Today in the War on Women
- Tara Culp-Ressler on the Republican movement for more mandatory sexual assault laws, not only in Michigan but in Kentucky, North Dakota, and Arkansas.
- Speaking of the Dakotas, the situation there for reproductive freedom is increasingly dismal.
- Interestingly, some Republican representatives in Iowa have introduced legislation that would make women who obtain abortions (and possibly women who use emergency contraception) guilty of murder. This has the advantage of actually being a coherent application of the principles in the Republican platform; the (fortunate) disadvantage is that one reason that the position of most anti-choicers is utterly incoherent is that for good reason it’s hard to understate the popularity of a coherent pro-abortion-criminalization position.
- Kate Sheppard on the struggle to reopen the Wichita clinic that was closed by anti-choice terrorism.
It should be noted that the whackadoo legislation in the Iowa House doesn’t have a prayer of making it to the floor of the Senate. Mike Gronstal (D), the majority leader, has repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to tell Republicans of this stripe to go pound sand, and in almost as many words.
They clearly haven’t thought out the ramifications (SURPISE!!!) of charging a woman who has an abortion with murder – and the same goes for a woman who has a miscarriage being investigated as a murder suspect.
If they start charging those women who had abortions/miscarriages with murder, they will NEVER win another national election (except for the Senate in some deeply Red States) – and a lot less state and district elections, too.
Charging the doctor, the nurse(s), and any other helper(s) with murder is one thing.
It’s a whole ‘nother kettle of zygotes to charge women with that.
And the male significant others, what are they to be charged with? Accessory to a murder?
And in the case of twins, or triplets, or more?
Will those be double-homicides, triple homicides?
Republicans will lose most of the women in this country who aren’t religious Evangelicals and/or Reactionaries forever.
And a whole lot of men, too.
Not everyone in this country is a religious-freak or a misogynist, Republicans.
Maybe in YOUR little bubble-world.
But that world, may soon be POPPED!
So, yes, ‘Please proceed, Iowa representatives…’
The lives you think you’ll save, won’t be YOUR own political lives.
If only. Even after all the crap that major Republicans spewed last year they didn’t do that horribly bad with women. Hell, as long as the Log Cabin Republicans exist you can’t assume that the party will lose all support from any group no matter no foaming at the mouth they become.
You may be right, but Obama beat Romney 55% to 44% among women last year – the single biggest demographic in the country.
Do you think if they charge women with murder in these cases, that Republicans can hold that number nationally?
And anything more than a slight shift in all but the Reddest Congressional Districts might result in more seats in the House to the Democrats.
Ok, maybe not in 2014, since even if Iowa passes this, which is doubtful, the law will only have been on the books for a short time, and the upcoming election is much more local than it is national.
But, if they run someone who agrees with that policy for President in ’16, and the Democrats run a white candidate, don’t you think that will mean that the D’s hold the Executive and the Senate, and maybe gain a majority in the house?
Maybe I’m wrong, but I think they’re so extreme, that it will affect them.
That’s why I want Hil to run-I feel like she could pick up the demographic Obama couldn’t-married woman. My still-married mother’s voted Republican since 1980, despite always identifying JFK as her favorite president (Irish from MA explains it I guess). She constantly makes the most non sequitur criticisms of the President. But you should have seen how excited she was in 08 to see Clinton running. She saw her speak and was sold. I don’t know if my mom is representative of other married women, but that was something I noticed.
Females – Presidential Vote Share
Conclusion:
1. Repubs have more women in binders since the WOW
2. Women like the WOW?
3. Women are convinced to vote against their gender interest by the Republicans use of divisive economic issues?
4. Social issues don’t mean as much as we think.
5) Republican policies that hurt women were something that did not develop ex nihilo in 2012, and women were clever enough to be aware of this?
