Republicans Still Don’t Know How To Communicate With Female Voters
It appears that the GOP still has a problem communicating with women.
It’s no secret that the Republican Party has a problem with women voters in general, and younger single women in particular. For confirmation of that fact one need only look to exit polls in recent elections that show Republican candidates losing badly among this demographic, quite often to the point where it costs them elections. In Virginia in 2013, for example, there is strong evidence that it was the votes of female suburban voters, principally in Northern Virginia, that cost Ken Cuccinelli the Governor’s Mansion. More broadly, Republican policy positions and actual legislation have certainly contributed to the idea that the GOP has an issue relating to issues of concern to women, whether we’re talking about the various Personhood Amendments that have been proposed in states across the country or the efforts by Republican controlled legislatures to even further regulate abortion clinics and require women seeking abortions to undergo invasive medical procedures. On top of all of that, of course, there’s the rhetoric of everyone from Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock to Rush Limbaugh. Finally, whether it is fair or not, and to a large degree I think its unfair, decisions like Hobby Lobby have been spun into the accusation that people on the right want to deny women access to birth control.
Democrats have tied all of this up into the so-called “War On Women,” and while conservatives have pushed back on that accusation against the accusation that their party has a problem relating to women, there’s enough evidence from polling and election results to establish that it is an actual phenomenon. To some degree, Republicans have come to recognize this and at least make some efforts to try to do something about it. The verbal miscues of Akin, Mourdock, and others have been largely non-existent during the current election cycle, for example, and when the GOP did its autopsy after the 2012 election, there was at least some recognition paid to the idea that the party needs to do a better job communicating its ideas to groups that have not traditionally voted Republican in large numbers, such as women.
As the saying goes, though, talk is cheap. What matters is what actual changes the GOP is going to make that would help to stop the dropoff in support among female voters. Obviously, the party is not likely to change its position on abortion issues, for example, and the influence of the religious right in the party means that we’re unlikely to see it change positions on things like the Hobby Lobby decision. Notwithstanding that, though, there are obviously things that the party could do to deal with predicament, most notably by simply being better at communicating its ideas.
In that spirit, the female members of the Republican Study Committee, a group of conservative Members of Congress devoted to pushing conservative ideas in the House, met to discuss what the party could do to improve its position among female voters. The meeting included many of the “best and brightest” among female GOP Members of Congress but, as Ashe Schow’s report shows, it left a lot to be desired:
“We have got to do a better job of [telling stories], whether it’s talking about social issues or whether it’s talking about the financial issues and the jobs and the economy,” said Rep. Diane Black of Tennessee.
“It’s how we are able to articulate ourselves – make sure we get the point across that we care,” said Rep. Renee Ellmers of North Carolina.
Great, everyone agrees. Go do that.
Except I’ve heard those same words from Republicans since I moved to Washington three years ago.
And even though the women on the panel all agreed that the GOP’s messaging needed to be better, it was clear they aren’t doing much to improve it.
Black referred to men and women as females and males, which makes you feel about as connected as someone talking about animal mating habits.
And that’s exactly what it seemed she was talking about when saying the GOP needs to do a better job at telling stories.
“Females will respond better if you can get a connection with a relationship,” Black said.
Black then used a story Noem told earlier as an example. Really, she didn’t have her own story to add? If you’re going to tell people to use stories to relate you should probably have a story of your own.
Then came the bashing of both genders, courtesy of Ellmers.
“Men do tend to talk about things on a much higher level,” Ellmers said. “Many of my male colleagues, when they go to the House floor, you know, they’ve got some pie chart or graph behind them and they’re talking about trillions of dollars and how, you know, the debt is awful and, you know, we all agree with that.
First she’s saying that men (perhaps only Republican men) don’t know how to connect with people. Second, she’s saying people are too stupid to understand pie charts.
Ellmers then said that women mainly want more time in their lives (don’t men as well?) and the first example she gave was that women wanted “more time in the morning to get ready.”
As for connecting to women specifically, Ellmers drove it home with a line that, had there been liberals in the audience, would have made the news.
“We need our male colleagues to understand that if you can bring it down to a woman’s leveland what everything that she is balancing in her life — that’s the way to go,” Ellmers said. (Emphasis added.)
Emily Zanotti comments (emphasis mine):
Now, not to pick on Ellmers specifically (I mean, we wouldn’t want to handicap her in her tough mid-year race against Clay Aiken), but it seems that Republicans had better luck with people who weren’t contained by the bounds of elective office (and, perhaps, a rift in the space-time continuum), since, perhaps, their contacts with actual women have given them some insight in how to respond to a real voter of the female persuasion.
But that’s, of course, if you totally ignore the part where Rep. Ellmers is noting that women are clearly too busy child-birthing and house-cleaning to tune into more complex issues, like taxes and war. Which is the primary takeaway from this interaction. Which is going to go very far in terms of marketing.
The problem they’re addressing is legitimate: the GOP has not been able to speak to women authentically and in a way that makes sense, not just to a woman voter, but to any voter who was raised in the modern age. Gaining insight into how voters speak, how they take in information and how they interpret policies is key to gaining a basic foothold with emerging demographics (actually, not even emerging – the voter shift of 2008 toward a more diverse, younger voter landscape is clearly here to stay). But what’s being said here is slowly developing into a knee-jerk Republican line: that young voters are decidedly Democratic, that they’re that way because they’re stupid, and that very little can be done to change their minds unless you dumb down your policies to match their perceived intellectual capacity
The fact that this is coming from Republican women is, perhaps, the most remarkable thing. You would think that they would have a good understanding of the issues that resonate with women, and how to communicate with them in the context of a political campaign. The fact that they all manage to win elections would seem to suggest that they have at least some good political communications skills. And, yet, here we have them essentially saying that the way to communicate with women is to dumb things down, that women respond to emotion rather than reason, and that the reason that they have generally tended to reject Republican candidates isn’t because there’s something wrong with the candidate or their ideas, but because, well, they are women. The fact that these are all smart, accomplished women makes the comments all the more strange. Indeed, it’s as if they’ve stepped off the set of Leave It To Beaver or some other idealized fantasy of what men and women are supposed to be like. Of course, this idealized fantasy is what many on the right seem to think is reality to so I suppose it isn’t too surprising.
