Like a tarantula that lurks in the shadows, radical feminism has
insinuated itself into every American institution, waiting to pounce and
extract its life blood, rendering the carcass lifeless and abandoned.
In 1964 the Democratic National Committee was riding high. Lyndon
Johnson had just crushed Barry Goldwater by winning 61% of the popular
vote, and the Dems held a 2 to 1 edge in the Congress. Back then, the
Democrats didn't need a feminist plank in their platform to woo the
female vote.
But in 1972 the party began its process of ritual self-immolation. That
year the DNC recommended the make-up of the National Convention
delegations be "in reasonable relationship" to the proportion of
minorities and women in each state. That guideline quickly became a
50-50 gender quota.
Suddenly ethnic Catholics, conservative southerners, and male union
workers, long the backbone of the party, were out in the cold. And the
Dems found themselves sucked into the vortex of feminist-socialist
agenda.
The Reign of the Femocrats had begun.
If there is one person who can take credit for the Democrats' rapid
descent into hysterical irrelevance, she would be Eleanor Smeal, former
president of the N.O.W. It was Smeal who first ballyhooed the notion of
the gender voting gap, and used it to bludgeon reluctant Dems to embrace
the rad-fem manifesto.
While it was a matter of record that the men's and women's vote
sometimes aligned differently, it was less clear which political party
would become the beneficiaries of that gap.
In early 1984 Smeal guaranteed the Democrats would enjoy a 10% boost if
they selected a female presidential running mate. So that July the
Democrats announced Walter Mondale's right-hand gal would be Geraldine
Ferraro. But four months later, only 44% of female voters voted for the
Mondale-Ferraro ticket, handing Ronald Reagan a historic landslide
victory.
No comment from Ms. Smeal about that sure-fire 10% margin of victory.
In 1985, EMILY's List arrived on the scene, funneling millions of
dollars to Democratic candidates who advocated abortion. EMILY's List
would eventually help elect 61 members of Congress, 11 senators, and
eight governors, all of them proponents of a death-dealing ideology.
Three years later Michael Dukakis tapped lady-in-lavender Susan Estrich
to head up his presidential campaign. Then Dukakis waffled on what he
would do if his wife was raped and murdered. Overnight his polling
numbers plummeted, and Bush Senior waltzed into the Oval Office.
In 1992 the "two-for-the-price-of one" Clintons came to power.
Practically overnight, Hillary became the darling of the Democratic left
and feminist ideology became the
operating
principle for the executive
branch of the federal government.
Eight years later, still determined to capitalize on the elusive gender
voting gap, Al Gore had one of his Alan Alda moments and selected Donna
Brazile to manage his campaign. No one seemed to mind that Brazile's
columns in Ms. Magazine consistently played the gender-victim card.
And in the 2004 go-around, the Dems chose hen-pecked John Kerry, the man
who admitted during one debate, "And my daughters and my wife are people
who just are filled with that sense of what's right, what's wrong. They
also kick me around."
What of Smeal's now-famous gender voting gap? From 1976 to 2004, the DNC
managed to increase its share of the female vote by exactly one
percentage point. That's right -- in 1976, 50% of the ladies opted for
Mr. Carter. Twenty-eight years later, John Kerry garnered 51% of the
soccer-mom vote.
And what of the NASCAR dads? They abandoned the Democratic party in
droves. While 50% of men voted for Carter in 1976, only 44% of the guys
selected Mr. Kerry in 2004, translating into a 3.5 million vote gap
favoring Mr. Bush.
In the seven elections from 1980 to 2004, the once-noble Democratic
party has managed to prevail in only two contests. The conclusion is
clear: The gender voting gap usually operates to the
benefit
of the
Republicans, thanks to consistently strong support from men.
The Democratic party now appears to be caught in a mental paralysis,
incapable of coming up with constructive solutions to the Iraqi war,
acknowledging the existence of the Social Security crisis, or reversing
the break-down of the American family. The Femocrats can't even engage
in honest debate that goes beyond boo-hoo stories, stale clichés, and
Nazi comparisons.
The Democratic party has become intellectually vacuous, psychologically
emasculated, and morally bankrupt. Call it the death knell of the DNC.
Carey Roberts has
been published frequently in the Washington Times, Townhall.com,
LewRockwell.com, ifeminists.net, Intellectual Conservative, and
elsewhere. He is a staff reporter for the New Media Alliance.
