Divisions with the GOP

John Cole was talking about splits in the Republican Party. I wrote:

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I’d say there’s a leftist consensus that there are two main factions in the GOP: the plutocrats (aka "economic conservatives") and the religious right (aka "social conservatives"). Of course there are also libertarians, neo-cons, and others, but those strike lefties as the most important divisions.

Those of you who read extensively in Right Bloglandia, is that how they see themselves? Do they see plutocrats versus social-cons as the important conflict? My superficial reading suggests that they don’t generally perceive plutocrats as such: everyone on the Right claims to be 4-square for Capitalism Uber Alles, so I’m not sure they notice where the real capitalists are.

The Gender Gap in Voting

Thinking vaguely through a political issue, again.

echidne of the snakes notes The Secret Demographic Topic in These Elections:

[quoting a Time poll:

Non-college-educated white women split virtually evenly, 46%-45% for McCain. By contrast, Obama remains weak among white men. That group supports McCain 57%-36% overall, and non-college-educated white men back the Republican ticket by an even greater margin, 63%-27%.

Do you know what I think? I think we can learn enormous amounts about the culture by asking why we don't discuss the voting patterns of white men.

I've been thinking about the voting gender gap: the fact that since about 1980 American women have been more likely to vote Democratic than men. Or that men are more likely to vote Republican, though it's usually not phrased that way.

This is a modern development. female conservatism was for many years a feature of voting behaviour in Europe and the United States. In Europe there is currently no particularly clear pattern -- in some countries women tend to be more conservative, in other countries it's men. Overall, there's a tendency for women to be risk-averse, which in many countries makes the average female voter slightly right of center.

All of the studies of the voting gender gap take male voters as the norm. But statistically, if there is universal adult suffrage *female* voters are expected to be the norm, because men have shorter lifespans and thus women will be more than 50% of adults.

If you assume female voters are normal, then what we've seen in the US looks like men moving rightward. Because men have disproportiate power, both major parties end up being toward the right. And that's just how it looks to our European friends: the US has one slightly-right-of-center party and one far-right party, but no significant leftist party by their standards.

I've just started reading "The Developmental Theory of the Gender Gap: Women and Men’s Voting Behavior in Global Perspective." by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart. (pdf), and it looks as though their conclusion is that women are becoming more leftist than men in most post-industrial societies:

the modern gender gap is more strongly the product of cultural differences between women and men in their value orientations, especially attitudes towards postmaterialism and the women's movement...

in postindustrial societies the modern gender gap was strongest among the younger age groups while the traditional gender gap was evident among the elderly.

What it looks like to me is not so much women moving toward the left, but a pervasive and even growing sense of aggrieved entitlement among men (especially, in the US, white men), which is moving them toward the right, and dragging the mostly-male power structure with them.

In the US, at least, I think there's also something about war. War has become a distinctly conservative value, and a distinctly male value, in a way that wasn't necessarily the case historically. I tend to link this with subtractive masculinity, in which only sports and war are safely masculine endeavors, but there may be something else at work, too.

Where are the McCain canvassers?

I've decided to take this relationship to the next level, as they say, and start canvassing this weekend. I'm in safe-blue NJ, but just across the river from PA, so the local Obama office is sending us to Bristol/Lower Bucks County to go door-to-door on Saturday.

I've never canvassed before, so I've been surfing around looking for "helpful hints" and "what to expect". And I stumbled across something weird.

If you plug canvass for obama into Google, you get 282,000 hits. If you use canvass for mccain, you get only 141,000 hits -- but scanning the first few pages, most of those are about canvassing *against* McCain, not for him.

If you put everything in quotes, "canvass for obama" gets 8180 hits -- and "canvass for mccain" gets only 7 (seven) hits. That's a boggling and almost literally unbelievable thousand-fold difference.

Where are the McCain canvassers? The GOP has got to have a ground game, but where is it? How are they organizing their people? Are they not going door-to-door at all, but just reaching people on the phone?

I can't figure out if the McCain campaign is totally clueless, or if they have some sort of ninja canvassing force that's invisible until it strikes. Does anyone know?

