"Class warfare" and "the war on women" — 2 wars or 2 fronts in the same war?

A question that came to mind as I was reading this comment, from Yashu, on last night's "Rosengate" post:

What happened was, in their efforts to attack Romney, the Dems suffered a strategery malfunction. Crossed wires caused a short circuit.

Crossed wires: i.e. two separate tactical strands of the Obama 2012 campaign against Romney momentarily met in Rosen's soundbite and short-circuited.

1. GOP "war on women" (Dem pandering to women)
2. Class warfare (spurring resentment of Romney's wealth)

Rosen was predictably going along on #1 (that's the meme the Dems are pushing now, #2 will come to the forefront later). But because they had to defend themselves against Romney's counterattack (Obama's economy hurting women), for a moment #2 came to the fore: i.e., Ann Romney's a rich bitch who's never worked a day in her life, so what does she know about the economy or jobs?

Short circuit. Because the "rich bitch" was tacit, implicit; what was explicit, what everyone heard out loud was: stay-at-home mom never worked a day in her life, so what does she know about the economy or jobs?

A stupid sneering insult to stay-at-home moms, i.e. a large number of women. Short circuit.

Do Democrats need to be careful to fight these 2 wars separately, or is there a way that the 2 wars could be merged successfully? Rosen merely lost a battle. That doesn't mean her side has lost the war or that it is not capable of a war on 2 fronts. You might not want them to win, but that doesn't matter for the purposes of this discussion. Whichever side you are on, you will want to understand this.



Here's something I found that was written before Rosengate. (I need a better word than "Rosengate." What would be the equivalent of "-gate" that would signify not a scandal, but a battle. Maybe: -incourt. Rosenincourt/Rosincourt?) Anyway, this is from a website I've never noticed before called policymic, and the author is John Giokaris:

During the weakest post-recession recovery in history, there’s very little material to accentuate the positive with, so the Democrats are trying to make up for it by dividing the American public with class warfare and trying to convince women they need dependency on government for protection.

See the connection between the 2 wars? In the merger of these wars, there is a coherent left-wing vision of government, and the stay-at-home wife is a threat to this vision. In the "war on women," women are threatened and beleaguered. They are victims, and they can't make it one their own. The left would like you to see that only the government can competently and reliably serve the needs of women.

The traditional vision would have each woman ally with one man and form a single economic unit that would be effectively and efficiently structured, with one spouse leaving the house each day to engage in commercial activity and the other spouse looking after things in the home. The married couple takes care itself, including its emotional and sexual needs, which are the very thing that produces offspring, and the love and economic support flows naturally to the next generation, which is trained to follow the same effective and efficient structure.

The left-wing response is to reject that traditional vision, but how? The rejection is the 2-front war. Women should perceive the traditional married-life model as a big threat. It's retrograde and subordinating. It's a throwback to the bad old days when women lacked choices. Anyone promoting the traditional married-life model will be re-framed as someone who will destroy the advances that have been made for women — even if they are only saying women have a choice, and the traditional model is actually a great choice, a choice you should consider, a choice that works best if you can find a good husband.

There's the central battleground: Do women have a choice? The left has loved the word "choice" when it comes to childbearing. Indeed, in the "war on women" battlefront, they want to say their opponents aim to take away the choice that is birth control and abortion, the choice whether to become pregnant or to go through with a pregnancy. But a different choice comes into play here: Should women choose the traditional marriage structure to protect their economic needs? It's a great option if you can get it, so the left would like to say: You can't get it. That's a choice that is no choice. Only rich people can afford that luxury. Only a 1 percenter can keep a wife at home. The right-wing candidate is very rich, and his rich-bitch wife doesn't know what she's talking about. They'd like to deprive all the other women of the protection they really need, which must come from the government.

In this left-wing framework in which the vast majority of women need the government structure around them, women are not supposed to identify with Ann Romney . The left would like to alienate her from you by portraying the economically supportive husband as something only available to the rich. President Obama would like you to think that even he, as a Harvard Law School graduate, could not keep a wife at home with their 2 children. It's an economic solution that works for so few people that it's no choice at all.

How does the other side fight this 2-front war? It's obvious now, isn't it? They need to show that the traditional household division of labor is viable and advantageous to many people, even those of modest wealth. I'd like to see that battle fought. Personally, I think many women have been fooled over the years into working terribly hard for too little reward. I also think — and I'm very non-retrograde here — that many men can do well as the stay-at-home spouse. (And I support same-sex marriages and think these nontraditional couples can prosper using a traditional division of labor.)

I would love to hear a very open and fact-based discussion of household economics. Let's do the math and take everything into account, including the tax advantages for the 1-earner family, the costs of going to work (clothes, transportation, eating out, etc.), and the many expense that can be avoided if someone is at home doing household work. There's a lot of propaganda in this 2-front war for the minds of women (and men). Let's keep our wits about us as we make our personal life decisions and our political decisions.