political campaigns

An article in the Houston Chronicle today notes that women in Texas are torn. But I just got off a briefing call with pollster Celinda Lake, who reminded that women in both Texas and Ohio are leaning Hillary.

Celinda also noted the following 5 things about this extraordinary election:

1. The magnitude of the gender gap has reached historic proportions.
2. Turnout models have never been so off.
3. The extent to which the economy has supplanted Iraq as the #1 issue is momentous.
4. Early voting is 4-5 times what it’s been in the past.

And my personal favorite:

5. Younger voters are turning out 2,3, and 4 times as much in certain states as in the past.

Rebecca London, Ph.D., is Director of Research at Stanford University’s John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities. Rebecca lives on California’s central coast with her husband and two school-age daughters. She’s frequently quoted in the press as an expert on poverty, youth, and working motherhood. Here she is! -GWP

The New York Times reported last Monday that people who lack health insurance tend to receive cancer diagnoses later in the stages of their illness, making treatment more costly and survival less likely (“Study Finds Cancer Diagnosis Linked to Insurance”). This finding, though horrific, is fairly predictable given previous research on health insurance coverage. Numerous studies have shown that lack of health insurance can be detrimental because uninsured patients tend to not receive regular or preventive care, their undiagnosed or under-medicated conditions thrive in the absence of such care, and when medical crisis escalates, they find their way into the emergency room and subject to exorbitant medical bills.

What is unusual – indeed frightening – about the study reported in the Times is that the findings apply not only to those with no insurance, but also to those who are insured by Medicaid, the health insurance program for poor adults and children. Medicaid should work like private health insurance, offering its subscribers access to preventive and acute-need health care on a timely and low-cost basis. However, it is well known that Medicaid reimbursement rates to doctors are lower than reimbursements from private insurers, and come with a tremendous amount of bureaucratic paperwork. Many medical professionals opt to not provide treatment to those covered by the program simply because it is not cost effective to do so.

The result: expanding inequality in access to health care with truly dire health consequences.

In this election year, any politician who tells us that universal health care is not needed to fix the U.S. health care crisis is avoiding a painful truth. Expanding Medicaid is not an option if we want to ensure health care access to everyone. We need to look back to the dark days of Hillary’s universal health care plan failure and critically analyze what happened with it in order to create a fresh version that will be palatable to policymakers and the public. Maybe a decade later, we’re ready to make a critical move.

Ellen Goodman had an interesting column last Friday (“The Female Style — Modeled By a Man”) in which she notes that Hillary Clinton has become “the tough guy in the race” and Barack Obama “the Oprah candidate.”

As Goodman explains, “He was the quality circle man, the uniter-not-divider, the person who believes we can talk to anyone, even our enemies. He finely honed a language usually associated with women’s voices.” She quotes political science professor Kathleen Dolan, who sees Obama as “the embodiment of the gentle, collaborative style without threatening his masculine side.” Dolan adds, “He’s being more feminine than she can be. She is in a much tighter box.”

Goodman offers a brief history of leadership studies and concludes with a provocative question: “So, has the women’s movement made life easier? For another man?”

I spoke to Goodman for her piece but she didn’t end up quoting me. I wish I could have referred her to both Renee Cramer and J.K. Gayle, who were having a similar conversation here on GWP, while I was off feeding sheep!

In his astute response to Renee’s post, J.K. Gayle shares some great links, which I wanted to share with everyone here. Comments J.K.:

Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, the world’s greatest scholar on womanly discourse and on presidential rhetoric, has conceded (to some of us at a conference recently) that Barack Obama is using feminist rhetoric. Kohrs Campbell is the one who wrote that famous “Hating Hillary” article a while back, in which she looked at the rhetorics of hate around Clinton. (I asked if she thought Toni Morrison, who endorses Obama, could fairly call him, if elected, “our first woman president.” Kohrs Campbell, who likes the idea of a true woman president sooner rather than later, replies: “yes, you could call him a ‘womanly’ presidential candidate.”)

