Then there are people who think (understandably) that liberal women are not real women.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz
Nancy Pelosi
Rosie O'Donnell
Chrissy Matthews
Rachel Maddow
Posted on 11/28/2014 8:32:19 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
No, red state women didn't save the party. But Ebola was a phony GOP-made crisis and Dems shouldn't have cowered.
Thanksgiving is a great time for writers to reckon with whatever we got wrong over the year – and to be grateful that in this day and age we get to write every day, and put mistakes behind us quickly. So with the 2014 midterm election rapidly disappearing in the rearview mirror, I thought I’d reckon with my one big political mistake this past election cycle, as well as one big thing I got, sadly, right.
In July 2013, long before the midterm, I wrote this piece: “Red state women will transform America.” I was pretty darn excited about the prospect of Wendy Davis, Alison Lundergan Grimes and Michelle Nunn stepping up and running in Texas, Kentucky and Georgia. In hindsight – or maybe even at the time – I showed some irrational exuberance. So did a lot of Democrats.
Maybe more significantly, I participated in wishful thinking shared by many more Democrats – believing that the women’s vote is the party’s ace in the hole and that, in addition to solid support from non-white voters, it will give them a lock on the White House, and will even turn red states blue over time. I’m less optimistic about that now. The Democrats’ continuing troubles with white women, and white married women, doomed all three once-promising white female Democratic candidates.
Of course, none of them were perfect candidates. I will always be grateful for Davis’s brave filibuster of horrible Texas anti-abortion legislation. But I overestimated her political skills. Reams have been written about her poor campaign; I don’t need to kick her here. In the days before the election, silly #tcot folks tried to pretend I’d written my Davis praise recently, not more than a year before the race. But I did get overexcited.
Likewise, Grimes wasn’t quite the pro I thought she was, although she had admirable political skills. Michelle Nunn, who actually came closest to being elected of the three, had little to recommend her besides her father’s famous name and her detachment from partisan bickering thanks to a career in business, not politics.
Even at the time, I overlooked what is still the tough reality of politics for women: Frequently, they get their big political breaks only when more experienced men size up a race and find it too dangerous. I still believe Texas will turn blue again, but state and national Democrats knew it wouldn’t happen in 2014. In Kentucky, experienced pols like Rep. John Yarmuth and Gov. Steve Beshear didn’t take on Mitch McConnell. And in Georgia, ambitious Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed knew he was at least a cycle too early for Georgia to turn blue.
I’m not blaming any of these men, by the way, for making the women in question sacrificial lambs or scapegoats. But the truth is, women often get their big “chances” when they run as sacrificial lambs. I should have reined in my optimism about their political potential much sooner.
My faith that white Democratic women could win over red state white women voters was particularly misplaced. CNN exit polls showed that Michelle Nunn lost white women to David Perdue 69-27; Wendy Davis lost them 66-31; Alison Grimes lost them 55-41. For now, the Democrats’ oft-touted advantages with “women” – which should always be described as “all women except for white women” — are outweighed by their difficulties with whites.
Right now, for complicated historical, cultural and racial reasons, white women vote more like “whites” – mostly Republican, though less than white men – and less like other women. Single white women and college-educated white women defy that trend more than others, but any 2016 prognosticating that relies on white women as Hillary Clinton’s secret weapon shouldn’t be trusted unless there’s data behind it. And I haven’t seen any.
What did I get right? Well, lots of things, if I do say so myself, but the most obvious late-cycle story was that Republicans and Fox News were ginning up a minimal Ebola threat as a powerful political weapon – and too many mainstream media outlets, and even Democratic politicians, participated. In the post-election mayhem, this seemed like too small a point to raise, but as we start bidding goodbye to 2014, I couldn’t resist it. I’d like to say Democrats learned from this one, too, but again, I’m not sure.
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes looked at media overkill on Ebola, especially at Fox and CNN (and also at the fact that it did nothing for ratings, which is heartening). Of course the right was disgusting, with Michael Savage dubbing Obama “President Obola” (the genteel Daily Caller settled for “President Ebola,” trusting their readers to get the African association with the Kenyan Muslim president’s unusual name).
Mainstream media skipped the name-calling, but went along with the hysteria: ABC News dubbed Ebola “the official October surprise,” and on CNN Don Lemon asked if it was “Obama’s Katrina.” Within a few weeks, though, Ebola was gone from our shores (though not from West Africa), the few American cases successfully contained by competent public health officials – but the story of its disappearance (let alone the media’s malpractice) went virtually uncovered.
In the end, CNN exit polls showed that while the public, early on, thought the federal government was doing an adequate job handling the threat, by election night that had shifted – 50 percent of voters polled disapproved of the federal government’s handling of Ebola, while 44 percent approved. Democrats lost so badly it’s unlikely that Ebola made the difference in any race. Still, it’s worth remembering how conservative and even supposedly moderate Republicans used Ebola politically – and how the media let them get away with it.
Sure, Senators-elect Tom Cotton and Thom Tillis were particularly insane on the topic, suggesting terrorists with Ebola might cross the Mexican border and combining the GOP’s three primal fears: terror, disease and swarthy illegal immigrants. But let’s take a moment to remember 2016 contender Gov. Chris Christie’s craven posturing, quarantining “Ebola nurse” Kaci Hickox when she came back from a trip treating Ebola patients. Christie dared Hickox to sue him: “Whatever. Get in line. I’ve been sued lots of times before. Get in line. I’m happy to take it on.”
