In battleground states across the country, Obama is underwater with female voters — especially women unaffiliated with a political party — and it’s making it harder for Democrats to take advantage of the gender gap, according to public polling and Democratic strategists....The theory is, Obama has lost popularity with women, and Democrats still need women, so they ought to double down on war-on-women politics:
First, they must overcome the Obama factor. After defeating Mitt Romney by 11 points among women in 2012, the president has seen his approval rating drop sharply with females, particularly in the battleground states....
In Alaska... Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska)... fighting for his political life against Republican Dan Sullivan... knows full well that female voters will be a key part of his equation if he manages to pull off a win next month. So he’s hammering home Sullivan’s opposition to abortion rights and pay equity legislation and slams his views on birth control and a version of the Violence Against Women Act.Hammering and slamming on the female organs. That oughta work...
... cuz it worked before.
Meanwhile, in Colorado, Democratic Sen. Mark Udall is way down in the polls but less way down with women, so:
Udall has been running a campaign heavily focused on Gardner’s opposition to abortion rights, hoping to disqualify his GOP opponent in the eyes of suburban women and independent female voters.Raju doesn't mention that Mark Udall's obsessive focus on female organs has got people mockingly calling him Mark Uterus.
Stop poking at us like that! What worked before might not work again, and when it seems not to be working, doing it more and harder might make it worse. We may see your desperation, see what you are trying to do, and that's exactly what will make it not work. Women have a full range of interests, not just the interest in maintaining control over our reproductive function, and once you've made it obvious that you think you can have us because we do care about that, we might find your approach insulting and offensive.
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You have much too high an opinion of women.
I enjoyed the rough sex imagery of this post, btw.
Women have a full range of interests, not just the interest in maintaining control over our reproductive function,
Bullshit. Mention free birth control or abortion and women lose all reason.
So incumbents are in trouble? GOOD! They've led this country down a horrible path and should be booted out.
Not all women have the full range of interests that you claim. However, being taken for granted as one issue voters is insulting. About time the female side wised up. Hope it continues.
"Bullshit. Mention free birth control or abortion and women lose all reason."
Even if candidates believe women decide emotionally — and I believe that all reason is intertwined with emotion — they cannot reliably produce the same emotion the same way every time.
The eternal child persona that has been rejecting growing up during The Great Obama Recession seems to be suddenly rejecting being seen as sexual playthings.
This could be a sign of an awakening that threatens the Dems bestest illusions and The Great Obama's Dreamworld.
There's a reason Colorado calls him Mark Uterus(D).
"One of the wonders of this political moment is feminist contentment about the infantilization of women in the name of progressive politics. Government, encouraging academic administrations to micromanage campus sexual interactions, now assumes that, absent a script, women cannot cope. And the Democrats’ trope about the Republicans’ “war on women” clearly assumes that women are civic illiterates."
Repeatedly pressing the same emotional button gives people time to eventually notice that emotional button is being pushed and to think about the manipulation and get emotional about being treated like that.
Also, it's irritating, really irritating, to have that one little button mashed over and over again by some earnest clod who thinks that's going to work.
Running on Ebola is a breath of fresh air.
Ann Althouse said...Even if candidates believe women decide emotionally — and I believe that all reason is intertwined with emotion — they cannot reliably produce the same emotion the same way every time.
So you're saying it really does depend on women's time of the month.
BTW, there is a full moon on November 6, within 2 days of the election, and Farmers Almanac calls it the "Full Beaver Moon".
This does not bode well for conservatives.
Too late. 2012 happened and it's consequences can be laid squarely at the feet of half-bright women.
OK, go ahead and "control."
I have to go see a man about a horse.
Obama proves once again why great boyfriends often make lousy husbands.
"We got married in a fever,
hotter than a pepper sprout.
We been talking 'bout Jackson
ever since the fire went out."
But, but, 50 Shades of Gray....
Women have a full range of interests, not just the interest in maintaining control over our reproductive function, and once you've made it obvious that you think you can have us because we do care about that, we might find your approach insulting and offensive.
Not the single moms the Dems are targeting. They eat this stuff up for breakfast happily.
"slams his views on ... a version of the Violence Against Women Act."