I will not claim to be an expert on communicating with women, especially in the context of politics. However I’m pretty sure that “bringing it down to a woman’s level” isn’t the best way to start. If that’s the direction the GOP is going to take, then it seems unlikely that they’ll see much more success with female voters than they have in the past.
Look, what we got here ain’t a failure to communicate.
It’s not that Republicans can’t “communicate” their message to women. In fact, their message is getting through loud and clear. The problem for Republicans is the message is that Republicans don’t care about women — in fact they’re trying across the board to make life harder for women, to discriminate against them — and women are coming to see that.
“Communicate” all you want. But if the real content of your message is “I think you’re a second-class citizen” then don’t be surprised if the female voter doesn’t want to buy what you sell.
It’s no secret that the Republican Party has a problem with women votes, younger women voters, younger voters generally, African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Jewish Americans, Muslims, gays and lesbians, poor people, people with advanced education, immigrants, seculars, and people who care about any of the above.
The GOP’s problem is that, in light of these groups overwhelmingly voting against them election after election, they nonetheless expect these voters to abandon all that and a capitulate to them, rather than proposing different domestic policies that would be appeal to any of these voter segments.
I think they just need to nominate a female VP candidate. That’ll get the votes!
I also resent these Republicans who claim that if they just explained their policies better I would see the light and agree with them. What do they mean? They should speak slower and use smaller words? They talk like they assume women are too stupid to know what they want – it’s very insulting.
The problem is the Republican base consists largely of members of the extreme religious right who believe women should be barefoot and pregnant – always 100% obedient to their husbands.I don’t really know how they fix that.
What @Rafer Janders said… This is why so many conservatives don’t believe there’s a “war on women” at all. Because the GOP isn’t doing things (in their own view) to _actively_ degrade and subjugate women – they just genuinely don’t give enough of a rat’s ass to even really try that hard. They’re not “attacking women” (again, in their own minds); they’re just cutting budget $$ from programs that support demographics that aren’t themselves. It’s literally too much effort to consider women, blacks, hispanics, etc to be “real” human beings, let alone court their votes.
Actually, I’m not surprised women Republicans don’t get it. They wouldn’t be Republican if they did. I said that snarky, but it’s true. They’re older and married, and all this family values stuff says that’s the only way a woman should be.
What I find amazing is that Republican men don’t get it. Surely even Republicans were once young, single, horny, and very much concerned with pregnancy.
Oh come on, this is the set-up to a joke right? Please tell me a Republican Congresswoman didn’t actually say this in a non-ironic, non-sarcastic way.
Part of the problem is that Republicans seem to assume that everyone wants to go back to the 1950s.
A lot of us don’t. And a lot of us aren’t very interested in turning back to Valium-addled housewives with nothing to do all day.
Republicans lately have been beguiled by poor polling in elections that leads them to think they’re wildly ahead when really they are losing, so to suggest they have problems communicating ideas in an appealing way to women is to make the presumption that they’re accurately perceiving the faults in their communication to begin with.
I suggest it’s a cultural thing. They would experience culture shock to live as a younger single woman does. In the sort of cultural insulation they’ve had in their lives (and it can go both ways, but rarely does the less-powerful culture make laws), they don’t have applicable solutions to offer the problems faced by single younger women.
It also doesn’t help that every year there’s a story like this about one minority or interest group that Republicans aren’t appealing to, and their answer is to change messaging instead of change ideas.
@grumpy realist:
Funny enough, if I’m perceiving the political climate right, the house[wives][beaus? bands? what?] of today are watching political news and are the ones agitating for change more often. The single women are too busy, like the single men, trying to find a good job, insurance, etc.
@beth:
GOP: Professional Mansplainers Society , at your service!
No please, tell me how my body works – it’s not like I’ve been occupying it for over 20 years!
No please, tell me how I don’t get screwed in the workplace – it’s not like I can read my own paycheck!
No please, tell me how someone should have to right to yell abuse at me for going to a clinic – it’s not like I’m capable of making a medical choice that’s none of their business!
GOP:PMS for all your womanly needs!
Actually, that’s not surprising at all. It’s fairly common for women in positions of power to be at least as dismissive of the abilities and intelligence of women as a group as any misogynistic man.
@grumpy realist:
Funny, I was talking about this with a group of my friends, and we all agreed that those 50s housewives weren’t from our families. Just from my family, there isn’t a housewife in my immediate family tree. My grandmothers both worked through the 50s, one to support her 4 children after her husband (my grandfather) became ill, another helped running the family business (and didn’t get credit for it from Social Security who credited only my grandfather), my mother graduated from high school in the 50s and immediately got a job, got married, and kept working. So I can’t help thinking that they want to “return” to a world that only existed on tv to start with.
Even if they could redefine their message, and find a “young Kennedy” type to appeal to women etc voters, would their southern base allow them to promote that message and not primary it to Kingdom come? These are the old southern democrats, the guys that filibustered against the civil rights act. They had to accept everybody as “equal”, the n…, the c…., the j…., and now their own women? Not going to happen. Looking back 60 years, it’s amazing how the Democrats managed to rid themselves of that ugly baggage, and managed to sink the GOP with it.