In a related post, Hugo Schwyzer offers “A few notes on feminism, symbols, and youthful Obamophilia.”

(Ellen, ask me again, and I will refer you to GWP readers!)

I’m delighted to bring you this guest post this morning from Renee Cramer (pictured left), an assistant professor of Law, Politics, and Society at Drake University in Des Moines, IA. Renee’s recent scholarly work has focused on intersections of race and class in American Indian law and politics and has been published by the University of Oklahoma Press (Cash, Color, and Colonialism) and several academic journals. Here’s Renee!

This Bridge Called Barack

Andrew Sullivan recently wrote that Barack Obama is the only presidential candidate – either Republican or Democrat – who can bring the United States out of the morass that is the “Culture Wars” and into a saner, more peaceful future. Sullivan wrote that Obama is the candidate who can “bridge th[e] widening partisan gulf” in American politics, suture the fissures created by divisive discourse on religion, and connect the generational divide that typifies Baby Boomer Era politics and rubs those of us in Generations X and Y the wrong way.

Sullivan pictures Obama as the bridge to the future that Bill Clinton sold us on, the bridge to the 21st century. And Sullivan’s right. It is useful, indeed, inspiring, to envision Barack Obama and his candidacy as a bridge that takes us beyond where the Clinton administration left off, and from which the Bush administration has tragically backtracked.

This vision – of Obama as a bridge – is a powerful one for many reasons. But for me, its powerful because it brings to mind the mind-blowing, transcendent work of Gloria Anzuldua. Hermana Anzuldua wrote Borderlands – La Frontera: The New Mestiza, which was published by Spinsters/Aunt Lute press in 1987 and went on to become an often assigned, much cited, lovingly read classic in feminism, Chicano/a studies, and queer theory. In elaborating the title of that book, the late Anzuldua wrote, “the Borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle, and upper classes touch, where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy.”

Barack Obama inhabits these borderlands. As the African American son of a “white” Midwestern woman and an African man, he lives on the borderlands of racial identity in the United States. As someone who has lived with varying degrees of material comfort, as a former community organizer with an Ivy League education, he occupies the borderlands of social and economic class. As a man who publicly celebrates being married to a strong woman, and the father of two daughters, he lives on the borderlands of gender relations. As a person who has lived for extended periods abroad, in developing nations, and who has crafted a persona of calm and compassionate rationality on the world stage, Obama has potential to change the face of the United States in the international arena; he is on the borderlands and the frontier of US foreign policy.

As a powerful campaigner who connects as well in small settings as large venues, indeed, Obama shrinks space with intimacy.

But it is not Anzuldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera that Sullivan’s piece evoked for me – rather, it is her earlier work, the edited volume that she and Cherrie Moraga compiled, titled, famously This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, and published in 1981.

That groundbreaking collection was utterly transformational – for scholarship, for women of color, for me (a Midwesterner, a “white” girl), when I read it in college in the early 1990s. The book juxtaposes disparate female voices, in a multitude of languages, attitudes, genres and guises. In it, writers like Audre Lorde call for a “radical restructuring” of the United States – they call for liberation, justice, and subversion. They argued that these transformations could occur in the most intimate of places – the home, the person, the body – as well as in the halls of government and the workings of the law.

NPR’s Tom Ashbrook noted in an interview with Sullivan that Obama’s candidicay, at this particular point in US history, is like a “miracle of American culture.” Anzuldua’s writings, her demarcation of the borderlands, her indigenista mestijae message, her ability to collaborate, to hold onto her idea of self while transcending identity politics – those, as well, are miracles of a truly American culture. I see them embodied in the Obama campaign.