I'm not all that interested in an Alaskan Senate race, but this word "version" jumps out.
It's a purity test, of course. Not only do you have to hold the right opinion, you have to hold the right version of the right opinion.
Historically, women have not been well served by purity tests. Yes, the Democrats are pushing political purity, rather than cultural purity, but there is a great deal of feminist writing focus on how the ritualization of purity is a way for the powerful to control women. Biological determinism is anti-woman.
Now Althouse is talking about having that one little button mashed over and over again?
I'm not a pervert, Althouse is the one drawing all the dirty pictures.
My theory is that women no longer feel threats from a Religious Right that could not even keep the gays suppressed on the marriage issue in the changing times. So they want a new reason to vote for Dems.
We are waiting.
and I believe that all reason is intertwined with emotion
I am with you on the whole limits of reason thing. I have been thinking about it a lot. I think that emotion and instinct are very tightly coupled however, and the instincts of men diverge as women who successfully reproduce select men with a certain set of instincts for protectiveness, but also a predisposition(instinct?) for planning for the future and a track record for effectiveness.
Women don't require these abilities, what they do require is the discernment to choose these abilities in men and the ability to attract quality men. Survival for the preceding millions of years of male and female evolution has depended on this.
It is different now. Who knows whose instincts are better suited to the survival of the nation in an era where men have built such a cozy save environment for women?
Odd are though, when it inevitably gets knocked down, the time tested instincts of the species will once again assert their value.
Ordinarily, I'd say "well, what other choice do the Democrats have but to try and scare women into voting for them?" However, there are more subtle ways to do this that doesn't say to women "you're an emotional child, so here's why the Republicans are evil boogeymen who hate your vagina!"
For example, women tend to be more receptive than men to issues of income security and government activism. Stressing their commitment to entitlements (which of course can all be paid for by taxing "the rich", meaning someone who is not you, dear voter) and regulation (which protects you, the voter, and isn't a burden on "good businesses") would probably do more to exploit the gender gap than trying to convince women that not making your boss pay for your contraception is the next thing to chaining you to a radiator until you make him a sandwich.
The "war on women" ploy worked best as long as there were Republican politicians willing to play the part and say incredibly stupid things about rape babies being gifts from God (even if you don't think a baby born from rape deserves to be aborted, you can at least acknowledge that the last thing a potential rape victim needs to hear is that maybe their rape wasn't so bad after all--free baby!) or that science prevents rape from creating babies, so if you're pregnant than you're lying about being raped. That sort of thing even affects races in other states--after all, maybe the guy running in my state thinks that same nonsense but is smart enough to keep his mouth shut.
But most conservative Republicans aren't Akins or Mourdocks, and while their views on abortion may be objectionable to pro-choice women, they're in line with pro-life women, and of course a lot of pro-choice women rank other issues (like crime, or keeping your job) a lot higher. Trying to fit a Cory Gardner into the Akin mold isn't going to work--he even backed the idea of making birth control over the counter, which is far more libertarian than requiring prescriptions and making your boss get involved in paying for it.
Mark Uterus deserves to lose, and it's good he's using this cheap tactic because maybe then people will learn it won't work anymore.
Well, it might just work. It has before, and the D's will keep doing it until it doesn't work anymore.
They'd be stupid not to.
Women have a full range of interests, not just the interest in maintaining control over our reproductive function, and once you've made it obvious that you think you can have us because we do care about that
How can one claim to care about maintaining control over something while still actively campaigning for a candidate who is trying to take it away from individual and seize that control for the state instead?
Obviously this issue isn't really all that important to you. Even in this very post, you are more interested in showcasing the issue as something to hit the Dems with while saying nothing at all about the Repubs who are passing the overly-restrictive laws.
There's a reason Colorado calls him Mark Uterus(D).
If a sitting Senator is being mocked in this way, I don't see how he can win. He comes off as perfectly joyless, as if re-electing him would be sentencing him to serve in prison.
It's women's foolishness that's being catered to.
"I believe that all reason is intertwined with emotion"
for example.
Udall ≈ You doll
How many ef'in times do I have to point this out.
There IS NO GENDER GAP,persay, of any consequence, because the disparity is not based on gender, but rather on race.