@Kari Q: Yes, it’s worse that just going back to the 1950s. It’s going back to a 1950s Leave it to Beaver idealist TV show that never even existed in reality.
Also wasn’t very stable–everyone seems to forget that it was the kids that were brought up in those idyllic 1950s that turned into the hell-raisers of the 1960s.
If your “perfect culture” can’t even make it through one generation, it isn’t going to be very useful.
@Rafer Janders:
This, times 117.
The problem isn’t that they aren’t getting their actual beliefs across to women. The problem is that they *are* getting their actual beliefs across to women, who are (on average) horrified by them.
“The verbal miscues of Akin [etc.]” are not miscues at all, except in the sense that it is a ‘miscue’ for a pickpocket to make you aware that he is lifting your wallet.
Doug:
@DrDaveT:
Right. Seriously, how many times does Akin have to double/triple/quadruple down on the fact that he meant what he said before we can admit that it isn’t a miscue.
Ultimately, the Republicans, like any minority party trying to reconnect with the broad electorate, need to have their “Sista Soulja moment.” Right now that doesn’t seem to be on the horizon.
At best, 2016 is the most likely possibility for said reboot. Whether or not it happens is anyone’s guess.
@Matt Bernius:
Nope. We’ll get at least four straight Democratic presidencies before they wise up.
First step: think of them first and foremost as Americans and human beings and people just like you, not as a separate category of being.
The real underlying question isn’t “would a woman want to be treated this way?” It’s “would any human being want to be treated this way? Would I want to be treated this way?”
@Rafer Janders: Actually I think most of their existing base will have to die before they are able to do anything.
I see Rafer beat me to it.
The problem isn’t just messaging. There are core beliefs involved here, and as with many other issues, we’ve got ourselves a helluva divide.
Me, I generally attempt to go with the “women are people” approach.
Well, I mean the basis of the problem is that the GOP is essentially asking “how can we lie to women and not get called on it” its like their minority outreach efforts– they essentially want to keep all of the same policies that may interfere with a woman’s bodily autonomy, or disenfranchise poor and/minority voters but they want to find a way to do it without those things being obvious.
The only reason why Republicans continue to win elections is because they have gerrymandered the state districts so badly and Independents can’t seemed to be bothered to get and and vote in off year elections.
You just have to explain things to females using simple terms and short sentences. If you use too much complexity their tiny brains may lapse into hysteria. I think the GOP is on the right track here.
The people who think that Todd Akin committed a miscue are basically the people who think that deep down, the man was talking some sort of sense about sexual assault. Only, he just didn’t describe his position in a way that a woman might understand and he became tongue-tied and so forth and made some mistakes, just like normal people would do if they encountered quantum physics.
@Vast Variety:
As much as I think gerrymandering is an issue, this sort of simple explanation misses the fact that there are still a lot of Republican Senators and Governors out there.
Without a doubt gerrymandering is a broad issue in district elections, but there are many states whose populace are majority Republican. And in places like Mississippi, I don’t see that changing in the near future — no matter how crazy the Cochran/McDaniels saga gets.
Now, the degree to which the currenlty the level of Republican representation in Congress accurately represents the population is an entirely different issue. But that has a lot more to do with the current construction of Congress and the Constitution.
@pylon:
But they need to find another idiot liar quitter…not an easy task.
Republican:
I just can’t see why I should have to support a woman who doesn’t have big tits or can’t suck a basketball through a garden hose — except for that perfect gem, my wife and mother of our lovely children.
@Janis Gore: Bless their hearts. No wonder they need such low taxes.
Simplified GOP male message to women:
“Male reproductive health matters more than female reproductive health. Do you understand why? No? Just ask your father, husband or boyfriend.”
@al-Ameda: sarc/ Well, isn’t that appropriate? Sex is so much more important to men.
There are significant things to do, and we need that release./sarc
There is something to be said for the conservative charge heard around here often that “the Republicans need to change their ideas” is just another way of saying “start agreeing with liberals.”
I’m trying to come up with a conservative alternative to what their current ideas on women’s issues are (health, equal pay, etc.) and I’m having a difficult time with it.
@Tillman: Ahem sir, they do pay for their own contraception, I’m quite sure.
Moderators, do you think it’s time for me to adjust my medication again? I’m inclined to do so.
My VA Vet brother’s Agent Orange Hodgkins has come back, and he has been treated, but pulmonary fibrosis due to one of the chemotherapy drugs, bleomycin, has kicked in.
One do think about screaming through the streets in the night.
@Tillman:
These aren’t Conservatives…it’s a party of Ron Burgundy clones.
A Conservative argument can be made for health care and equality.
Not a Republican argument.
@John:
Of course, unlike any of those other groups, women actually constitute a majority of the voting public.
Ron Beasley’s Cream reference was damn near inaccessible. I’m a VN girl. Here you go:
http://youtu.be/nXspsfoPX50
So no, I don’t think the current Republicans address my concerns, thank you all.
Just for fun, if you haven’t heard Koko Taylor:
http://youtu.be/nXspsfoPX50
@Janis Gore: Actually that was Country Joe and the Fish not Cream. But it is true that many of those who grew up in “ideal families” in the 50s grew up to br hippies in the late 60s and 70s.
@Ron Beasley: You’re about 10 years older than I am, so you have a slightly different perspective.
But my mother was not an “ideal” housewife, but a housewife, and I had Betty Friedan in my hands well before I was 15.
