'Class Warfare' and Gender Politics in Massachusetts

Article here. Excerpt:

'How might gender politics interact with economic anxieties and class conflicts in a race between Warren and Brown? For years, conventional wisdom has held that female candidates fare relatively well when "it's the economy stupid," and not crime or national security. Traditionally women were presumed to be more honest and compassionate than men and accustomed to balancing budgets. Traditionally, female candidates have exploited feminine stereotypes in advancing themselves and items on a feminist agenda, notably suffrage. (Government is "enlarged housekeeping," Jane Addams once said.) But the extreme, atypical economic crisis currently confronting voters can't simply be said to require better housekeeping; deficit reduction is not an exercise in compassion, and neither honesty nor compassion seem highly valued today, as male and female Republicans alike run as un-compassionate conservatives and self-styled mama grizzlies revel in ruthlessness.'