Black WOMEN (self-destructively) vote Democrat in > 95% numbers.
That skews the numbers when one looks ONLY at gender.
Black men also vote >95% Democrat, but because White men vote so strongly for Republicans, you don't see a male 'gender gap'.
Romney got fifty-six per cent of the white female vote; Obama got forty-two per cent.
I believe that all reason is intertwined with emotion
Not for most men. Time to repeal the 19th amendment.
Also, it's irritating, really irritating, to have that one little button mashed over and over again by some earnest clod who thinks that's going to work.
She's trying to be subtle, Meade, but for God's sake, take a hint.
I'll put it another way (see my post above).
You cannot 'win' the Black female vote by appealing to "women's issues".
Because they are Black, they will vote Democrat, no matter what - even unto their own continued poverty.
No gender gap, qua gender, exists.
Voting based on race, exists. And the intransigent by-race voters appear to be the Blacks.
" 'Also, it's irritating, really irritating, to have that one little button mashed over and over again by some earnest clod who thinks that's going to work.'
She's trying to be subtle, Meade, but for God's sake, take a hint."
The professor must tolerate a lot of such abuse to continue running a blog that is open and not one sided. But she spoke a real truth in saying "all reason is entertwined with emotion." It's just that the proportion of emotion is much, much higher among the fairer gender.
The target audience for this tactic is not educated law professors, but low info/IQ voters with the reasoning skills of Cameron Diaz: "We have a voice now, and we’re not using it, and women have so much to lose. I mean, we could lose the right to our bodies. We could lo–if you think that rape should be legal, then don’t vote."
I base that statement in part, on personal experience as the father of five grown daughters, all educated and intelligent... but still, women.
I think in three hundred years, Islam will have won. They will destroy us the same way they destroyed Rome. Why? Because they have only to destroy and rule over the ruins. There's is the warmaker's veto on those who only desire peace.
Women don't have the instincts, generalizing here, to think about such things and reject such thoughts as somehow deranged but women have selected men who do think about such things, so that women don't have to.
This is kind of a trap. Women are unknowingly rejecting the choices that woman as a group made though the men that they selected that led to the specific set of humans who are alive today alive.
I guess the comments above make me a bitter old curmudgeon, best left by the wayside of history. But I just think that the past is going to make a comeback.
The gender gap justifies the progressives' attempts to destroy the family.
Did the professor reveal the source of 'what's old is new again?'
"all reason is intertwined with emotion."
"Is", but need not be. Rational thinking takes focus, work and sustained effort.
That's why there is not enough of it about. And the more prone one is to the pull of emotion, the harder one has to put in the work to stay reason-able.
But it can be done.
Progressives, however, tend to stop thinking at the first place that they can self-delusively rationalize the happy thought "boy am I a good person for believing this!"
@SomeoneHasToSayIt
viz Michael Moore who proudly claims he is "the only white person who thinks O.J. is innocent."
""Ann Althouse said...
Repeatedly pressing the same emotional button gives people time to eventually notice that emotional button is being pushed and to think about the manipulation and get emotional about being treated like that."
That's why the Denver Post endorsed Gardner. Although, watching a clip of the Udall/Gardner debate, it looked like the leftists called him Mark Uterus as a friendly, not mocking, nickname, at least they thought that is how the wider public would receive it.
"tim in vermont said...
I think in three hundred years, Islam will have won.
"
The way a lot of Americans are embracing executive action, which I see as a first step towards totalitarianism, I don't think it will take that long.
Tim in Vermont:
I am more sanguine about Islam. I believe that the warlike northern genes will prevail. As Islam impinges on the currently debased freedoms of the west it will, and is beginning to, dawn on the populace that it requires some forceful pushing back.
SomeoneHasToSayIt: How many ef'in times do I have to point this out.
There IS NO GENDER GAP,persay, of any consequence, because the disparity is not based on gender, but rather on race.
Doesn't matter how many times you say it. "Conservatives", like lefties, are emotionally invested in a certain world view, and have their own set of confirmation bias filters.
Black WOMEN...
Black men...
