It was a neat trick.
Republicans thought they could dress up their extremist, antiquated, anti-woman ideology in a skirt and lipstick and sell it as a new, revitalized feminist movement.
But it didn’t work. Just as it didn’t work in 2008, when John McCain made his transparently cynical selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. While it may have given some conservative men starbursts, American women -- even the ones who had fought hard to elect Hillary Clinton to be the first woman in the White House -- loudly rejected the idea that Sarah Palin, even with her ovaries, was a true champion for women.
And it didn’t work this year either. Despite all the hype and hoopla a few months ago, despite all the speculation and promises that this year would be another Year of the Woman, it didn’t work. Turns out, it was the Year of the Man. Again.
Come January, the Speaker of the House will be a man. Again. The number of women serving in Congress -- an already measly 17 percent -- will actually drop for the first time in 30 years. And there will be fewer men who have fought for women’s rights, replaced by extremists who seek to undo the very legislation that has benefited women.
This year wasn’t just the Year of the Man. It was the Year of the Anti-Woman Man.
The premature claims of the Republican Party and of the breathless media that this year’s election would somehow mirror the 1992 election were always absurd. That year saw a historically high number of women run for office -- and win. Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Patty Murray, and Carol Moseley Braun were all elected to the Senate that year. Twenty-four women were elected to the House of Representatives for the first time; almost all of them were Democrats.
They didn’t run because they wanted to deny healthcare to their fellow Americans. They didn’t run because they wanted to cut taxes for the rich. They didn’t run because they wanted to bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.
American women were angry that year. They had watched the all-male Judiciary Committee viciously attack and humiliate Anita Hill for daring to accuse Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment.
Their anger motivated them to run for office, to change a government that was dismissive, and even outright hostile, to women’s concerns.
So they ran. And they won.
That was not why Palin’s Mama Grizzlies ran this year. They weren’t interested in fighting for the rights of women. No matter how often they invoked the idea of crashing the “Old Boys’ Club,” in truth, they had no interest in actually changing that club. Each of the Palin-endorsed Grizzlies opposed any social services that benefit women and their children, from healthcare to welfare to education to clean air. Even as they wrapped themselves up in the “feminist” label, their campaigns rarely, if ever, acknowledged or addressed issues that are important to women.
Palin used her ever-growing platform to offer her corrupted vision of a women’s movement this year by supporting candidates she claimed represented true feminist values.
She supported Meg Whitman, who wanted to deport the woman who worked as her housekeeper for nearly a decade.
She supported Sharron Angle, who thinks rape victims should learn to “make a lemon situation into lemonade.”
She supported Christine O’Donnell, who described herself as a feminist with a “commitment to the women’s movement,” but doesn’t think women should serve in the military because it distracts men from doing their job and gets them killed.
She supported Carly Fiorina, whom she laughably called an “international women’s rights champion.”
She even supported Rand Paul, who kidnapped a woman as college “hoax,” and who, during his campaign, argued that businesses should not have to abide by civil rights laws -- the very laws that have so benefited women.
When one of Rand Paul’s volunteers physically assaulted a woman at an event -- and then demanded an apology from his victim because apparently, bitch had it coming -- Sarah Palin said nothing.
In fact, none of these self-appointed leaders of the feminist movement had a word to say about the attack. Sure, they were quick to call the media sexist for questioning their positions, but when the opportunity arose for them to actually take a stand against a violent assault against a woman, their silence was deafening.
And the election results showed that women weren’t buying what the faux feminists were selling. Men embraced the Grizzlies; women did not. They were less likely than men to support Republican women.
The gender gap was evident in key races involving high-profile Republican women candidates, with women voters less likely than men to support the Republican woman.
• In South Carolina, governor-elect Nikki Haley won 49% of women's votes compared with 55% of men's.
• In the Nevada Senate race, losing Republican candidate Sharron Angle garnered 48% of men's votes but only 42% of women's.
• In California, losing gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman won 45% of men's votes, but only 39% of women's.
