Originally posted on OB Rag on Aug. 14, 2019
By Colleen O’Connor / Times of San Diego / August 9, 2019
The reasons why a woman will be on the Democratic ticket are in the news every day.
That news is not just ugly, violent and unbelievably cruel, but repulsive in the extreme. And it affects women in visceral and now political ways.
While this may sound alarming, the list below points to some reasons why even Orange County—that Republican bastion—is now majority Democratic.
The answer is women.
Research from the 1980s demonstrated that when corporations or businesses or even academia got caught in a scandal, it was best to have a woman “clean up the mess.”
Seriously, this stems from the earliest years in the country when women were considered the “moral” guardians. “Men would be men,” but women were actually the arbiters of moral standards—and must behave accordingly. The female was “more trusted” than the male.
Watch the news. When it is bad, a woman is in front of the bank of reporters expressing regrets, apologies, or spinning faster than Kellyanne Conway.
Underneath all this is a visceral reaction among women, not obvious in the polling. The sheer revulsion, disbelief, shock and now horror, is moving women away from the “white male” power dynamic.
Consider women’s reactions to the news over the past several years:
- A “porn star” President whose lies constantly shred the Ninth Commandment
- A President whose abusive rhetoric, speeches, avarice, and behavior towards women, people of color and different cultures is shocking to any civilized human
- The dozen-plus women accusing Trump himself of unwanted sexual harassment
- The behavior of his allies—now many in prison or under investigation or awaiting trial for “misdeeds” that appear more traitorous than mistaken
- The vile “dark web,” “Twitter-verse” and non-stop put downs of anyone in disagreement
And it is not just politics. It occurs in sports, the media, the church and even the Boy Scouts.
Too many instances to count, but the images and stories linger.
The video of a woman being dragged—by the hair—out of an elevator in Las Vegas by an NFL player comes to mind. And the NFL actually keeps a rather large database of players’ arrests.
The worst sports examples:
- Larry Nassar, the former Olympic Gymnastics coach who sexually abused the young girls entrusted to his care. Called “a monster” by a U.S. Senate investigation into abuse of Olympic athletes, Nassar—alas—wasn’t the only abuser.
- Olympic figure-skating scandals followed
- The latest Boy Scouts furor counts hundreds of former scouts alleging sexual abuse
Expand the list to those felonious abusers (mostly rich and powerful) kept under the radar for decades:
- Jeffrey Epstein, convicted pedophile and now accused sex trafficker and abuser of hundreds of under-age girls
- Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, Bill Cosby, Charlie Rose, etc. and etc.
- The Roman Catholic Church’s litany of sexual abuse of altar boys
- Add the unspeakable treatment of the separation of mothers and children at the Mexican border
- And the recent mass murders in Ohio and Texas.
These victims and their stories have moved the female “moral” guardians (and many men who argee) in ways yet to be detected by pundits or pollsters. Their votes and their voices and their quiet—but profound—revulsion for such behavior, will guarantee a woman on the Democratic ticket in 2020.
Which one? No one knows, but several can be discounted already.
Marianne Williamson is too loving. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is not a serious contender. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota lacks the heft of a big state’s backing. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York struggles with her anti-Clinton past.
Which leaves the two female heavyweights: Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kamala Harris of California.
One of these two women will be on the Democratic ticket and the other is a sure bet for a cabinet post. Treasury for Warren. Attorney General for Harris.
Why? The thousand plus reasons listed above. And the fact that 56% of women identify themselves as Democrats or leaning Democrat.
Democratic women will stay home if a woman is not on the ticket. It is, after all, the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote. And they will vote for a woman.
The biggest danger to the Democrats—and the biggest gift to Trump—is to have an all-male ticket in 2020.
But it’s not going to happen.
Colleen O’Connor is a native San Diegan and a retired college professor.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
yeah, better happen. I still got my “Michelle 2020” button in the drawer, but I’m happy to magic marker that button to “20ASAP” :-)
If you want to claim moral superiority over others then perhaps a good start would be not promoting sexism? Just a thought.
What??? Are you saying – just so I’m clear – this O’Connor’s post “promotes” sexism?
If she reversed the terms you’d find it offensive and chauvinist.
I get it, there’s many inequalities to be upset about. But answering sexism with more sexism isn’t going to change any minds. .