The dignified humanitarian health worker won the round, getting released to her home in Maine and declaring Christie’s move not the “abundance of caution” he said it was, but “an abundance of politics.” Democrats could learn from Hickox; too many cowered in the face of GOP (and media) demagoguery on the small threat posed to Americans by the disease. Vulnerable Democrats Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mark Udall of Colorado and Mark Pryor of Arkansas all defied Obama and came out in favor of travel restrictions on people coming from Ebola-plagued nations; all lost their races anyway.
Even in real time it was obvious what Ebola panic was designed to do, but voices who said exactly that were drowned out by hysterics. And when hysteria prevails, the GOP wins. That dynamic trumps the Democrats’ demographic advantages and will for a while. Democrats lose when they’re overconfident about demography and underestimate the power of fear. I was one for two on those issues last cycle; I’ll try to do better next time around.
Blaming Ebola?
Not the cancelled policies and insurance rates doubling due to an extremely divisive law? Not the constant race baiting domestic policy and America last foreign policy?
As usual with libs, it’s all about the spin.
Let’s rub a little salt in the wound:
The Vanishing White Democrat (Daniel Greenfield)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3228726/posts
The Rats have not learned anything. They will keep doing the same stuff until they are stopped.
Ebola-shmola, the libtards have been claiming for years that
the GOP has been moving way too far to the right and would
pay an electoral price. Reality bit the Dems on the ass and
they still don’t know it judging by this nitwit article.
The truth is GOP, and conservative Republicans, in partic-
ular, like to stay put. That’s why we are conservative. It is the Democrats who have moved left beyond reason that has
the masses pissed off. Next time a lib says that the GOP
has swerved to the right point out that twenty years ago
and less both Republicans and Democrats opposed gay
marriage. Now just Republicans oppose it. Who changed?
For one thing, his insistence on looking at such topics as Ebola strictly through a political lens is madness. Here we had, and still have, a communicable disease with a 70% mortality rate, and it isn't to be taken seriously because that has negative political implications? One could search hard and still not find a case of suicidal blindness to match. It was not hysteria and no, the government did not do enough.
It gets stranger than that.
For now, the Democrats’ oft-touted advantages with “women” – which should always be described as “all women except for white women” — are outweighed by their difficulties with whites.
Quite a bit of pathology in a single sentence. Gone is the appreciation that white women did support 0bama in numbers which invite reservations about their sanity, and present is a sharp divide along a racial divide that does the author little credit; in fact, it's disgraceful. That sentence might have been written by any Grand Kleagle of the KKK. The clear implication is that white support of the Democrats evaporated because they are all racists, and yet somehow they elected 0bama twice, didn't they? A rational mind might wonder what's wrong with that case. The author does not.
"They learned nothing and they forgot nothing," as Talleyrand said about the people whose heads met the machine of Dr. Guillotine. Those heads, at least, were no more empty than those belonging to the current American Left. I shall happily offer the author a narrative other than his convoluted political agonizing. What happened was that the American people had a bellyful of the arrogant, ignorant, racist, finger-wagging progressives and voted accordingly. It had nothing to do with either race or sex and everything to do with disgust at the lies and the ridicule and the incessant hatred.
bttt
never let a good crisis go to waste is for thee but not for me ?
I always thought that when hysteria (aka. lack of logic or reasoning) prevails it's usually in the (D) favor.
We can’t help it that they handled the Ebola crises incompetently.
Americans wanted flights shut down from those infected countries. We didn’t want Ebola brought to our shores.
Obama became Obola.
I have yet to read a single article from a non-right wing writer that blames the 2014 election losses on campaign tactics or policies of the Democrats themselves.
Joni Ernst, Senate, from Iowa.
Shelley Moore Capito, Senate, from West Virginia. [total six republican women in the Senate].
Mia Love, Congress, from Utah.
Elise Stefanik, Congress, from New York. [Total 22 or 23 republican women in the House].
Why isn’t she happy with this record number of women? Or is she almost ready to admit that the whole “war on women” thing is a lie, and she only cares about liberal women who want to grab our guns and kill babies?
LOVED reading this!
: )
Obama is the hefty boat anchor tightly tied around the Progressive movement’s long, vulnerable neck. They are the real Grubered crowd.
Senator Pryor was ahead in most Arkansas polls until President Obama arrived and viewed the tornado damage. Gay marriage was declared legal the same week as his visit— Sunday newspaper photos on Mother’s Day.
Yeah, it was an unbelievably horrible year for white women running for office, well, for the ones with a D after their names anyway.
I still believe Texas will turn blue again...
____________________________________________________________
OK, Mr. Walsh...... lay down the crack pipe and shut down your computer......
I still believe Texas will turn blue again...
____________________________________________________________
OK, Mr. Walsh...... lay down the crack pipe and shut down your computer......
You don’t get it. Liberal women do not think conservative women are “real women.” (Just like conservative blacks are not real blacks, conservative hispanics are not real hispanics...you get the point).
Then there are people who think (understandably) that liberal women are not real women.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz
Nancy Pelosi
Rosie O'Donnell
Chrissy Matthews
Rachel Maddow
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