As myriad post-election analyses have demonstrated, the Democratic Party lost this year because Democrats stayed home. And that includes women, the very women who voted for Obama over McCain by double digits in 2008, a lead that was all but erased this year. It was even worse among unmarried women, who tend to favor Democrats by as much as 25 percent.
This year, those women didn’t bother.
In the last midterm election in 2006, 22.72 million women voted Democratic. This year, the Democrats lost 2 million of those women.
In 2008, more than 39 million women voted for Obama. Sure, it was a presidential election, and this year was a midterm, but those 40 million women are out there, still wanting a reason to bother. This year, the Democrats didn’t give them one.
That’s a big up-for-grabs constituency for a savvy political party to woo. And here is the good news: they lean Democratic.
And they don’t just lean Democratic. They work Democratic. Ask anyone who has ever worked or volunteered in a campaign office; they'll tell you that those offices are filled and fueled by women. Women organize social events to raise money and awareness for candidates. They volunteer to make calls and knock on doors. They bring food to campaign offices to feed staffers and other volunteers. Women don’t just vote; they get others to vote too.
But they didn’t do that this year. And even though they rejected the alternative of conservative feminism that Palin and her Grizzlies offered, they still hungered for a sign from the Democratic Party that they mattered.
In an August column in the New York Times, Anna Holmes and Rebecca Traister wrote:
Imagine a Democrat willing to brag about breaking the glass ceiling at the explosive beginning, not the safe end, of her campaign. A liberal politician taking to Twitter to argue that big broods and a “culture of life” are completely compatible with reproductive freedom. A female candidate on the left who speaks as angrily and forcefully about her rivals’ shortcomings as Sarah Barracuda does about the Pelosis and Obamas of the world. A smart, unrelenting female, who, unlike Ms. Palin, wants to tear down, not reinforce, traditional ways of looking at women. But that will require a party that is eager to discover, groom, promote and then cheer on such a progressive Palin.
Joanne Bamberger, of the blog PunditMom, agreed:
We don't have to make ourselves out to be "mama grizzlies," but if women want more places at the political table, we need to accept the fact that whether we agree with Palin's politics or not, we might be able to take advantage of her populist playbook to take our rightful places at the table of political leadership.
The hunger is there. Democratic women want a political party that fights for them -- aggressively and unapologetically, just as Palin claimed to do for conservative women. For too long, they’ve been told that the Democratic Party is that party. But after so many years of seeing women’s issues dismissed as special interests, as bargaining chips to be traded for “more important” issues, Democratic women aren’t buying it.
Thankfully, they’re not buying the snakeoil sisterhood that Palin and the Grizzlies tried to sell either. But the excitement -- and envy -- surrounding the Grizzlies demonstrated that women are hungry for something. And when they feel their needs and concerns are not addressed, by Republicans or Democrats, they stay home. And that costs Democrats elections.
It’s a good lesson to learn, and it shows great promise for 2012 because there is a constituency out there of millions of would-be voters who want to be heard, involved, and represented. And they will work hard to elect candidates they believe in -- and their work will win elections. And they want to vote for Democrats. And Democrats cannot win without them.
In the last two election cycles, Republicans have tried to break through that voting bloc with lipstick and lipservice. That dirty trick hasn’t worked. Yet.
But Democrats cannot afford to ignore the problem. They need to recommit themselves to the promises they make to women in election years and in party platforms. They need to promote women in the party, to give them positions of leadership. They need to keep Nancy Pelosi as their leader in the House. And they need to be courageous enough to proudly reclaim the mantle of being the only political party in America that actually fights for women.
As Rebecca Traister warned before the election:
If Democrats are to stay relevant and persuasively assert themselves as the party of progressive America, they must man up by admitting -- and more than that, proudly promising -- that their future will rest in part in the hands of women.
This is the choice the Democratic Party faces for 2012: A renewed commitment to the values the party claims to espouse, or another election lost to the hype and hyperbole of conservative feminism and voter apathy?
Democrats have less than two years to decide just what kind of future they want to have and to, as Abigail Adams once pleaded to her husband, remember the ladies.
And the clock is ticking.