It's a great time to be a woman, even if you're not. Maureen Dowd's column today is just the analysis for which I've unsuccessfully searched since Tuesday. Tune in--it's important. Her column,
"Drapes of Wrath", which is FREE again today, features political trend analysis so sharp that you could use it to shave your legs. It opens:
The new Democratic sweep conjures up an ancient image: Furies swooping down to punish bullies.
Angry winged goddesses with dog heads, serpent hair and blood eyes, unmoved by tears, prayer, sacrifice or nasty campaign ads, avenging offenses by insolent transgressors.
This will be known as the year macho politics failed -- mainly because it was macho politics by marshmallow men. Voters were sick of phony swaggering, blustering and bellicosity, absent competency and accountability. They were ready to trade in the deadbeat Daddy party for the sheltering Mommy party.
Cartoon explanation and more on the flip...
Susan B. Anthony (chasing Grover Cleveland in the cartoon above) envisioned this and would be cheering us (Democrats) on. She founded the American Equal Rights Association in 1866, and she spent the better part of her life trying to win voting rights for women in the United States. In 1920, 14 years after Anthony's death, American women finally won the vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment. That's not so long ago, folks.
First a turbo-boosted MoDo visual:
Republicans were oddly oblivious to the fact that they had turned into a Thomas Nast cartoon: an unappetizing tableau of bloated, corrupt, dissembling, feckless white hacks who were leaving kids unprotected. Tom DeLay and Bob Ney sneaking out of Congress with dollar bills flying out of their pockets. Denny Hastert playing Cardinal Bernard Law, shielding Mark Foley. Rummy, cocky and obtuse as he presided over an imploding Iraq, while failing to give young men and women in the military the armor, support and strategy they needed to come home safely. Dick Cheney, vowing bullheadedly to move "full speed ahead" on Iraq no matter what the voters decided. W. frantically yelling about how Democrats would let the terrorists win, when his lame-brained policies had spawned more terrorists.
So, what's a girl to do? Well, first thing is to realize that it's our time to do something and revel in it a bit. Women have more to yell about, more to care about, more to run on, then anytime in history. You found your vote, now find your voice:
On Tuesday, 51 percent of the voters were women, and 55 percent of women voted for the Democratic candidate. It was a revival of the style of Bill Clinton, dubbed our first female president, who knitted together a winning coalition of independents, moderates and suburbanites.
According to The Times's exit polls, women were more likely than men to want some or all of the troops to be withdrawn from Iraq now, and 64 percent of women said that the war in Iraq has not improved U.S. security.
As much as the GOP will try to paint Tuesday's election as a bump in the road in their quest for world domination, there's a larger trend at play here I hope they continue to ignore. As long as the highly accomplished career-woman Kate O'Beirne is the female voice for the right-wing, with her book, Women Who Make the World Worse: and How Their Radical Feminist Assault is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports, and her right-winged counterpart, Ann Coulter, stay out in front, I'd say the path ahead is pretty clear.
[Also posted at Truth & Progress]