On Palin, Sexism, and What Women Want.

Great Debates
1

I’m sure some of us can agree on several issues involving the Republican choice of Palin as their Vice Presidential Nominee: 1) that it has lit the fire under the conservative right voting republicans. 2) It shows McCain’s ability to act outside of the box. 3) Palin showed a certain amount of gumption accepting the role.

I think McCain camp has been hoping the “Palin Effect” will steward him right into the oval office. However, many women in the United States and her home state of Alaska disagree with that notion, saying “Palin is absolutely not ready to lead the nation should McCain die during office.” and “Palin has flip-flopped on major issues in Alaska including earmarks and the infamous Bridge to nowhere”.

Furthermore, NPRthis morning showcased several women talking on each side of the Palin coin. One the one hand some women say she is the right choice to energize and give voice to thousands of silenced women … and on the other hand they say she is a horrible choice for the #2 spot in the land and that eventhough she is a working mom, she may have her priorities a little misaligned with an infant child at home. It seems women are split however, more women are wondering about her judgement, as well as McCain’s judgement in choosing someone like Palin to take the VP slot. To some women this loooks like a clear sign of McCain pandering for the Hillary Supporters who were not happy with the way the primaries were conducted. And for other women, this looks like a completely irresponsible choice on the republican side.

One of the women that I found to be most interesting was a lifelong republican working mother who was angered at McCain for picking someone so unqualified in foreign affairs, and national politics she considered voting for the democratic candidate.

What I find intriguing is the dichotomy of women voters out there, those who support the GOP simply because Palin is a women, and those who are voting issues who think Palin was a choice that does not reflect the good judgement they are looking for from a VP choice, and a presidential hopeful.

Debate wise, in terms of what women want - where does Governor Palin rank in areas where she will undoubtedly be tested, like ability to conduct foreign policy and congressional relations?

In my opinion McCain has a duty to explain to the nation the specific roles the vice president would play in the next administration - and how exactly would Palin conduct those roles. In the end I believe people will vote on issues and not gender, we’ll see.

2

Given that McCain just went through the whole primary process with one of his main opponents being Hillary Clinton, I would tend to disagree with your initial point (2) that this demonstrates McCain is able to act outside the box, when he and everybody involved in this year’s process has been outside the box the entire time. Then again, I would guess that he damn well better be able to act outside the box, since that’s where everybody is. Eh.

I think it would be refreshingly interesting to see a Presidential candidate lay out exactly what he expected the VP to do, since it’s been the tacet assumption for most of my life that the main goal of the VP candidate has been to get the Presidential candidate elected, and everything else is gravy.

In the case of Sarah Palin, it would also be interesting to see how McCain expects her to help him get elected, because I’m still not convinced that was a good choice, or a clearly-explained one; if he wanted to think way outside the box, he should have picked Hillary as his VP candidate.

3

Well, colour me politically ignorant, but I thought McCain’s main opponents during the primary process were other Republicans.

Learn something new every day…

4

FYI: Some of the shine may be wearing off.

I will say I doubt most women will vote McCain/Palin just because Palin is a woman. Doubtless there are some few who will but I think most women are as concerned about the issues as anyone else and will not vote based on the gender of the candidates. At most for women it might be a nice thing to have but is very low on the list of important criteria to them.

Clearly Palin severely lacks the experience necessary to be POTUS should McCain have a grabber. Whether she can get enough on the job training beforehand (should that happen) is anyone’s guess and depends how McCain will make use of his VP. As such I think McCain answering the question now of what role he expects her to play is of critical importance. Historically VPs have been anywhere from seat warmers to very active so we just cannot intuit how this would work out.

5

The idea that women would vote for the Republicans over the Democrats over charges of sexism makes my brain ache in a way that all theDemocratic Excedrin in the world can’t help. On one side we have perceived sexism from the party because they somehow failed to act when Hillary was supposedly savaged by the press.

