In 1972 the Democrats became, somewhat half-heartedly, the party of women’s rights. Throughout the 1960s the Democrats had served as the de facto gathering ground for all the social justice movements of that era, and with the advent of the McGovern Commission rules, what had been informal became formal. The rules were changed, the convention was opened up, and suddenly all the various grassroots activists (feminists, civil rights workers, the anti-war crowd) had a seat at the table.
Ever since then the Democratic party has served, however inadequately, as the political home for people who care about human equality. Think of Jesse Jackson’s magnificent Rainbow Coalition: that has never been the reality, but for 35 years it has been the ideal. It’s what the Democrats are supposed to be.
But increasingly over those 35 years, we women have been taken for granted. Even the lukewarm support we enjoyed in the 1970s is just a distant memory. The Democrats no longer attract our votes so much as the Republicans repel them. We vote Democrat simply because the Republicans are even worse.
This is a wonderful situation for the Democratic party elites, of course. They don’t have to really fight for anything or take risks or work hard for their constituents; all they have to do is be marginally less bad than the Republicans. Or not even that: they just have to maintain the appearance of being less bad. For us, on the other hand, it’s a distinctly unwonderful situation. We’re stuck with riding this donkey (to borrow from Al Sharpton’s glorious speech) as far as it’ll take us, but there doesn’t seem to be a damn thing we can do to actually make the fucker go anywhere.
This has been the problem facing American feminists for years. Long before Hillary ran for President, long before Barack Obama smugly assured the world that Hillary’s supporters would vote for him in a flash, we had a problem. The Democrats weren’t earning our loyalty. They were taking us for granted, knowing that no matter how little they did to earn our support, every year women would still go to the polls and vote Democrat anyway because, remember, the Republicans are even worse.
It’s reached the point that we can’t even rely on the Democrats to stand up for our basic rights. Twenty-two Democratic Senators voted to confirm John Roberts as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 2005. A few months later, when Democrats failed to block the confirmation of batshit-crazy Samuel Alito, most feminists I know went into a state of barely-contained fury. Many of us had worked our hearts out for years to elect every Democrat we could, in no small measure because we were relying on the party to stop the erosion of our rights under a conservative Supreme Court. Lot of good it did us.
The netroots have been no better. New Democratic power-players like Markos Moulitsas have made it clear that women’s rights are at the absolute bottom of the priority list — any priority list. Kos himself famously invited those of us from the “women’s studies set” who disagreed to either don a burka or get the hell out of Dodge. (Meet the new boss: same as the old boss.)
What we needed, feminists said to each other, was leverage. How could we get leverage? How could we get the Democrats — old and new — to represent women’s interests? How could we create a situation where women’s votes weren’t assumed to be in the bag, but were a prize that Democrats would have to work for?
Voilà. Leverage is here.
It’s here because of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the shameful way she was treated — by the media, by the Obama camp, and, most damning of all, by the Democratic National Party. Even women who didn’t personally support the Clinton candidacy were nonetheless appalled by the Trashing of Hillary. It’s not that she lost; after all, losing is part of the game. It’s that she wasn’t beaten in a fair fight. She was treated like garbage, and she’s still being treated like garbage. (As of this writing, Howard Dean is refusing to let Hillary’s name be on the ballot for the first vote at the convention, a startling departure from the norm. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in this campaign and she earned more primary votes for President than any Democratic candidate in the history of this country. And the DNC won’t even let her name be on the ballot.) The huge swell of anger in the land is the righteous rage of millions of women — women who are armed and more than ready to punish the DNC. Over and over the message is being beamed straight to the powers-that-be on a laser light of pure anger: You don’t get to take our votes for granted anymore. No more.
It’s a glorious situation. It’s what we’ve needed for years. Finally, the Democrats have to work for our votes! Finally, we have leverage!
That’s why despite my anger at Hillary’s mistreatment, I am thrilled that so many women are drawing their line in the sand. I’m thrilled by the growing PUMA movement (Party Unity My Ass). I’m thrilled that for the first time since the 1970s, women as a group are demanding that a national political party treat us with respect — or else. And they — we — are dead serious. We’re too old to be tricked or browbeaten or guilted. We’ve been riding the Democratic donkey faithfully for 35 years, and damn if that ass didn’t turn around and fuck us.
No more.
What’s interesting, though, is that many of my sister feminists — the prominent pundit types, not the regular Jane Doe types — haven’t yet grasped the import of what’s happening. Even some of those who supported Hillary are now heard to quietly mutter that it’s time to “unite the party.” They don’t recognize the great big lever in front of us because, well, we’ve never had a great big lever in front of us. We’ve talked about leverage for years, yearned for it, but never had it. Most of us have spent our entire political lives being taken for granted. We’re so used to voting Democrat no matter what that it’s become almost second nature.
Another reason, a more insidious one, is the powerful social conditioning that even feminists struggle to transcend. We women are supposed to get along, to not make waves, to put our own needs aside. To sacrifice for the greater good. To unite the party.
But “unite the party” is simply nice-speak for “give up your leverage.” The Democrats certainly know that, as do the Obama trolls who are now flooding our moderation queues with comments. Every time they say “unite the party,” what they’re really saying is, “please give up your leverage. Please just put down that gigantic lever you somehow got hold of and walk away. Please go back to the way it was before, when you voted for the Democrats no matter how much they took you for granted.”
Not bloody likely.
It’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out. My own prognostication is that the existing feminist movement and this new wave will remain largely separate, at least for awhile, and very possibly even oppose each other. That’s because modern feminism is dominated by a) young Third Wavers who support Obama anyway, and b) “establishment” feminists who are too plugged in to the money circuit to fight City Hall. This new wave is different: a big grassroots uprising of women of all ages whose latent feminism has been awakened by this election. This group is big and messy and fairly diverse in its political orientation (from leftists like me to near-Republicans), much the way the Second Wave was in the 1970s. But these women are united in their anger and their exasperation and their determination that now is the time to draw the line. No more.
I’m looking forward to it. But that’s another post.
Posted by Violet in Election 2008, PUMA, Recommended
