The most intriguing and little covered development in the primary season is something that you would think the MSM would be all over. White women are disappearing!
They disappeared from Iowa. They disappeared from New Hampshire. They disappeared from South Carolina and Florida. Many of them are surely young, blonde, and good looking - time for an all points bulletin!
Cross the jump with me to help look for them!
They are Republican women, and they are not showing up to vote in the GOP primaries.
To put this in context, remember that Republicans have always and universally assumed that Hillary is going to be our nominee. As we know from hundreds of diaries and thousands of comments here, firing up the GOP base is all about Evil Hillary, which is why we are confidently assured that she can never, ever beat McCain.
Certainly Republican men love to hate Hillary. So, surely, do the hardest core, vocal Republican women. (Except for Ann Coulter - who knew?) But a lot of Republican women don't seem to quite be feeling the rage. Do I think they are all just waiting to vote for Hillary? No. But they sure are not showing up in droves - or even the drovelets that their men are - to vote against her.
And a significant - maybe decisive - sliver of them? Republicans have not quite managed to recreate the 1950s, even in the gated communities, but by and large it is the women who handle the bills, and fret about what they do if someone in the family gets sick. They're no liberals, but their families could use a break, too.
Chances are that some of them have had it, just a bit, with the reek of misogyny, too.
Stepping back, there's another interesting point to make here, because it isn't just Republican women who are disappearing, though they're disappearing in larger numbers. We all know about the turnout skew between Dems and the GOP. We are pumped up. The great majority of us like both our candidates, and most of all we are eager to get the show on the road and take it to St. John McCain in the fall.
But if the GOP has assumed all along that they'll be facing Hillary ... why did they come in with a weak field? Why is their fundraising in the crapper? Why aren't they showing any particular eagerness to cast a symbolic early vote against her by voting in their own primaries?