Put Down the Sexism

Cross-posted from DailyKos.

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Just, drop it. Turn around and walk away.

Try going 24 hours while making comments about Sarah Palin that do not reference:

1. her anatomy or physiology

2. her attractiveness

3. her clothing

4. her hair or cosmetics

5. anything that can be abbreviated "I.L.F."

6. any of those qualities with regard to her husband or children

The biggest single danger of Palin's candidacy is that it will bring enough foaming misogyny out of the Democratic side to repel some female voters over to McCain.

The day after the NH primary, kos wrote of Hillary Clinton:

the more assholish her detractors behave, the more you help her. The way she was treated the past few days in New Hampshire was a disgrace, and likely a large reason for her surprise victory. So keep attacking her for bullshit reasons, and you'll be generating more and more sympathy votes for her.

...

The more she's attacked on personal grounds, the more sympathy that real person will generate, the more votes she'll win from people sending a message to the media and her critics that they've gone way over the line of common decency. You underestimate that sympathy at your own peril. If I found myself half-rooting for her given the crap that was being flung at her, is it any wonder that women turned out in droves to send a message that sexist double-standards were unacceptable?

Over at Shakespeare's Sister, the Sarah Palin Sexism Watch is already at Post #3. (#1, #2) They're doing it not because the Shakesvillagers agree with any of Palin's policies, but because that's how feminism works. They're getting too much material from this site. Dry up that well, people.

Thursday night, Barack Obama threw down the gauntlet for us, too:

one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character

Although Barack referred specifically to accusing your opponents of lack patriotism, I think he's also talking about other "fighting words", as well.

Here's one guideline: if you put your insult about Palin through a couple rounds of babelfish, would the translation be "She is female"? If so, you're doing it wrong. Worse yet, you're *hurting your own side*.

Dear Obama supporters; also, Dear Clinton supporters

-- especially any of you who might be actually working on the campaign, or whose donation pockets are deeper than mine (please imagine a wallet with a moth flying out).

Glenn Greenwald has been documenting the yearning of some Congressional Democrats to pass a FISA bill giving telecoms amnesty for lawbreaking they did at the Administration's request -- amnesty that would, by an *amazing coincidence*, remove the evidence for this lawbreaking from public view. This battle is also being documented over at Daily Kos.

A lot of us feel that it's time for Senator Obama step up to the plate and *lead* on this issue. He's said that he's opposed to telcom amnesty -- encourage him make a serious speech about it. Encourage him to "encourage" other Congressional Dems to "encourage" Hoyer & the other Telecom Congresspeeps to reconsider. Make "Rule of Law" and "Respect for the Constitution" serious rallying points. Please, if any of you have any good offices to use, *use them*.

And to those of you who supported Senator Clinton's campaign: she has a great Leadership-with-a-capital-L opportunity here, as well. Encourage her to prove that she can be just as great a Majority Leader as she was a campaigner. The opportunity is here, begging to be used.

Sexist or Incomprehensible? You decide!

Amanda at Pandagon found an ad for the UK store Harvey Nichols -- click here to see it -- that is either incredibly sexist or makes no sense at all. Possibly both. And no-one can figure out how this is supposed to sell more shoes, either.

Do you only get the plump guy if you wear slippers? What's the correlation between the sneakers and the black guy? Or is this supposed to be a chart where you fill in your results?

Then echnidne of the snakes points out this Oliphant cartoon. What a laff riot! It has been suggested that maybe Oliphant was trying to poke fun at anyone who thinks he can ride roughshod over HRC (or that PMS is still an issue for her, given her age), but his track record argues against that.

When it comes to Chris Matthews, though, I don't think there can be two schools of thought -- he's really not that hard to understand.

Dear Senator Christopher Dodd:

The President of the United States must take an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

So far, you appear to be the candidate most likely to keep that oath.

You are currently the front-runner for me. Keep it up.

Respectfully,

ME

Dear friends:

If you appreciate what Senator Dodd has done, let him know.