@Ron Beasley: Will you run that Country Joe again? Maybe I was too upset to listen, but I do admit that about the only metal I like is Jimi Hendrix and Iron Butterfly.
@Janis Gore: My mother was also an excellent housewife and she didn’t go back to work until my younger brother started high schoo.l. The fact remains me and my two siblings ended up as hippies . I had a hiatus when I took a job with the DIA after college to avoid becoming canon fodder in Vietnam.
100% of the reason why modern day Repubs cannot gain traction with women, blacks , Hispanics, Jews, etc is perfectly illustrated by these two quotes from Doug:
And
Note that the predicament is that the women don’t understand the Repubs. It simply does not register on them in any way, shape or form that they might benefit from listening to the women, from trying to understand the women’s point of view and taking some wisdom from that. Instead it’s all “If only these women would stop nattering on so we could explain to them what they should consider important and correct.” Sheesh.
@Janis Gore: Don’t get me wrong, I loved Cream, that’s where Eric Clapton got his start. I was also into the mellow music of James Taylor and Gordon Lightfoot way back then.
@Ron Beasley: Hard to be a hippie when marijuana just puts you to sleep and cocaine just makes you nervous, you know?
@Janis Gore: did she squirm? Betty Friedan, I mean. Who you had in your fifteen year old hands. Ok, ok, if I have to explain it that much it isn’t funny.
@MarkedMan: Who?
@MarkedMan: Guess not, Sugar. Last I saw of Betty Friedan she was working on decent living situations for elderly people in a fragmented society. I ‘spect she don’t squirm much.
@Janis Gore: I have never done cocaine and cheep chardonnay puts me to sleep before marijuana ever did. I quit smoking marijuana in the late 70s when they instituted drug test for employment – alcohol is detectable for 12 hours but marijuana is delectable for several days. As someone who has done both I remain convinced that marijuana is much less harmful than alcohol. We should have learned that prohibition doesn’t work but apparently not. We now have legalized marijuana across the Columbia River in Washington and I anticipate it will be legalized here in Oregon in November.
It’s been more than 20 years since I’ve taken much more than an aspirin. Before then, I’d had nearly pure cocaine and said “Yenchh, y’all go to that expense and trouble for that?”
But give me a drop of crystal meth in some orange juice and I’ll paint your boat (to OCD standards), and lay you on the side. I’ve done it once, and that stuff is seriously dangerous.
I wouldn’t even put pot in the class with hard liquor. I can be a surly bitch on Chivas.
@Janis Gore: The hardest drug I’ve ever done is peyote buttons but only after a Native American showed me how to scrape out the strychnine so I didn’t have to be sick for an hour or two. The late great author Aldous Huxley wrote a book alternate states of awareness, https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FThe_Doors_of_Perception&ei=LrPEU4z2EObpiwLZnoHAAQ&usg=AFQjCNH4wspcxLhyySR3hRxnULvFceoC2w&sig2=REvwivrjIJN3B22PAEPnGw&bvm=bv.71126742,d.cGE&cad=rjt
Un hunh. Haven’t done that. Did you read Carlos Castenada?
Mo’ kicks for the ladies. Janis Joplin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bld_-7gzJ-o
I write for an audience that is largely young and female. I have also written dozens of books as a woman. (Yeah, it is kinda weird.) And I am occasionally asked if either of those two things are difficult, and how can I do it.
1) No, not difficult at all. and, 2) I never spent ten seconds wondering how I was going to write for girls.
Say what you have to say, tell your story, be authentic. That’s how you communicate with females. Also males. There is literally not a single thing different about communicating with women. Nothing. As astounding as it seems, they’re just regular old humans. They use written and spoken language to communicate concepts. I mean, what’s the mystery here?
@Janis Gore:
Nope. They get women to pay for it for them.
Well when you spend your days spewing out utter Bu!!$hit to weak minded, uneducated, self-important buffoons who uncritically lap up anything you say, your skills at logic are bound to atrophy.
The idea that the more conservative party will ever be able to appeal to unmarried women is laughable. Unmarried women and single mothers will probably be the group that is most overjoyed with the U.S. becoming a one party state with very high taxes and a massive government.
@Ron Beasley: “I loved Cream, that’s where Eric Clapton got his start.”
Not to get all pedantic, but Clapton got his start in The Yardbirds and the John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. By the time Cream came along, he was enough of a star for the band to be considered a “supergroup.”
@superdestroyer: You say that as if it’s impossible for unmarried single women to be CEOs, who as a group consider themselves “post-tax.”
@superdestroyer: Considering that the so-called conservative party is saying to unmarried women “you’re inferior and we’re not going to worry about your problems”, why should attention be paid, regardless of the government?
Yes, I’m for a strong government with a lot of social programs, but that’s mainly because companies are too short-sighted to put money into basic research. If we ran the country along the lines you want, we’d have no Moon Landing and would all be speaking German.
Remember, you can’t get a baby from getting nine women pregnant for one month each. Unless you have sufficient continued basic research in a country, you are going to be at a disadvantage when you suddenly need to do applied research. We’re already giving up far too much of our capabilities to the Chinese.
@grumpy realist:
Do you really think that a government dominated by the likes of Sandra Fluke or Elizabeth Warren would ever support a moon exploration program or a massive supercollider.
The future of the mommy state is nothing but welfare, education (for who knows what), healthcare, and pensions. The mommy state will squeeze out everything else to keep the single moms happy.
@superdestroyer:
I’m pretty sure that Warren and Fluke, unlike their Republican counterparts, believe in science and scientific research projects, so yes, yes I’m fairly certain that they would support such programs.
I approve this message! Let it be the official GOP understanding of the matter. Please continue.
