation may not be one of their highest priorities in coming to the Senate. It’s hard to imagine them at the next Emily’s List fund-raiser.
More evidence of a looming sell out on this issue?
–Ann Bartow
I don’t think that macho Democrats in office, whether male or female, will be able to do much to defend reproductive rights unless we get more egalitarian, feminist (and I don’t want to say femme or bottom) Republicans in office. Hardly anyone seems to remember or respect the work of officeholders like Lincoln Chafee, senior, much less Nelson Rockefeller, who deserved some mention of his role in liberalizing abortion laws in all of the press related to President Ford’s recent passing, IMHO.
Regardless, protecting or limiting abortion rights has gotten polarized along party lines beyond the point of diminshing returns (recognized somewhere between the Nov 2004 election and the Sept 2006 hurricanes), so hopefully we’ll not only get beyond religious polarization but partisan polarization as well.
Or maybe not.
Maybe we’ll just see an increase in funding for Title X clinics, favoring states and communities that want to make comprehensive services accessable, and an increase in funding for anti-choice crisis pregnancy centers and sonogram parlors elsewhere.
Maybe we’ll not have it spun quite that way, I’m sure that if there are increases in spending and likely increases in taxes at some point, both parties will want to put a positive spin on it, and invoking religion as a way to rationalize tax increases only goes so far.
Neither party has a monopoly on “selling out” abortion rights, as both have required the other’s participation to do so while making it not appear they’re really trying hard to do so.