Just a possibility
Republican Presidential Vote Share of Women since Clinton and then the Newt Revolution:
’92 = 33%
’96 = 33%
’00 = 44%
’04 = 47%
’08 = 43%
’12 = 44%
Data from ANES, except for ’12 which is from the NYTimes (with a little calculation)
You realize for this to have any meaning, you need to show how women differ from the rest of the vote, correct?
Oh come in, it’s not like his statistics are misleading, I mean there’s nothing wrong with just using raw D percentages when the elections covered included two in which a significant third-party candidate that skewed the vote, so that Manju’s chart makes it look like the GOP suddenly got more popular with women the next time out.
Presidential Vote Share since Clinton and then post-Newt Revolution:
Year = R – D
’92 = 33% – 53%
’96 = 33% – 61%
’00 = 44% – 56%
’04 = 47% – 53%
’08 = 43% – 57%
’12 = 44% – 55%
And you’re comparing the campaign with Palin with a woman-free ticket in 2012.
Controlled variables, how the f*ck does that work?
Or, gender gap (D% women – R%) =
’92 = 20 points
’96 = 28
’00 = 12
’04 = 6
’08 = 14
’12 = 11
So, the gender gap is nothing new.
I might be surprised, if I didn’t live through the Reagan years.
Manju, you do realize that your posted numbers actually show that the GOP women who ran into the arms of third party candidates during the run of HW Bush came back to the GOP for his son, right?
I don’t know what kind of point you’re trying to make, but the only point I get out of this is that women tend to vote Democrat, and Republican women hated George HW Bush and Bob Dole as much as Republican men did in ’92 and ’96.
Ha, you got me there…
…sorta. I mean, what to do with this? After all, Reagan was a solid anti-choice nutcase pol for his time.
So, in 1980, Reagan did 5 points worse with women than with the electorate as a whole, while in 1984, he did 8 points worse.
You usually are not this transparently dishonest.
Well, in ’96 Perot got 7% of females. Clinton = 61, Dole = 33. (I don’t know why this adds up to 101%)
But Perot got more Dems (8%) than Repubs (6%). He got 20% of independents, but they are a small group and (I think) among them, they were more Dem learners.
So, that can’t be it.
http://www.electionstudies.org/nesguide/2ndtable/t9a_2_3.htm
Well, I’m using the same metric others were before I came onto this thread. Using yours, Republican points worse with women than the electorate as a whole:
1980 – 4
1984 -3
1988 -3
1992 – 1
1996 – 3
2000 – 5
2004 – 3
2008 – 3
2012 – 3
The point is, Social issues don’t mean as much as we think.
Okay, in 1984, you had a ten-point female delta between Reagan and, well, you said Ferraro, while I assume you meant Mondale. Mondale lost the election by 18.2 points.
Now, since you have also said that Reagan got both 55 and 56% that election, while Mondale and/or Ferraro got both 45 and 47, I’m not sure how to parse your data, but I do think you have a promising career counting votes in Florida.
Data (up to ’08)
http://www.electionstudies.org/nesguide/gd-index.htm
’12:
http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/results/president/exit-polls
Using the NYTimes data (since it has the total vote handy)
year/ Reagan total vote/ women’s vote / gap between the two
1980 51 / 47 / 4
1984 59 / 56 / 3
http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/national-exit-polls.html
I’m confused by this. The Republicans have been the White Man party since 1980, and Democrats have consistently done better than Republicans with women ever since. How does showing that indicate that social issues don’t matter?
This is an awfully nucanced subject, but the quickest way to rasie doubt is by looking at the claim that; “The Republicans have been the White Man party since 1980.”
Via Paul Krugman, here is what the data says:
Having said that, regarding race, things change around 2008, with the election of barack Obama. But 1980 is waaaaay too soon to call the R’s the White Man’s Party. Hell, post 1980 Dems will deliver two men who voted against the 1964cra into the presidential line of succession.
I’m sure Malaclypse can tell you who those two men where.
Also, link to krugman/Bartles blurb:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/white-male-math/
OK, there is a slight difference between Ames and the NYTimes.