Of course, even if a given demographic group “naturally” leans one way politically, there is a big difference in losing a group 60/40 and losing it 75/25 or somesuch thing.
The conservative narrative here is pretty screwy. The idea seems to be that single women need to get themselves husbands who will support them. Don’t be dependant on the government, depend on your husband! [And given the context for this, it’s pretty obvious they are not talking about depending on each other in an equal give & take way, but rather specifically about financial dependance – woman having man pay for her stuff, or having government pay for her stuff].
Why is one form of dependency clearly superior to the other? Why is dependency on either the default situation assumed for women? What about women who want, and succeed in having, careers? Also, for lots of women who would like to be homemakers, few such potential husbands (dependable types) are available, but apparently they are to blame for this (no, wait, that’s blamed on illegal immigration, instead of the far more blameworthy off-shoring, isn’t it?). The above, to me, is an incoherent mess.
Also, there are plenty of people out there who are generally pro-getting-married but who are going to view the old patriarchical model of marriage as a poor fit for them. GOP messaging can run aground there even if the voter doesn’t think of themselves as needing the government to help them. My wife, mother of 2, is very successful, and the GOP has essentially zero chance with her. Or, quite obviously, with me.
@al-Ameda:
I doubt it. They would see a moon program, a super collider, or other large research program distract from education, health, and pensions. If it comes down between more special education teachers or more aerospace engineers, I think everyone will agree that the progressive women of the world will always support the pink collar jobs of the world. If it had been up to women, the colonist would have never left the eastern seaboard, there would have never been a transcontinental railroad, or an interstate highway system.
Are we to assume that your assessment doesn’t include women already within the party, I wonder?
Or maybe the democrats war on Conservative women has something to do with this? After all, Democrat politics, when it comes to any woman daring to espouse conservative ideas, looks like a game of whack a mole… ponder Sarah Palin, as an example from your own writings.
@Rob in CT:
Thank you for making my point that single women are never going to support the conservative party. When Uncle Sam is very dependable in providing, why either try to be independent or enter into a marriage. Considering that most married whites vote for Republicans, there is little real talk of pushing women out of the workplace. However, when Democratic policies make living in a good neighborhood with a good school very expensive, How single women benefit from that, I do not know.
@superdestroyer:
Haven’t you noticed that the very good public schools – in places like Palo Alto – are where white collar professionals (Democrats) live? I’d say that single women with children benefit (as does everyone else) from good public schools.
@michael reynolds:
Don’t sell yourself short, most people write as the opposite sex terribly. When speaking with someone or writing to them, just speak to them as a person. When trying to write as someone you have to put yourself in their head to at least some degree. Most writers I’ve come across haven’t managed that very well.
@al-Ameda:
The problem is that the best part of the good schools in Silicon Valley is that they are overwhelmingly Asian and White. However, the cost of living in those school zones is incredible. The same can be said for places around Boston or DC. However, the Democrats have supported for years a program to reduce the number of good neighborhoods with good schools by importing a large number of third world immigration, taxing upper middle class people to discourage having children, and busing the children of the middle class out of their own neighborhoods. The question for all of those single women is why they want to limit the good schools in the good neighborhoods to so few people.
LOL. I have no doubt you think I made your point. Don’t ever change, sd.
@superdestroyer: Well, I’m a progressive woman, and I don’t believe that, so your statement is false.
If I’m against a supercollider, it’s going to be because I think that’s an inefficient way of getting access to the energies involved. We’d probably do better if we took the same amount of money and put it towards cosmology, better orbiting telescopes, and a permanent manned base on the dark side of the Moon.
@grumpy realist:
Obviously, you lie.
You, like all people, are only capable of acting as a group, and only then in ways that conform to superdestroyer’s assumptions about that group.
@michael reynolds:
You forgot “based on inherent encoded behaviors tied to their race or gender”
@OzarkHillbilly: Mr. Hillbilly, I was thinking of the type of woman who would pass along the cost of contraception in her rates.
And personally, I’d suggest that women not be dependent. My sister and I are the women in our family who have done the housewifely thing, oddly enough. My three sister-in-laws have all worked throughout their marriages. Two of them are retired now.
My sister’s husband suggested that she stay at home when their daughter was born, then abandoned the whole family after 28 years of marriage.
My husband wanted me at home, too. He died two years ago and left me not well-fixed enough to not work. I’m back at school, since my degree was in journalism and my main experience was in newspapers.
@grumpy realist:
Do you really think someone like Karen Lewis http://politics.suntimes.com/article/chicago/karen-lewis-inches-closer-run-%E2%80%94-crafting-exploratory-committee/tue-07152014-1251am would ever support building a base on the moon or more orbital telescopes. In her world, if a tax dollar is not spend on education, social welfare, healthcare, or elderly care then that tax dollar is wasted.
Do I really need to dig up all of the anti-NASA statesments from the Congressional Black Caucus to show that in the future, government spending will be social welfare spending.
@superdestroyer:
Well, dude, I happen to be married to a progressive woman who is a big supporter of the space program. So it’s just possible . . . and I don’t want to freak you out . . . that people make individual decisions based on their own independent criteria.
However, as a Democrat, I do applaud the efforts of you and people like you to alienate absolutely everyone who is not a white, straight, Christian male. Keep up the good work!
@michael reynolds:
There is no way that any form of a conservative party can ever appeal to single women. If the Republicans became much more libertarian, they would not get any more of the young or single women vote. If they stay where they are, they get almost no young single women votes. If the Republicans move to the middle, they blur the line between themselves and the Democrats and all of those single women stay at home. Even in places like Detroit or Chicago, massive failures of the Democratic Party do not discourage young, single women from voting for Democrats.
