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Hey Dems, He's Just Not That Into You
Submitted by Matt on Sun, 2014-11-09 19:20
Article here. Excerpt:
'Well, the pundits were right: the political “gender gap” would decide the fate of candidates in the 2014 midterms. But the decisive point wasn’t that Republicans have a female voter problem. It was that Democrats have a male voter problem.
...
It was a pattern repeated nationwide. In Iowa, Republican candidate for Senate Joni Ernst—the first woman Iowa has ever sent to Washington as an elected representative—tied her opponent, Democrat Bruce Braley, among female voters. She won men by 18 points. Or take, for instance, the unexpectedly non-competitive race in Georgia, where a Republican man defeated a Democratic woman; the Democratic candidate won female voters by eight percentage points but lost men by a staggering 23 points.
...
No, instead, it turns out that when your message is very clearly aimed at pandering to or terrifying one slice of voters, the rest of the electorate says “no thanks.” “Please, oppressors, bring your male privilege to the polls for us” isn’t exactly a message that wins you hearts and minds, no matter how many Lena Dunham appeals you make. And with men seeing wages stagnate and economic opportunity drying up, hammering home a message about the “war on women” is tone-deaf at best.
...
There’s a gender gap in politics, for sure. But it backfired on Democrats in the midterms. And in the process, it sent the youngest woman ever to Congress (a Republican) and the first female Senators from Iowa and West Virginia (both Republicans).
Not such a bad night for women after all.'
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Comments
Ah, the irony
The "war on women" meme only worked to turn off male voters to Democrats and to turn them onto conservative women. In my state, the Democratic candidate did nothing but talk about abortion and birth control and how the Republican candidate was going to create a shortage of condoms when he outlawed birth control--even though he wanted to make BC available OTC.
The bottom line: women aren't the only people who vote. And not all women view abortion and birth control as the only issues. Men don't get excited about a message skewed solely to women. Catering to women can sometimes backfire.
Back to the drawing board -- or at least the woodshed
The Dems made a calculated decision in the '70s, less a risk in their minds but more a strategy. They realized if they could consistently win a strong majority of women and non-white male voters by championing causes they believed would appeal to those groups, speak specifically to them and characterize the GOP as not caring about their issues, between those votes and even a single-digit percentage of white men voting Dem, they'd probably get 2/3 majorities in Congress and get the WH year in and out, eventually owning all nine SCOTUS judges, too.
Though for awhile it looked like this idea may work, it ran into problems. First, it underestimated the degree that white women raised in GOP homes would continue to vote GOP. Second, it misread/misunderstood what the typical female voter really cared about, incl. around things like birth control/abortion. They assumed women categorically would eventually come to support abortion rights by 2000, but that didn't happen. It also assumed women'd naturally, as a result of feminism, pursue political office in greater numbers by now. While the number has indeed increased considerably, they expected more -- and more female Dem pols to be in office due to the support of women and minorities. It hasn't happened (though the GOP has produced many female pols, to the gob-smacking surprise of the Dems) and now, they're unsure how to deal with it. They've spent decades pillorying men (non-white men have noticed, too), thoroughly alienating them from the party. Thus without unequivocal support from female and minority male voters combined with far fewer white male votes than they expected (why you'd expect the ppl you insult at every turn to support you, I dunno), plus the party by this time clearly having been taken over not just by feminists but by obviously full-throttled whack-job feminists (The Hildebeast, B. and M. Obama, Joe "The Feminist Pander-bot" Biden, Nancy "Wingnut" Pelosi, etc.) whose one common message is that men suck, have left the Dems feeling more than a little like Wile E. Coyote after running off the cliff before gravity kicks in.
Gravity'll really kick in in '16. By noon on Jan. 20, 2017, the GOP will have both houses of Congress *and* the WH, with four in-the-bag GOP-leaning judges on the SCOTUS and one who's drawn that way (Kennedy, but he is really more a plain old wild card, at least from the Dem-GOP POV). Oh my.
But still, to me, the GOP can hardly be called a pro-men party. After all, has even a single GOP pol spoken out about things like pursuing the right of men to exercise a "paper abortion", or enact legislation including women in Sel. Srvc. Reg'n req'ts, etc.? Or the biggie, sweeping judicial reforms both around father's rights and presumed innocence? Maybe I missed it, but I can't name one.
You reap what you sow. The Dems have only themselves to blame for their Wile E. Coyote-like electoral status. Silly kitties. Those kitties are silly. Silly, silly, silly. :)
Tolstoy's "War and Peace"
While I enjoyed the bashing that the feminist "majority" (a.k.a: The Democratic Party), took, I am not entirely sure the lesson will be clear to the pundits.
