The Democrats Woman Problem by Pol. Psy. Martha Burk
Terri
Martha Burk
May 31, 2005
Martha Burk is a political psychologist and author of Cult of Power:
Sex Discrimination in Corporate America and What Can Be Done About It ,
released last month from Scribner.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told Tim Russert on
"Meet The Press" last week that if he could strike the words "choice"
and "abortion" out of the lexicon of the Democratic party, he would.
Echoing George Lakoff's influential book-Don't Think of an
Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate -Dean said "when
you talk about framing this debate the way it ought to be framed...
this is an issue about who gets to make up their minds." Lakoff, the
current darling of party strategists agonizing over what went wrong in
the last election, says the Dems didn't get their ideas out in a way
that fit the emotional "frames" already in people's minds about
the role of government in their lives.
The Democrats put out reams of facts about Bush's lies on weapons of
mass destruction, his hypocrisy on Leave No Child Behind and his plans
to dismantle Social Security. In spite of this overwhelming evidence
that Bush is bad for the country, people voted for him anyway.
Ominously for the future, women-historically the largest bloc in the
Democratic base-voted Republican in greater numbers than they have in
recent history. The gender gap, a mainstay for the Democrats since
1980, virtually disappeared, with Kerry beating Bush among women by
only 3 percent.
Lakoff is probably right that Bush's appeal to women and men alike
was more emotional than rational. But the erosion of women's support
for Democrats was also a result of the Kerry campaign strategy. The
Kerry campaign shied away from talking to women at all, choosing
instead to go for the white male warrior vote. Women's advocates were
alarmed about this from the beginning, when the Democrats refused to
fund a strategy to get women to the polls, while the Bush team had a
person in every precinct who was responsible for turning out the female
"W" vote.
Even female Republican pollsters like Kellyanne Conway admit that women
lean Democratic "if left to their own devices." That's because
women depend more on the social safety net (the compassionate "parent
government" in Lakoff-speak), and the Democrats have traditionally
stood for better social services like expanding health care and child
care, and ensuring retirement through Social Security (women's main
source of retirement income ). But the Democrats failed to exploit
this natural advantage, instead trying to out-tough-guy Bush on the war
and homeland security. According to the Votes for Women 2004 project,
Republican women's events were about how much the campaign valued
women, while Democratic women's events were about extracting money
from female donors to use on general campaign themes. Significantly,
among women who stayed away from the polls, homeland security ranked
third behind the top concerns of jobs and economic security and health
care security.
Leaving women out of the debate was not new for the Democrats. They
have shown us in the last two elections that they don't want to be
too vocal about women. Every time George Bush said to Al Gore, "I
don't trust the government, I trust the people," Gore had the
perfect opportunity to counter with "except for women in making their
own decisions about their own bodies." He never once took that
opportunity. In 2004, the Dems avoided "women's issues" at every
turn, even taking the Equal Rights Amendment out of the platform for
the first time in 40 years. When their own internal polling showed the
pay gap as one of the top concerns for women, the candidate didn't
want to talk about it publicly. As for the abortion issue, only those
far inside the Beltway could decode Kerry's rambling answer in the
final debate to conclude he was-sorry, Howard-pro-choice. Even so,
the DNC is now blaming the loss on "being forced into the idea of
defending the idea of abortion," according to Dean.
It's true most women don't get up in the morning and think "I
hope abortion stays legal today." More likely they get up and think,
"I hope the baby sitter shows up, nobody gets sick, the car holds
together one more year, the older kids don't get shot at school, and
the boss doesn't pat me on the rear and promote the guy I trained
over me." But unless the Democrats are willing to talk directly to
women about those concerns-in emotional terms, if necessary -then
"reframing" abortion won't do the trick. And lifting "personal
freedom and personal responsibility" from the Republican playbook
-as Dean is now doing-won't do any good either. When women get
up on Election Day morning, they'll still think about elephants.