I see the metric you are using now, and I’ll run it using the NYTimes dataset only.
Sorry, Manju, but both Bartels and Krugman are full of hot air:
I guess the part you highlighted from the anonymous blogger is what you think proves that “both Bartels and Krugman are full of hot air”.
Well, its just pure speculation:
The guy is focusing on small town v cosmopolitan working class social conservatives. But he doesn’t realize that he’s trying to explain a phenomena that by-in-large does not exist.
At teh time of his writing, working class voters had simply not been voting increasingly republican, except of course for those in the South post-64…. where there were hardly any republican office holders to begin with, due to the dems racially coercive one-party system.
Like every other libtard out there, he sits and wonders why there have been “just two Democratic Presidents in the last 40 years.” (he writing before Obama’s election).
The fall of Jim Crow, the demise of a one-party system favoring liberals is the answer. End of Story.
At teh time of his writing, working class voters had simply not been voting increasingly republican, except of course for those in the South post-64….
Like in that Southern state, Kansas?
Good point.
BTW, Manju, libtard is about as useful a term as Repuglican, so keep that in mind when you’re trying to pretend to have an intellectual conversation in the future.
As many scholars whom you haven’t sucked up to have documented, segregationists appeared on all sides of the spectrum from authoritatian to quasi-populist liberal(except on race issues), of course, so your attempt at explaining your convoluted, Ptolmaic theory of American politics and race has, as usual, been shown to be not in accord with the available facts and data. Like Kansas going for Republicans increasingly more so despite not being a Southern state with a one-party lock by Dems pre-Civil Rights era.
Manju does not understand statistical significance?
Yes, he doesn’t understand that with MoE, even a well-designed poll will have MoE at least 2 or 3%, so that the difference between the two years compared is practically irrelevant.
Apparently Manju doesn’t even understand the concept of rounding up or down.(See above)
For instance, Romney won married women by 7 points according to the CNN exit poll
Check who gets charged under those “fetal endangerment” laws. It’s always a poor, drug-abusing woman and usually a minority. Sure, they were intended to give police and prosecutors another tool to use against abusive husbands, boyfriends, and the random lunatic that attacked a pregnant woman, but it shouldn’t be a real surprise that misogynists will find a way to re-purpose any tool.
That proposed law might declare all abortions to be murder, but some abortions will be more murderey than others.
Malaclypse, hopefully this formats:
Total Vote:
Year/R/D/Difference
1980 51 41 10
1984 59 40 19
1988 53 45 8
1992 38 43 -5
1996 41 49 -8
2000 48 48 0
2004 51 48 3
2008 46 53 -7
Female Vote Only
Year/R/D/Difference
1980 47 45 2
1984 56 44 12
1988 50 49 1
1992 37 45 -8
1996 38 54 -16
2000 43 54 -11
2004 48 51 -3
2008 43 56 -13
2012 44 55 -11
Gender gap (difference between both differences):
1980 8
1984 7
1988 7
1992 3
1996 8
2000 11
2004 6
2008 6
2012 7
data:
http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/national-exit-polls.html
http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/results/president/exit-polls
RH Reality Check this week has ‘An interview with Tammi Kromenaker of North Dakota about legal threats to her clinic.’
Not to be a pest, but it’s “Tara Culp-Ressler”, not “Tara-Culp Ressler”.
Y’know, for posterity.
Of course this trend is quite unfortunate and I would love to see a Republican member or two of the SC replaced with liberals willing to strengthen Roe v Wade and get rid of some of these laws. But there are plenty of places in the world where women can’t get abortions legally. Should I be more concerned about the women in North/South Dakota? You know, they have the franchise up there. And until white women abandon the Republican party it’s going to be tough for women in red states regardless. It’s not at the top of my list of concerns.
Hahahaha what is this
Do you also de-prioritize issues of the poor and working class in the US because, hey, they’re better off than poor people in the developing world, and lots of poor and working-class white people vote Republican?