Tolstoy elaborated on this lesson in "War and Peace." I will paraphrase.
Tolstoy said that SOME historians will say that the course of western history was changed because Napolean lost the invasion of Russia. And he lost the invasion of Russia due to poor war plans during the Battle of Borodino. And he had poor plans because he was sick when he drew them up. And he was sick because he caught a cold. And he caught a cold because his assistant did not bring him his boots during a cold rain.
Thus, this assistant changed the course of western history.
(One finds the same issue when one says: a butterfly flapping its wings in Tokyo can cause a hurricane in the Bahamas.)
Such views do not consider the mass sum of all effects. They focus on single lines of thought. This is common with political pundits who must get their point across in a sound byte. And I think the same will hold for understanding the male vote this year.
Rather than view it in terms of abortion or birth control or "war on women," or "no economic strategy offered by the Democrats," one should look at the "man living in the middle of the country."
The college men who are fed up with being considered rapists:
MOTHERS who cannot understand why "Johnny cannot read, as our governmnt pumps money into Mary and SMET;"
Blue Collar men who have not been helped by the recovery (if you call it that):
Or by the incessant media talk on body-image and WOMEN (waking men up to the realization that, we, too, are belittled by the six-packs of Hollywood's Superheores -- much worse: feminists whine about themselves and ignore male pain);
And older men suffering from prostate cancer who are told to celebrate breast cancer month.
Matt said it just right: "[Democrats] spent decades pillorying men (non-white men have noticed, too), thoroughly alienating them from the party."
That really is all it is: men have had enough.
The MRA's are rising. And the ignorant feminists will continue to disaprage MRA and fail to recognize that MRA's are growing stronger and more vocal. We are not going back into the closet of being second hand citizens. We are getting angrier.
And the next election? One can only hope the GOP notices: don't bash men. Yes, help men, too. And choose the governor or arizona (female, hispanic) as a running mate, and flush feminism and the Hildebeast (the only war o nwomen she suffered was the war her husband waged on her).
The only missing pieces:
White men and black men must come together. Black men should, I hope, realize that while White men perpetrated SERIOUS injustice agains them with lynchings, the feminists have never taken responsibility for the False rape accusations leveled against black men. MRA's SHOULD make this clear. Feminists got theirs (and if you look it is usually FEMALES suing to stop affirmative action for Blacks).
Straight men and Gay men must form an alliance.
And both of these are happening.
I agree
When Matt writes "But still, to me, the GOP can hardly be called a pro-men party."
It's not. It's simply not as anti-male as the Democrats. And GOPers often criticize feminists. But it does not address the issues you mention nor does it address a lot of issues, so it's not truly pro-male. It's just not as openly pro-feminist and anti-male as the Dems.
good comments all round.
good comments all round.
going here and there listening to various pundits explaining this or that version of what happened, it occurs to me that many things happened in this past election cycle, and none of them so simple as men vs. women, or black vs. white and so forth. what I see is that many, many factors played a role, and running the same play (racism/sexism) over and over and over again as the dem's did made them easy targets w/ an expected outcome.
the dem's ran a play on birth control being taken away, when the only b.c. to be potentially taken away in real time is free b.c., and dem's showed their arse over that last year w/ that nutty college student wanting us all to pay for her many sexual encounters. and b.c. really isn't that expensive.
the dem's picked up the aborting ball and tried running w/ it, but even as they complained about back alley abortions (again), most Americans don't agree w/ all the many (taxpayer funded) abortion options available being used and abused now.
then came the war on women pass over the middle. that ball just didn't fly right. American women are some of the most privileged people on earth. what $$ they don't make, men wind up turning over to them anyway on payday. what hurt even more is the fact that their stat's are bogus, and pay is largely determined by each person's personal decisions.
the dem's then tried bringing the old guard billy boy out of retirement. problem is, he was a bit of a rogue and cheated repeatedly on his wife through the years - cigar anyone?
every play they tried the pub's countered it w/ a blitz of the truth. global warming? are you crazy? the mooch's school lunch fiasco? hungry kids everywhere, except at her kid's school. gun control? has anyone heard of fast & furious? that one play alone got mz. nunn spanked here in Ga. even though many conservatives consistently voted for her father. none of these plays worked, to say the least.
they even had a not ready for prime time q.b. in reserve, but every time he tried warming up, the wiser heads scurried him back into the locker room. in no time at all the game was a blowout, and they ain't pretty losers either are they?