Anzaldua’s writing was called, by Patrisia Gonzales and Roberto Rodriguez in their weblog’s obituary for the author, “honest as a cactus.” Obama would likely smile at that phrase. Certainly he has his own tendencies for telling prickly truths, like when he famously spoke about raising auto emission standards, not at an environmental rally, but in front of United Auto Workers members and assembly line workers in Detroit, and when he is frank about the costs of some of his proposed programs, and candid about the costs of the campaign on his personal life.

Some feminists have argued that Hillary Clinton is the candidate we must support, primarily because she is a woman. And lately, supporters of Clinton have accused Obama of sexist language on the campaign trail, as when he said that she “periodically” attacks his campaign, when she’s “down” in the polls.

But my brand of feminism is an anti-essentialist, transformational politics. It is not a reductivist regressive identity politics that sees insult and victimization in the most innocent of phrases. Barack Obama’s very identity requires an anti-essentialist stance. And his refusal to play the race card in the face of clearly racializing language from his opponents refuses the victim cast. Like Anzuldua’s writings, the potential of Obama’s candidacy is “transformational,” as Sullivan writes – transformational of the culture wars, of America’s image abroad, of our sense of responsibility to each other, and of our cynicism and apathy towards “politics as usual.”

In his hybridity, in his transformational and historic campaign, in his focus on empowering and employing the grassroots of American democracy, I see Obama as the most feminist candidate currently running. Certainly, he is a bridge – not a bridge to the dubious promises of the 21st century; but a bridge that evokes the promises of the borderland, the understanding and acknowledgment that American democracy has, as Gloria Anzaldua and Cherrie Moraga reminded us, been built on the backs of others who came before.

He is A Bridge Called Barack.

You can reach the author at renee.cramer@drake.edu. And thank you to Shira Tarrant for making the connection!

Well, she inspires the heck out of me. And Jennifer Baumgardner too.

There’s a pro-Hillary letter going around that I thought I’d post here, since tomorrow’s GUEST POST is pro-Obama. (Please note: this is not Girl with Pen playing it both ways, but rather Girl with Pen very much wanting to maintain an open forum where readers and guest posters are free to share their opinions!) Here’s the letter, for those who might be interested, with info about how to sign on, below….

Feminists for Clinton

We are women who support Hillary Clinton for the presidency of the United States. We do so because we believe that she will be the best president for the entire country. And as feminists, we also believe that Clinton is the best choice for attending to issues of special importance to women.

We write to you now because it’s time for feminists to say that Senator Obama has no monopoly on inspiration. We are among the millions of women and men who have been moved to action by her. Six months ago, some of us were committed to her candidacy, some of us weren’t, but by now we all find ourselves passionately supporting her. Brains, grace under pressure, ideas, and the skill to make them real: we call that inspiring. The restoration of good government after eight years of devastation, a decent foreign policy with ties to world leaders restored, withdrawal from Iraq and universal health care: we call that exciting. And the record to prove that she can and will stand up to the swift-boating that will come any Democratic nominee’s way: we call that absolutely necessary.

Clinton’s enormous contributions as Senator, public servant, spokesperson for better family policies and the needs of hard-pressed women and children are widely known and recognized-even by her opponent. Her powerful, inspiring advocacy of the human rights of women at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1994 was heralded around the world as a stunning departure from the normal anodyne role of First Lady. Corporate special interests managed to defeat the health care program she advocated in 1994. But she kept on fighting, acknowledging her mistakes, and in ensuing years she succeeded in winning expanded coverage for children. Now she has crafted the only sensible and truly universal health care proposal now before the voters.

On the Iraq war, many of us believe she made a major mistake in voting for Joint Resolution 114 in 2002-along with the 28 other Democratic senators, including John Edwards and John Kerry. But we also note that her current opponent, when asked about that resolution in 2004, responded that he did not know how he would have voted had he been in Congress then. We do not know either. But we do know that at the time, his opposition to the war carried no risks and indeed, promised to pay big dividends in his liberal Democratic district.