Why can’t you be concerned about all of them at the same time? It’s not a zero-sum equation.
imo probably South Dakota. SD looks a little bit closer to totally banning abortion, but the difference is razor thin.
This was funny. Anyways, I know this was a bit of trolling on my part, but these laws impact the middle class quite a bit as well. It’s not that easy for someone with a 30K/year job to travel out-of-state once the last abortion clinic disappears. And middle class white women are still voting for Republicans in droves. It’s pretty amazing really.
Good to put a name to the faceless bunch of petty, vindictive white male assholes willing to sell poor women and WoC down the river because: white women. Fuck you.
Your anonymously posting vitriol is hardly impressive. You’re imputing views to me that you have no basis for. I’ll happily donate to support a Democratic candidate for congress that has a good chance of winning but doesn’t represent my district. But in a lot of states, the Republican majorities are substantial. You might even consider the policy results to carry some democratic legitimacy. I’m not going to spend any energy trying to swing the result. If that’s selling poor women down the river, what are you doing about poor women around the globe? I don’t say that to make the point that we can’t do anything about domestic issues, but to point out that we are always establishing priorities and mine do not lie in North Dakota (SCOTUS decisions on the other hand…). I also knew my post would tweak noses, but I do think it’s interesting to note the difference in the level of injustice between a policy enacted through a legitimate democratic majority that unfairly impacts a majority of the population with the vote (in this case women) and the many other situations where it is a small minority being persecuted or cases like Wisconsin where hard right Republican policy priorities were achieved with narrow electoral majorities and a kind of bait-and-switch campaign. These comment sections are not always about just expressing outrage about social injustice. That doesn’t actually effect change anyhow.
Your singular talent at meeting obvious systemic injustice committed against more than one half of the US population with a hearty “meh” and a manly shrug of the shoulders has now been noted, thoroughly. Please run along and take your self-congratulatory thought experiments and Dear Muslima hand-wringing and hand-waving with you.
It never fails to irritate, by callously invoking the plight of women abroad, wherever they are, the lengths men will go in their artless attempt to ensure the women they know stay humbled, handicapped, and properly ashamed of themselves. And yet it’s obvious, as in your case, they think they are advocating the kinder, nobler, more sublime and logically reasonable argument. Literally: stay out of my feminism. You are not wanted.
If you are a citizen of the United States, which after all is a constitutional republic, you ought to be more concerned about plight of women in the United States than elsewhere in the world, because as a voter in the United States, you have a degree of personal responsiblity for government policy in the United States. When you drive, shouldn’t you be more concerned that you don’t run over pedestrians yourself than about the possiblity of someone else running over pedestrians? It’s much the same thing.
I think that is his point. He is a citizen of the United States. He is not a citizen of South Dakota or Iowa.
No, it isn’t. He’s pulling the starving-women-in-Africa / dear-Muslima routine. Ten to one he’s a straight, white man who thinks American women are a bit too empowered already, if you ask him.
Actually, Njorl gets my point exactly. And I certainly wouldn’t claim that women are too empowered, however you would measure it. But I don’t hold out much hope for woman’s rights in most of the states. And unlike Jim Crow, they have the vote and they actually form a majority all on their own.
No, actually. You’ve confirmed exactly what I suspected: that you’re an angry, victim-blaming white boy with a chip on his shoulder. That you pretend to believe the franchise is some kind of magical elixir to the myriad, intersectional problems of social justice tells me all I need to know about your trolling bullshit.
And the Sun is going to explode into a red giant and engulf the Earth in about five billion years, so really why should be concerned about the welfare of anybody on this planet when it’s ultimately doomed anyway? Humanity is not at the top of my list of concerns.
Minor editing request:
Sorry, I don’t usually make comments like this, but I don’t think this is too big of a deal. When you guys do lists like this post and the previous one, can you add an extra carriage return between the bullet points? I don’t know about anyone else, but I find them very hard to read without extra spacing in between.
Thank you, that’s all, carry on.
I agree with this.