On the other we have the most mysoginistic campaign I have ever seen. First they trot out Sarah Palin so we can all say, “Omg she’s a she!” Next they manufacture the SAVAGE (omg!) and BRUTAL (noes!) attacks by Obama’s campaign against her and her family to convince morons to please save the poor damsel in distress by contributing to the campaign! Of course, they can’t and won’t provide any examples of this heinous abuse.

This sexist theme they developed flowed nicely into their next ad, where they lament compeletely manufactured attacks from Obama, saying “How disrespectful. :(” Oh no, she got her little feelings hurt because Obama said she lied about the stuff she lied about (the rest of the ad is pure fiction). And the left actually wants to look into what she’s saying instead of just accepting everything at face value! Noooeeesss!!!

Then there was the press issue. She wasn’t talking to the press. Why wasn’t she talking to the press? Was it because she was woefully unprepared and would undoubtedly shoot down the campaign like an errant duck on the moose range? Of course not! It was because they were concerned that the media (those bastards) wouldn’t treat her with the proper amount of respect and deference. DEFERENCE! We must have deference! :lol: As I’m typing this she’s now been the nominee for almost three weeks now, and she’s given a grand total of ONE interview. And no I don’t count Hannity.

Can you see any of the above happening with a male candidate? Of course not. This campaign is the very definition of sexism, and I hope women who are voting on that alone (and I suspect it’s a small group who look at it that way) come to understand it.

6

According to a poll in today’s New York Times,

7

The part that pisses me off is that by chosing Palin, McCain undermined all the hard work that all the QUALIFIED women have done. There are many more qualified people, but he chose a bimbo. In my opinion, he re-glazed the glass ceiling. People who may have had reservations about women in high places are now being reinforced in thinking they can’t handle it.

8

I’m not sure exactly where you want this discussion to go, but I thought I’d at least respond to this bit of your OP. One of the most infuriating things about McCain’s choice of Palin is that it seems to be based on an idea that women will/ought to support a woman candidate just because she is a woman. Over in a different thread, another poster went so far as to call non-supporters of Palin’s ‘cunts’ who just didn’t like her because she didn’t march in lockstep with NOW’s ideals of feminism but instead presented some other (undefined) model all her own.

She’s not qualified. She’s uninformed about national and international issues. She’s conducted herself during her mayoralty and governership in ways that I find reprehensible. She’s been lying about her conduct since being chosen as VP candidate. And her political views happen to be diametrically opposed to my own.

Look, I’m a progressive, liberal Democrat. I wasn’t going to be voting Republican this election for any reason short of personality-altering lobotomy or sudden divine intervention. I voted in the Democratic primary, but not for Hillary, so I don’t have that particular axe to grind.

Palin’s lack of experience and qualifications make her, in my mind, an insulting choice by McCain – as if he’s saying to American women (and especially disenchanted former Hillary-supporters), “Hey, look at this, ladies – I picked a woman as a running mate! You should like that! Vote for me!” It’s really icky to be told (either implicitly or explicitly) that I ought to support this woman because she’s a woman and I’m a woman and so what am I bitching about?

On the other hand, I’m really disgusted when I hear people talk about her status as a mother being a potentially disqualifying concern. That, I think, is actually sexist and harmful to women’s rights and should not go unchallenged. I don’t believe it would be an issue if she were a man with an infant son rather than a woman with one.

This is a long response that may not really be to the point that you wanted to address. And even at this length I don’t feel like I’ve adequately expressed my central point, which is – Why wouldn’t there be a difference of opinion among women voters about Sarah Palin? We don’t have a hive mind, you know. It’s not like we see somebody with two X chromosomes and automatically clasp her to our bosom as a sister and agree with everything she says. I had reasons for preferring other Democratic candidates to Hillary and voting as I did in the primary, and I have reasons for disliking McCain’s choice of Palin for a VP. I’m okay with that. I don’t feel like it makes me any less a woman. (Or, for that matter, more of a cunt, as that other poster seemed to think).