How many ef'in times do I have to point out that it's not just blacks? With a few sub-group exceptions (older Cubans, some SE Asian like Vietnamese, irrc), non-white men vote Dem at higher rates than those dreaded idiot single white women.
Also, it's irritating, really irritating, to have that one little button mashed over and over again by some earnest clod who thinks that's going to work.
So far it has worked every time.
As Islam impinges on the currently debased freedoms of the west it will, and is beginning to, dawn on the populace that it requires some forceful pushing back.
Good observation - whose to say that we will just roll over and take it. ISIS has motivated Kurdish women to become warriors against them. It's become a "war with women" & may be a real paradigm shift in the world of Islam, as women are taking on roles that they have been forbidden to do before.
Kurdish Women Fight on Front Lines Against Islamic State
Supposedly a Muslim male does not get jihad if killed by a woman - I say supposedly because some sites are saying that is not confirmed.
Imagine Sarah Palin posed with a high power rifle saying "come 'in git it!"
it looked like the leftists called him Mark Uterus as a friendly, not mocking, nickname, at least they thought that is how the wider public would receive it
So Mark Uterus is meant to be chummy and heart-warming?
I would not have expected that outcome. Are leftists that out to lunch, or am I? (*Don't answer that*)
@ Tim in Vermont...Rome had been sacked three times by barbarian German tribes before Mohammed got his first revelation. Did you mean Constantinople? However, both were out looking for loot.
etbass wrote: ...the proportion of emotion is much, much higher among the fairer gender.... I base that statement in part, on personal experience as the father of five grown daughters, all educated and intelligent... but still...
... related to you.
"doing it more and harder might make it worse"
Context means everything.
The only war on woman is the economy and more the pity so many woman are gullible enough to fall for the abortion and pay equity nonsense. Whatever one's opinion of abortion is, abortion as it is is the law of the land and no candidate running in any election this year will have any effect on the legality of abortion and as for pay equity its been illegal to discriminate for decades in pay for equal work for equal hours. Woman have a choice albeit not necessarily one they want: they can get the equal pay if they are willing to work the equal hours but that would entail giving up having children (in some instances) or other sacrifices.
There are worse things than living single.
Well it's axiomatically true that a woman has a right to change her mind...but it certainly seems like most of the damage has already been done. The Left used pretty obvious appeals to base emotion to swing women to their side and as a result of their subsequent wins were able to pass legislation that, among other things, gave women "free" things. Those "free" things are not going away (I say "free" since of course somoene pays for them, but not the women directly--this is apparently an acceptable definiton of free now but I dissent).
With respect to the argument that appeals to emotion face declining marginal returns generally--even if true (and I certainly hope it is) if the total return is positive enough it's still a rational tactic. Furthermore how does this analysis hold up for, say, minority voters as groups (Hispanics or blacks, for instance)? You'd think something as obvious and crass as Biden's "keep ya'll in chains" or Clinton's incredible accent with "ain't no ways taaaard" would be enough to turn off at least some of their targeted group--but has it?
In short: I agree with the theory that the tactic of pushing a button designed to elicit a strong emotional response should face diminishing marginal returns, but I am not certain we see strong objective empirical evidence supporting that theory--at least not yet.
Even more shortly: The strategy of pandering to identity groups should continue to succeed as long as individuals consider themselves strongly affilitated with their identity group(s) (and invested in those group's separate interests). This is likely to be true even if the tactic of very obviously referencing women's issues no longer works as well/as easily to influence that group's votes.
Now where's Betamax to round out this disucssion with allusions to self-love, or vibrators, or something equally clever??
Colleen Hufford, whose story slipped from the front pages faster than a, "Hunter Biden dismissed from Navy," was a real victim of the war on women, decapitated by an alleged muslim, at work, following his dismissal.
I would think on some level this story would reverberate in women voter's minds but then Teddy Kennedy was loved by women voters in Massachusetts because he delivered constituent services like, "Flag That Flew Over the Capitol," unerringly. So what's one dead secretary compared to getting a cousin from the old country a job at Massport?
"I'm not all that interested in an Alaskan Senate race, but this word "version" jumps out. It's a purity test, of course. Not only do you have to hold the right opinion, you have to hold the right version of the right opinion."