Now, the two candidates have virtually the same plan for withdrawal from Iraq. And on the critical, broader issues of foreign policy, we believe that Senator Clinton is far more consistent, knowledgeable, modest, and realistic-stressing intense diplomacy on all questions and repairing our ties with world leaders.

We are keenly aware right now much is at stake-not just on national and international security, but on the economy, universal health care, the environment, and more. Our country needs a president who knows the members and workings of Congress, and has a proven record on Capitol Hill of persuading sympathizers, bringing along fence-sitters, and disarming opponents. There is an irony in her opponent’s claim to be able to draw in Republicans, while dismissing her proven record of working with them as a legislator. We need a president who understands how to make changes real, from small things like the predatory student loan industry to large things like the Middle East. Hillary Clinton has the experience, knowledge and wisdom to deal with this wide range of issues.

Our country also needs a president who has a thorough mastery of “details”-yes, details – after eight years of Bush and Cheney. The job of restoring good government is overwhelming, and will require more than “inspiration” to accomplish it. We believe that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Justice Department, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control, the Environmental Protection Agency, and many more can be restored to full and effective functioning only by a president who understands their scope, regulations, personnel, problems and history. Knowing these “details” and acting on them are essential to begin the healing and recuperation of the country.

How many of us have heard brilliant and resourceful women in the workplace dismissed or devalued for “detail-orientation” in contrast to a man’s supposed “big picture” scope? How many of us have seen what, in a man, would be called “peerless mastery,” get called, in a woman’s case, “narrowness”? How many women have we known-truly gifted workers, professionals, and administrators-who have been criticized for their reserve and down-to-earth way of speaking? Whose commanding style, seriousness, and get-to-work style are criticized as “cold” and insufficiently “likable”? These prejudices have been scandalously present in this campaign.

With all this in mind, we believe that Hillary Clinton is the best candidate for president, because she is the surest to remove the wreckage and secure the future. Politics is not magic. Hillary Clinton as president promises what government at its best can truly offer: wise decision-making and lasting change.

If you wish to sign on, please send your name to Ellen Dubois (edubois@history.ucla.edu). Please include any relevant affiliations and titles.

Ellen Carol Dubois, Professor of History, University of California, Los Angeles Christine Stansell, Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago

Maureen Dowd’s “A Flawed Feminist Test,” which appeared last Wednesday in the NYTimes, generated much heat, of course, in the feminist blogosphere. I am only just catching up. But I am thrilled–thrilled!–to share this letter published in the NYTimes last week by “Making It Pop” graduate Alisa Guthrie! GO ALISA! On so many levels.

CNN now has a 3 minute video up from their 1-hour exploration of race, gender, and politics on Friday. In it, CNN’s Randi Kaye talks with a group of women about the “unavoidable issues of race and sex over Clinton and Obama.” And speaking of spectacle, on March 31, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at my alma mater (the University of Michigan) will be offering one of theirs. The event is called “Status and Spectacle: Stagings of Gender, Race, and Class in U.S. Popular Culture” and I wish I could teleport and attend. The poster they sent me has this amazing image of the Hollywood Canteen for Service Men, white service men casually strolling in on one side, “colored” service men rigidly lined up on the other, waiting, it seems for the white boys to go in. Among the topics to be covered: southern culture, white manhood, and the 1956 assault of Nat “King” Cole; Gretchen Wilson and the country rhetoric of the “virile female”; and clashing configurations of class, race, gender, rank, and celebrity at the Hollywood Canteen.

(The event will take place from 4-6pm at the Michigan Union, for those in the area! For more info, call 734.764.9537)

Check out this article in the New York Post for the latest on intergenerational tensions among women and the Obama-Clinton divide. Aside from the racy headline–“LIPSTICK JUNGLE: WHY YOUNG WOMEN ARE VOTING FOR OBAMA — AND LEAVING OLDER HILLARY SUPPORTERS FUMING”– I thought the article was actually quite thoughtful. I was interviewed for the piece but fear I safe-talked my way out of being quoted. I was concerned that the piece was likely to offer more of a catfight angle, which as a personal policy I adamantaly refuse to play into. Kudos to reporter Maureen Callahan for her coverage, I say! See if you agree, and let me know what you think.