So, the only real question is politics is what happens when young women along with blacks, Latinos, public sector workers, academics, and Asians given the Democrats a majority that they cannot lose. I guess it is easier to see politics is fashion and to support the fashionable positions and political movements rather than think about the long term consequences of the Democrats becoming the one, dominant party in the U.S. and the policy and governance results.
The only two young women I know of in college right now are studying mechanical engineering and anesthesiology. Oh, and one in pharmacy.
I haven’t found many in education or the social sciences. The fields don’t pay well enough.
Doug: “Finally, whether it is fair or not, and to a large degree I think its unfair, decisions like Hobby Lobby have been spun into the accusation that people on the right want to deny women access to birth control.”
You mean where the SCOTUS set a new standard of reverse piercing of the corporate veil, for birth control? You mean ceaseless shaming of women for ‘slut pills’?
Doug: “Obviously, the party is not likely to change its position on abortion issues, for example, and the influence of the religious right in the party means that we’re unlikely to see it change positions on things like the Hobby Lobby decision. ”
Where ‘abortion’ means ‘abortion and birth control, which gets redefined as abortion whenever we can’.
@pylon: “I think they just need to nominate a female VP candidate. That’ll get the votes! ”
A hottie. Do some bikini shots 🙂
@Janis Gore:
Mechanical engineers are overwhelmingly male. The highest paying job right out of college with just a bachelors degree is a petroleum engineer and is overwhelmingly male. However, if you look at social work, elementary education, nursing, those are overwhelmingly female. Also, Anesthesiology is something that is studied in graduate school for a nurse anesthetist or in a medical residency for a physician. Medical school is around 50% female and pharmacy school is around 80% female.
One of the interesting things about pharmacist is that it is the career field with the smaller wage deferential between males and females.
And she is becoming a nurse anesthetist.
I was just looking for parallel construction in the sentence.
@KM: “No please, tell me how my body works – it’s not like I’ve been occupying it for over 20 years!”
To be honest, many of them might see a difference between ‘occupy’ and ‘own’.
@superdestroyer: Actually, the one time I remember the House got rid of funding for the Space Station, it was the Republican votes that had removed it.
So there are progressive people who have different ideas than I do about what to fund? And? This is news? At least when we discuss how to divvy up the funding I won’t be trying to convince someone who thinks the world is 6000 years old or that evolution doesn’t exist!
Republicans do well with married women..it is unmarried women they have a problem with. And that does have something to do with the messaging…they could improve that message..or they could do what Democrats do and promise women free birth control. Truth is both parties have a problem with the American voter right now.
@superdestroyer:
You’re right, we should all immediately begin to analyze the consequences of your obsession.
You ever see Star Trek Wrath of Khan? Remember how Kirk and Spock realize that Khan thinks in two-dimensional rather than three-dimensional space so they manage to get behind him?
You think in static states. You don’t understand power dynamics.
1) You are not the target of Republicans, power is the target. So their party will move toward power. They are power-tropic. They will bend in order to find and hold onto power. The only question is how long it will take them to make the attempt.
2) “Conservative” doesn’t mean what you think it does. Conservative can mean a lot of things. It does not have to mean the paranoid, racist, fantasist monstrosity that has absconded with the label. Conservative is a relative not an absolute term.
So, if we assume that Republicans’ goal in the end is power, and we assume that the terminology is changeable, the obvious conclusion is not that we will soon be a one party state, but that Republicans and “conservatives” will adjust.
@Janis Gore: I’m working through a bachelor in electrical engineering and I see a lot of women in my classes… Some classes females are the majority (modern differential equations). I was really surprised.
@ grumpy realist
Give me a shout if you are ever in the bay area, we can hit a Mt. Tam star party 🙂
What do you think of a L2 space station as opposed to a moon base?
@michael reynolds:
However, the establish Republicans (who you are discussing) think in one dimension. They are incapable of understanding that gaining the support of one group (say poor Latinos) means losing the support of others. Yet, they desire power and that is why they will soon be dwelling inside the Democratic Party (See Arlen Specter, See Lincoln Chaffee, See Michael Castle).
But once again, the real question is what happens to policy and governance when all of those former Republicans move over and become Democrats.
@anjin-san: depends on what you’re building it for. I think the advantages of a Moon base are a) possibility of using sintered revolting for building material, b) mass-driver placement, c) moon mining, and d) L2 is still going to need stick keeping. Also from an environmental view it’s much better for humans to live under lunar gravity than microgravity.
@superdestroyer:
No. Notice how I pointed out that you are not the target of the GOP? It’s because you have an idée fixe which at base is narcissism. You think you’re important or speak for an important group. You’re a hardcore racist, and as such you are part of the Republican base, but you and your ilk are a group in decline. People like you are dying out.
If the GOP wants power (and it does) it will pander less and less to racists like you, and begin to open their doors wider. You will be politically orphaned. Only your narcissism blinds you to this obvious fact.
So your entire paradigm makes no sense whatsoever. You have an obsession based in your inflated sense of self-importance. But politics is about power, and when racists like you stop providing a winning electoral margin, you’ll be tossed aside. That’s political reality.
Look at history. Your ilk used to be spread through both parties. Now you’re isolated within one party. But already the GOP is in crisis because they understand that you people are a political liability long-term. So, eventually you’ll be out of politics altogether, joining flat-earthers and other cranks in the “just ignore them and they’ll go away” crazy person demographic.
The GOP will survive. You won’t be part of it.
The irony of this coming from sd is really, really amusing. Thanks, sd! I needed a chuckle this morning.
