“Sixth, Warren will get the women’s vote without losing so much of the men’s vote that Hillary forfeits.”
During this demographic transition period, before the Democrat core minority constituencies become the majority of voters, white females provide the swing vote in most constituencies. In 2008 enough wanted to participate in a historic moment to put Obama in office. In 2012, the Democrats successfully ran the “war on women” campaign to pull enough wavering white females to their side.
Whether it is Elizabeth Warren or Hillary, the Democrats will once again be beating the “historic moment” (first female president) and “war on women” drums. They will be appealing to emotions and not logic. Obviously they will not be able to run on the successes of 8 years of progressive policies. They also cannot run against Obama because African Americans are a core constituencies and they count on a 90%+ Democrat vote from African American voters.
To date we see no evidence the Republican Party can come up with an effective response to either the “war on women” or “historical moment” themes. The call to “break the glass ceiling” and the “its our turn now” chorus will be very appealing to white female voters who are not strong conservatives.
The GOP seems intent on nominating another older white male politician - Romney, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie all of whom will look like more of the same. None of them are capable of countering the emotional campaign that will be directed at the the independent white female voter. Any of these nominees will be slammed daily in the media for being out of touch and anti female. They will be constantly on the defensive, attempting to project “middle ground” positions on issues such as government financed abortions and birth control, gay marriage, government mandated gender pay equity, amnesty for illegals, and most likely the new issue of government subsidized day care. If the GOP nominee doesn’t endorse the progressive position on these issues he will be pilloried for being anti female and anti children. If he adopts the progressive point of view in order to sway female votes, he will risk too many conservatives staying home to win the election.
While I detest racial and gender politics, the only effective antidote to a Democrat ticket led by Warren or Hillary in 2016 may be the Republicans running a female, preferably a Hispanic or other minority female. With a minority female at the head of the ticket, the anti-female and white privilege themes are neutralized in the presidential race, unless a white male GOP VP candidate were to make a stupid remark. At this point in time the Republicans are doing nothing to put a credible female candidate for the top of the ticket in front of the voters so it appears the establishment is intent on running either Romney or Jeb.
We must not forget the Senate will also be in play in 2016 and the Republicans will be defending more seats in states where the vote could go either way. With a female at the top of the Democrat ticket, expect many vulnerable male GOP senators to be facing female Democrat opponents in 2016. We will likely see the same thing in House races the Democrats perceive as potentially in play. If the GOP wins the House again in 2014, and reelects the colorless and ineffective Boehner as Speaker, expect the electorate to be tired of what the press will continue to portray as GOP obstructionism by 2016. It is conceivable the Dems could win the White House, Senate, and House in 2016 by playing the gender hand effectively.
Expect the 2016 election to be all about the “year of the woman”. It is the only winning strategy for the Democrats and the GOP strategists seem unable to conceive they could be heading for an electoral disaster on the scale of 2008.
I fear that we are going into this election cycle and in 2016 as a divided political entity-I hesitate to call us a party-in which the moneyed establishment part of the party is intimidated by the media and so they offer statements up which the media exploits to prove that the conservative side of the party is too radical for prime time. The media consistently drives wedges into the Republican Party leaving it splintered and ineffectual and those wedges so often have to do with race or gender.