Finally, some great commentary on the illusive nature of that much-coveted chimera — the woman voter. Check out this interesting commentary and counterpoint in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, titled “Where Do Women Voters Stand After Super Tuesday?”, and Marie Wilson’s refreshing take on the current feminist debates around the Democratic candidates this week, over at the White House Project’s blog, Change Everything. Writes Marie:

The historic candidacies of Sens. Clinton and Obama have now made it impossible to talk about the generic “woman voter”–and that alone is a triumph for women of all stripes. Now, we are learning to talk about women as they really are: individuals who differ by race, class, age and geographic location, who will make different choices in candidates based on their different experiences of and in the world. That’s good for our democracy because it bring a chorus of new voices, perspectives, and issues to the table. It creates a more robust national conversation, a more representative plate of issues to address, and a population that is encouraged and inspired to take a more active role in the political process — which is good for all of us.

As someone who came to the women’s movement during the “second wave,” I know how our differences can be a source of pride as well as contention. And I’m happy that women aren’t being seen or acting as if we are all alike, because it’s our prerogative to be the authentic individuals that we are. Further, I see it as a privilege that we women can now feel comfortable disagreeing with each other on the public stage. In the past, disagreement was something we felt we couldn’t afford, so we had these conversations mostly behind closed doors and behind each other’s backs.

Nowhere are we seeing a more dynamic picture of our newfound comfort with discussing our political differences than in the online universe, which has most recently been a launching point for some passionate debates concerning our first female candidate. Renowned leaders of women’s causes are vocally disagreeing, and for every well-known feminist who offers commentary on this historic election, hundreds of lesser-knowns are contributing too, with often eloquent and moving language about why they are supporting Obama or Clinton. When it’s all over, the women’s movement will have a trove of spirited, intelligent, and diverse debates documented as part of our rich, evolving history. This, too, is a good thing — though you might not know it from reading the press coverage.

Men disagree often. It is seen as the natural order of things, and no one gets alarmed. When women have open disagreements, it’s different. The press revs it up, exploiting the healthy ritual of debate as hostile, destructive, divisive. But we know better. At the heart of the matter, we know that we are jointly committed to the causes that have always been women’s issues — we just have differing views on how to get there. What we are seeing is the maturing of a movement and the ability of its members to thoughtfully disagree. Let’s resist the urging of the media to divide and conquer what we hold as true — and instead celebrate this monumental year as we continue to move the women’s movement into the 21st century.

Amen to all that I say.

Some amazing get-out-the-vote work going on this season:

I may be late to this one, but I just learned about CitizenJanePolitics, the “modern girl’s guide to picking leaders of the free world. If that doesn’t merit a “go girl” holler, I don’t know what does.

Meanwhile Women’s Voices, Women’s Vote just launched a national voter registration drive aimed at the 15 million unmarried women who are not registered to vote. The nonpartisan org is dedicated to increasing the number of unmarried women participating in our democracy and is mailing voter registration forms to more than 4.1 million homes in 22 states.

Finally, ya’ll know that Thursday is Valentine’s Day, but did you know it’s also the 88th birthday of the League of Women Voters? The nonpartisan org continues to do great work, providing trustworthy and balanced resources to citizens and lawmakers and getting out the vote. To send them a valentine of continued support, you can click here.

P.S. U.S. Census data shows unmarried women now represent more than 26 percent of the eligible voting age population. In the last presidential election in 2004, of the 20 million who did not participate, nearly 15 million were not registered and another 5 million were registered but did not vote. Compared to married women, single women are 9 percentage points less likely to register and 13 percentage points less likely to vote.

(Image cred)