If you're hammering women's reproductive organs in your "stump" — yikes! — speech and you've got the word "version" in there, you're fated to slip up and say "virgin." But I bet he doesn't say it in the speech, that Politico just put that in to make it accurate.
SomeoneHasToSayIt said...
"There IS NO GENDER GAP,persay, of any consequence, because the disparity is not based on gender, but rather on race."
While there is a large race gap, there is also the marriage gap. Married women voted for Romney. Of course, most black women are not married.
Single women are not voting for $10 worth of pills. All the Sandra Fluke nonsense about birth control is just a bitch whistle. What the "War on Women" claims really mean is, "We will make men support you and your children, even if they refuse to marry you". Which, of course, they do. The bastards.
I was quite sympathetic to feminism, when I was a lad back in the 70's. Feminists were saying that they wanted to have the same opportunities as men, and that seemed a perfectly reasonable desire. But modern feminists are not interested in opportunity. Whatever they may or may not have achieved, they have not achieved happiness. And they blame men. And they want to make us pay, financially, physically, in each and every way they can think of. Like somehow that will solace the fundamental dissatisfaction they feel at the empty core of their self-centered beings. Vote for Hillary, she's an ugly bitch who married a philandering psychopath to advance her career. And she is clearly just as miserable as you are.
"How can one claim to care about maintaining control over something while still actively campaigning for a candidate who is trying to take it away from individual and seize that control for the state instead?"
How about wanting to maintain control over healthcare but not abortion?
How can one claim that abortion is healthcare?
Pick any other condition medically necessary for 3% and optional for everyone else, see where claiming all procedures should therefore be freely available to everybody at no cost gets you.
I always wondered why privacy between a woman and her doctor justifies Roe v Wade's ban on abortion, but such a privacy right does not trump Obamacare's intrusions into the doctor patient relationship.
I don't think Cory Gardner is going to win. I'm channelling my inner conspiracy theorist, but all Colorado voting has moved to mail only ballots and there's same day voter registration.
The day after Udall wins, they'll harp on and on about how they turned out "their base" in Denver. No, they really just paid people to go door to door and pick up ballots to fill them in however they wanted.
In Alaska, not sure the women's issue will help.
Mark Begich pissed off a lot of people of both parties when he signed a pandering city labor agreement as lame duck mayor of Anchorage, that put the city in a big hole.
They're no different than the "back to Africa" types here:
They rely on tired talking points because there's not an original thinker in the lot of 'em,...
Hey Crack,
Still think the Republicans are going to lose this coming election?
I remember you giving a whole string of supposed predictions you made, once upon a time, to bolster your prediction that Republicans were going down this election cycle.
How are your powers of prognostication feeling these days?
The gender gap also works the other way--any smart Democrat should be asking why men break so heavily for the GOP candidate. While the smug and delusional can try to explain why whites go heavily for the GOP ("GOP tries to scare voters away from black people!" "Something's the matter with Kansas!"), it's not so easy to explain why men favor the right-leaning party.
It has been suggested that men tend to be more receptive to appeals to individualism, entrepreneurship and personal responsibility, as well as punitive approaches to crime and foreign policy, while women are less receptive to that and tend to favor security and community, which meshes more with leftist appeals.
In an election like this, beyond the fact that Democratic constituencies don't turn out as much compared to presidential years, the thing is that the Democrats' message won't work as well. Their own guy has been in the White House for six years, and there's natural Obama fatigue (as there was Bush fatigue 8 years ago) as well as a sense of "if they couldn't fix things by now then why bother?" With border security coupled with new terrorism concerns (Obama himself claiming ISIS now threatens our country) and the Ebola virus in the news, moderates are losing more faith than before in the "in" party. Add to that a regular drumbeat of scandals (IRS, VA, Secret Service, now the CDC) and you see little reason for a moderate to give the Democrats their vote, or for the Democratic base to turn out.
At this point it'd be surprising if the GOP doesn't gain the six Senate seats they need, plus about a dozen House seats.
"Stop poking at us like that!"
Oooh. That was a rapey way to put it.
Mostly they are assuming that females are emotional, easy to manipulate and obsessed with sex. Kind of the way (some--I said some!) females view men.
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