It isn’t “sexism”, my friend, for women to want women leaders – as many men do – as clearly it’s time for a change and bury as much as we can of the old male chauvinism system. Women have been oppressed, period. It’s more than “many inequalities to be upset about” – it’s a system that pays women a fraction of what men make for the same work; it’s a system that degrades and devalues women’s work, a system that insists on control over women’s bodies – and I and many can go on and cite a thousand reasons …..
That is the very definition of sexism. Gender discrimination. Only a women can do the job. Choosing against a presidential nominee because they are male. And yes, people who voted for Barack Obama because he’s black (well half anyways), those people who never got off their butt for an election prior… that’s called racial discrimination.
As for the “fraction” it’s close to 98% for the same work/position.
“Since we have started tracking the gender pay gap, the difference between the earnings of women and men has shrunk. But significant disparity in how men and women are paid still remains. The uncontrolled gender pay gap, which takes the ratio of median earnings of all women to all men, decreased by $0.05 since 2015. However, women still make only $0.79 for every dollar men make in 2019.
What often gets lost in translation is what the uncontrolled wage gap truly represents — that women are less likely to hold high-level, high-paying jobs than men. There are structural barriers which keep women from advancing in the workplace– this is what we call the opportunity gap.
The controlled gender pay gap, which controls for a number of factors such as job title, years of experience, industry and location so that the only differentiation between workers is their gender, shrunk by just $0.008 since 2015. Women now make $0.98 for every dollar an equivalent man makes.”
https://www.payscale.com/data/gender-pay-gap
Please – don’t tell us next that men are the victims.
Power corrupts, and powerful women like the murderous Golda Meir of Israel, England’s horrible neoliberal Margaret Thatcher the best buddy of our neoliberal President Reagan, Indira Ghandi… Look at Hillary Clinton (I know, some people would prefer to forget this) and what she did to Ukraine by paying for a right wing neo-Nazi coup for $5billionUS according to her hand-picked assistant Victoria Neuland intercepted-and publicly released-cell phone call). And then there was the absolute destruction of Libya where they now hold slave auctions in the center of cities. That didn’t work out so well for the Sec of State, did it? Go back a couple presidents and ask yourself about Sec of State Madeline Albright publicly stated answer that the death of 500,000 Iraqi children due to Bill Clinton’s sanctions ‘was worth it?’
It’s not about the gender of a candidate, not their campaign slogans, it’s about what they do. In all this hoorah so far, Tulsi Gabbard is the only one who had publicly stated that the Iraq War was started by liars telling lies (that would be a felony if you did that). And she went there but knowing it was all a lie by the US government?
So, correct me if I’m wrong here, that means the deaths of over 1 million Iraqi people since 2003 are on the UN-indicted war criminal perps’ heads-that’s you Wanker Bush and Shotgun Dick and Runty Rumsfeld and Condolezza Rice (a woman) and the rest of your neoliberal war-for-oil regime!
Be very, very careful what you ask for. There’s been nothing but bad to worse presidents since Ronnie Reagan….and a lot of very unsavory women thirsty for power just as much as the men. Sharks circling for blood spoor, and politics are full of them.
sealintheSelkirks
Sounds like you might have found someone that you could vote for (?) Although I am supporting Senator Warren I also like Tulsi . She seems to understand the value of communicating with our “enemies” . Perhaps that is the solution to a lot of our problems.
JMS: I agree, she does seem to understand that people need to talk not throw more missiles and bullets at one another. And she acknowledged the Iraq Invasion not as a ‘mistake’ but as a deliberate lie by the Dick Cheney & W Regime which definitely got my attention.
My problem with Warren is her foreign policy. Same with Sanders the old school FDR Democrat. Both don’t talk much about the insanity this country is doing around the world or the grotesque military spending that is bankrupting the US. But it is refreshing to hear Tulsi who does show some promise with her thoughts on US-started wars…
Chris: Are you saying that the Israelis peace movements that are protesting the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by their government are antisemitic? There are a lot of Israelis that are not happy with their government though they aren’t prominently displayed in US corporate MSM much…but then nothing much against the accepted status quo does.
Hopefully soon you will figure out the difference between what a government inflicts as policy, and that country’s citizens’ religious beliefs. If there are no differences then it’s a Theocratic State, a dictatorship by religion, and not deserving much in the way of pity. Nor tens of billions a year in subsidies for that matter that could be better spent improving the lives of this country’s children.
sealintheSelkirks
“Power corrupts, and powerful women like the murderous Golda Meir of Israel”
OOoh just a bit antiseptic.
Antisemitic