@Grumpy Realist: Bloody spell-check….that should have been “regolith”, not “revolting.” Sigh.
@Grumpy Realist: Also “station-keeping” for “stick keeping.”
I’m starting to hate auto-correct with the white hot hatred of a million burning suns.
There’s pleny of money in the military budget that could be shifted over to NASA. A tiny, tiny bit of the DoD budget could be used to double NASAs, if I recall correctly. Obviously, NASA isn’t the end all and be all (I think a lot of basic research is funded via other channels), but the point is that there’s PLENTY of room to shift our budget priorities such that we both boost social welfare spending *and* science & technology spending, without needing extra revenue. [I will grant that DoD spending does fund a lot of aerospace engineering work, so it’s not like taking a dollar from the DoD and putting into research or giving it to NASA is a $1 win for science & tech. It’s less than that, but it’s certainly not a net loss.] And of course if we actually had a unified Dem government we might get some more tax revenue (though it would likely be pretty modest, as the Dems are not the socialists they are often accused of being). Add it all up and the result would certainly be a budget that would upset you, but it would not be a budget that axed NASA and other scientific research.
I love that the guy hitched to the wagon of the Party that has spent decades glorifying ignorance and elevating nonsense supersition over empirical fact thinks that Democrats are going to harm the country’s research efforts. At most, there would be an intraparty fight and the pro-science funding people would win.
Incidently, why don’t you hate NASA? They keep putting out info backing up the Climate Change “alarmists” warnings. Given that modern Conservatism is about being against whatever Liberals are for, updated daily, I’d expect NASA to be high on the sh*tlist.
@grumpy realist: “that should have been “regolith”, not “revolting.””
Well, that explains why I had no idea what you were talking about.
But now that you’ve corrected it… I still have no idea what you’re talking about!
@wr: How about this definition from the Encyclopedia Brittanica?
In other words, “stuff on the ground”. One of the Japanese engineering companies made up a bunch of fake lunar regolith and discovered it could be sintered using microwaves into something very much like pumice. Suggested that this was the most efficient way of building a Lunar base.
2012 exit poll data (via WaPo):
Overall, women voted D 55-44.
Married women went R 53-46 (men 60-38)
Unmarried women went D 67-31 (men 56-40).
You see a clear gender split here. The Rs win married people, but they win married men by more. The Rs lose single people, but they lose single women by more.
The age splits were as you’d expect, with the Dems winning younger people (18-44). Older folks (45-64) went GOP slightly and retirees (64+) were solidly R.
Young people are more likely to still be single, so there is likely substantial overlap there.
Something similar is likely involved with income splits too. More income correlates with more R votes, as has long been the case. One also tends to make more as one gets older (at least to a point, IIRC peak earning years are typically 40s and early 50s, and then things start declining). So is it the income, the age, the marital status? A mix? Probably.
And of course, to come around to sd’s hobbyhorse, we all know that Romney won the White vote (the only one that should matter, natch) handily but lost because minorities voted overwhelmingly for Obama (including “model minority” Asians, who racial essentialists typically like to laud if they want to show they’re not [just] hateful bigots, but apparently see as some sort of puzzle in a what’s the matter with Kansas kind of way). The solution is obviously to double-down on the White vote. After all, it’s the only one that matters and dirty moocher minorities will never vote for the more Conservative Party so there is no point…
@grumpy realist: Thank you. I hope SD doesn’t mind this brief demonstration of how some women know a lot more about science than some men…
Not so long ago there was much discussion of the “whore-madonna-crone” concept of feminity. Seems like a lot of Republicans are stuck there.
The concept of an independent woman who doesn’t want to be married AND doesn’t want to sit in Big Daddy’s lap just doesn’t register.
Re: DoD and NASA, it looks like the DoD budget is roughly 10 times NASA’s budget (actually slightly closer than I would’ve guessed, but the order of magnitude is right). ~$650 billion on military, ~$65 billion on NASA.
There is also ~$65 billion for non-defense R&D (defense R&D is comparable, also at about $65B).
Given that, it’s not hard to imagine a budget that includes more funding for NASA & scientific R&D, social safety net programs, lower deficits, funded by higher but not egregiously high taxes. This is not, as they say, rocket science.
@Rob in CT:
There is no solution for Republicans nationally in the long run just as there is no solution for Republicans in Chicago, Baltimore, DC, or SF. Progressives can mock conservatives all they want and brag about being the winners in the future but there is still no way that any form of a conservative party will exist in the U.S. and judging by the bluest cities in the U.S. there is no way that a second party can survive.
Instead of fashionably bragging, I suggest that progressives think long ans hard about the demographics changes that have made them such massive winners. Will there really be enough tax dollars to fund all of the programs demand by all of the groups that progressives will have to pay off. What happens when groups that are Luddites and oppose most of modern life begin to hold sway in policy and governance. Just like I suspect that all of those single women have no use for NASA, DOD R&D, and the DOE, I suspect that they will also oppose fracking, high tension power lines, nuclear power plants, hydro-elect, and virtually every other way to mass produce power in the U.S. What are the implications of such Luddite, short term thinking?
What a sexist piggish thing to write…I guess SD’s poor wife must be knocked up and pregnant most of the time and definitely does very little, if anything, outside of their home…
That’s certainly more effective than the Republican message which seems to be all about chastising single women as sluts who need to get under the controlling thumb of a husband ASAP…
If Republicans continue to think this way, SD’s inane prediction about a one party state really will come true…
@An Interested Party:
The one party state is going to happen whether the Republicans double down on the white vote or pander after the minority vote. There is nothing that the Republicans can do to get any significant block away the current Democratic Party. David Axelrod is a genius is finding a way that every path leads to victory.