Perhaps some women will think it’s swell that there’s a woman on the ticket and will vote Republican just for that reason. Some will actually share her views on abortion, sex education, creationism, book-banning, environmentalism, energy, foreign policy or the whole rape kit thing, in which case they were almost certainly going to vote Republican anyway. Others, perhaps, simply won’t care enough about these issues to outweigh the good feeling they’ll get when they vote for a ticket with a woman on it. I can’t imagine myself into the thought processes of a woman in either of those categories.

But again, I’m a Democrat, so this isn’t really supposed to make sense to me, I guess.

9

I’m always the first person to cop to political ignorance, so we’re in the same boat; I just remember a lot more headlines over the past year as being McCain vs. Clinton or McCain vs. Obama, rather than McCain vs. the other serious Republican candidates, to the extent that I don’t actually remember the names of any of the other Republican candidates.

10

Well…McCain had essentially wrapped up the Republican nomination early so there really weren’t other Republican candidates for him to bicker with or the media to pick over. In that vacuum they inserted Obama/Clinton as his rivals.

11

This is an odd yet very true fact of this campaign that I have scratched my head about as well. I remember when Edwards dropped off, and Clinton and Obama were starting their true sparring sessions…I wondered to myself where were the republican’s candidates were? McCain was so far under the radar, maybe that’s because the national news was concentrating on the other historical race…where looking at an old white guy running for the pubby position was SOS.

I think his choice is too little, too late. But we will see.

12

I don’t think the mere fact that she has given birth in the past is what people are concerned about. The vice-presidency is not any old job, so having an infant with Down’s syndrome could potentially bite into the time she needs to devote to it.

And would a woman in a powerful position really be able to neglect an infant child to the same degree that a man in a powerful position would be.

13

Why not? Is there any reason her husband cannot be the primary caregiver in her stead? Certainly we would hold the reverse to be ok (that a wife could stay home with the kids while the husband jetted around on VPOTUS business).

14

That’s a false dichotomy. Either women like here solely because she’s a woman, or else they are issue voters who don’t like her?

What about the women Democrats who don’t like her simply because she is a woman (A ‘bimbo’, in Kalhoun’s terms), or else women who like her because of her stances on issues?

15

Well [devils advocate hat on] some women actually think it is the woman who should stay home and help raise a child. [/devils advocacy hat off]
I’ve heard a number of times on NPR women saying she needs to be closer and more intuned with her infant son. Not away on business 24/7.

I would like to see numbers on women who like her because of her stance on issues, that seems to be one of her biggest downfalls as of right now. She barely has a stance on issues like foreign policy and congressional relations.

16

Sorry, my paragraph that you were responding to was worded poorly. I agree that most of those people who identify this as an issue are focusing on the infant-with-Downs-syndrome-as-worthy-distraction, not merely on the fact that she has children. I just believe this would not be an issue if she were a father rather than a mother, and I agree with Whack-a-mole that there’s no earthly reason she shouldn’t be as able to ‘neglect’ (to use your word) her child as her husband would be were their career positions reversed.

17

Right. And I identify that as anti-feminist claptrap that should be opposed wherever it’s encountered. YMMV.

18

I see your point Aholibah - in her situation in particular, if positions were reversed would her husband be gone as much as she will be as VP?

19

Todd Palin took a leave of absence from his job at BP last year but returned to a job on the North Slope so he wouldn’t lose his pension benefits. He is also a crab fisherman. With dad way up north and mom on the campaign trail the child is apparently being raised by surrogates. How do women feel about that?

20

I’m not sure I understand what it is about her particular situation that would affect the amount of travel she’d be doing. In fact, we don’t have much information about what McCain/Palin think her duties as VPOTUS would be. I’ve heard that McCain’s take on the VP’s duties is: “To inquire each morning as to the state of the President’s health.” (I could go on a cite hunt for that if anybody feels it necessary – I just heard it on the radio yesterday in an interview with the guy who’s just written a book about Cheney, Gelman I think his name is.) Palin herself has famously remarked that she doesn’t know what the VP is supposed to do. So maybe she’d have a very limited brief, in fact, and there would be nothing to prevent her devoting simply scads of time to her youngest child, unless and until McCain kicks off.