I don’t think David Axelrod is a genius. In 2004 or so, people thought Karl Rove was a genius. He isn’t, and never was.
This is absolutely hilarious. The “luddites” of whom you speak reside in the GOP. The people who have serious problems with modernity are not Democrats, sd. Or rather, there are very few such people in the Dem coalition, and they have no power.
What you “suspect” doesn’t necessarily comport with reality, sd. Got poll data backing up those claims? Do you actually have any factual basis for them? I rather doubt you do. What you are doing is a variant of Cleek’s law (CL being “conservatives are against whatever liberals are for, updated daily”). In this instance you have a grab-bag of things you like or think are needed, and assume that liberals must be against them.
The only one that makes a lick of sense is the fracking & nuclear power claim, and those are about environmental concerns, not about wanting health insurance or to spend more on other social programs. Further, within the current Dem coalition, there is substantial argument over nuclear, with a faction heavily promoting it as the best chance we’ve got at mitigating climate change (which you think is a giant hoax, last I checked, so what do you care?). Fracking is going like gangbusters, and yet you whine. We’ll frack. The question is whether or not it’s done with an eye toward possible negative consequences (my issue is wastewater storage/disposal, due to my experience with environmental pollution claims). Regarding hydro, my understanding is that basically everything that can be dammed for hydroelectric power has been already. You think that if Republicans win power suddenly there would be a bunch of dams built? Where?
sd,
Explain to me, in your own words, why Republicans win married men 60-38 but married women 53-46 (just like they do better with single men than single women).
They have trouble getting women to vote for them, whether they are married or not. The effect is more pronounced among singles, certainly, but it exists in the married group too.
Care to explain that?
One final thought, and then I should just let this thread go.
The idea that the Party of “drown the government in a bathtub” and, when in power, spends a great deal of time and energy focusing on social issues like abortion is the one that wants to focus on funding scientific research is pretty silly.
The GOP has a higher % of religious fanatics in it (the Dems have plenty of religious folks, many of whom believe odd things, mind), and is constantly working to undermine proper science education in our schools. They push all sorts of unscientific nonsense about evolution, contraception, climate change… hell, tax policy (tax cuts never fail, they can only be failed! Despite the actual results over the past ~30 years, which clearly show that tax cut-spurred economic growth is, at least at our typical levels of taxation, modest and not nearly enough to make up for the drop in revenue), you name it. The GOP is badly fact challenged, and yet you want to push this idea that Democrats are luddites and won’t fund NASA. It’s so absurd I actually feel bad now that I bothered with it at all.
@Janis Gore: Oh, yikes. Here’s Koko Taylor:
http://youtu.be/w_fygyQiHoA
@Rob in CT:
Considiering I almost never post a comment on global cimate change, you are incorrect. However, it is hard to believe that progressives really care about global climate change other than as a club to beat Republicans. Given the Democrats support for more immigration and their refusal to take the policy measures than would be justified by all of the alarmist talk, it should be obvious that the Democrats do not really care.
Much like the way that young, single women do not care about NASA, it should be obvious that young, single women are not willing to give up cars, travel, or housing to lower their environmental footprint
@An Interested Party:
The one party state is going to come true no matter what the Republicans do. They can either stay some form of conservative party and be buried in a demographic avalanche or they can try to become the Democratic-lite, me too party and fad away as an unnecessary copy of the Democrats.
Either way, those young, single women will be their wish of a one party state, a much bigger social welfare state, and a much smaller private sector.
You know what, SD?
SFUT.
@superdestroyer:
Apologies if I was incorrect about your view of climate change. I have only ever seen you claim that progressives/dems don’t really care about it because we don’t all start living like hermits or whatever, which is a standard deflection tactic of deniers. I see it all the time. “Why should I believe in it if you still drive a car, huh?” It’s bullshit.
Democrats, by and large, are worried but not enough. There was an attempt to pass cap & trade that failed in 2009, illustrating this perfectly. Republicans, by and large, seem to think the whole thing is a hoax and have staked out a do-nothing position on policy, at least while they’ve been out of power (as recently as 2008, I believe, they had policy proposals to deal with the problem that they now largely claim isn’t real). There’s a difference there, and it does not reflect well on the GOP.
You keep saying that young single women don’t care about NASA, and you have yet to actually back that up with anything. I assume that’s because you don’t have any backup.
The great irony of all your posts in this thread is that of all of us, you are the one who has the biggest problems with modernity. But we’re the luddites. Ok, man. Whatever you say.
@Rob in CT:
Can we all agree to ignore his rants about the coming Democalypse? If we pretend he doesn’t exist maybe he’ll go away.
@Rob in CT:
I’d say it’s trickier than that. Remember, the Republican Party currently consists of a Frankenstein’s conglomeration of factions with very little in common philosophically. Those factions have very different views of climate change — but can agree that “do nothing” is the preferred policy.
The Limbots believe what they’re told on the radio, which is that it’s a Liberal hoax intended to trick them into {increasing government, ceding might to Europe or China, losing their mojo, whatever}.
The fundamentalists believe God gave Man dominion over the Earth, so whatever we do with it is cool with him. (Remember James Watt? Yeesh.)
The rich and powerful know perfectly well what’s going on, but don’t give a flying fart because they won’t personally be inconvenienced, and their grandkids will be protected by wealth as well. Let the rest of the world drown, or starve, or whatever. In the meantime, any steps that might actually have a chance to make a difference would be annoying.
…plus the usual undecided and uncertain plurality, who worry that it might be true but are too comfortable with the status quo to act in the presence of that uncertainty.