Women is a big word

[Ta-Nehisi]

Obama vs. [InsertInterestGroupHere] is the standard story for big media these days. It began over year and half ago, here at home, with this trumped up question of "blackness." Heh, Peter Bienert memorably called it "Good black" vs. the "Bad Black." That one still makes me laugh. I don't think I'll ever forget Shelby Steele going on Hardball to proclaim that because Hillary Clinton, on the basis of her identification with Al Sharpton, was "in many ways blacker" than Barack Obama. Steele wasn't alone, Deborah Dickerson, Stanley Crouch and Andrew Young all played on the same theme.

All of these cats are over fifty, and I think, were reflecting a notion of race that had been shaped by the culture wars. When Obama declared his presidency, they simply applied to him the same rules they'd used in the 80s and 90s, with no sense that things had changed. The "not black enough" line was lazy thinking that backed up this idea that we spend our days thinking about white people, and all the ways we can make them feel guilty.

Now we have moved on to Obama vs Jews, Obama vs. Appalachia and Obama vs. Women. I was thinking about this after I read E.J. Dionne's piece, which is one in a series of articles that warns of potential backlash among women voters against Obama. Much like the "not black enough" stories, the piece is based mostly on anecdotes and punditry. One thing I've learned in my time doing this job is that you can string together five or six quotes about nearly anything. I could probably get seven or eight accredited scientists to tell me UFOs existed.

I don't think there's much of question as to whether gender/sexism affected the election. The need for pundits to comment on Hillary's appearance has always seemed bizarre to me. But I'm leery of confusing anecdotes from a few voluble Hillary supporters, with women voters en masse. On average, Barack Obama lost the female vote to Clinton by six points. In many states like Vermont, Virginia, Missouri and Utah, he actually won the female vote. In Wisconsin, he tied Clinton. Thus this idea that there are great numbers of women who really believe that Clinton was robbed strikes me as also as hokum.

Media feeds on conflict, and the flatter the conflict, the easier it is to write. But one of the great revelations of this election is how diverse America really is. We tend to get hung up on small--but important--factors, like Obama's problem in Appalachia. But I'm just going to level with you--there is no way I thought a black man would ever carry Oregon and Iowa and then also get 90 percent of the black vote. What that says to me is that there is so much out there that I really don't know. And that I also should stop blogging so much, and get out more.

Comments

All of these cats are over fifty...

but they can still swing it, daddy-o.
outta sight, man.

Posted by cleek | May 30, 2008 9:19 AM

Thus this idea that there are great numbers of women who really believe that Clinton was robbed strikes me as also as hokum.

I agree, but...there are a lot of women out there. It doesn't have to be a very big percentage of women --or even a very big percentage of older white women--to make a difference. It wouldn't kill him to pick Sebelius.

how diverse America really is.

This I totally agree with. It's a nation of 300 million. I'm at the point where I'm instinctively distrustful of specific claims made about "Americans" (as distinct from some subcategory thereof).

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | May 30, 2008 9:30 AM

Re "We tend to get hung up on small--but important--factors, like Obama's problem in Appalachia. "
---------------
The United Mine Workers union -- a major force in Appalachian politics --endorsed Obama the other day.

Posted by Don Williams | May 30, 2008 9:47 AM

I came to a realization this morning. The DNC and the media have been working together to sink the Clinton campaign from the beginning. Why else schedule the Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting the same weekend as the Sex and the City premiere? Anti-womyn!

Posted by janine | May 30, 2008 9:53 AM

Well, you're never going to get to be a big time pundit if you're going to refuse to talk up conflict based on a few anecdotes. Saying false things in an angry manner will make you successful.

Posted by some ass | May 30, 2008 9:54 AM

Gee--As it happens, Pew has just come out with a survey indicating a sharp erosion in Obama's support among white women; whereas in February he was viewed positively by 56 percent, now he's down to 43 percent. Among Democratic white women, since February Obama's negatives have gone from 21 percent to 35 per cent [His negatives among men--20 percent--have hardly budged over that period]. Given that a considerable majority of Democratic voters have been women, I'd say 35 percent of them is a "great number." I'm in Obama's corner, but I really think this is cause for concern, and can't be brushed off as "hokum."

Posted by David in Nashville | May 30, 2008 9:55 AM

I'd agree with everything you said, but I wouldn't lump Debbie Dickerson in with the rest of those guys.

When she was saying that Obama wasn't culturally black, she wasn't using it as a pejorative, and I think she clarified her position a lot in the BloggingHeads she did with Ross Douthat (well worth watching by the way).

And yeah, that's certainly a debatable point. I'd tend to think that Obama pretty much took up American cultural "blackness" as his own by going to Chicago, being active in their community, going to Trinity Church, marrying Michelle Obama, etc. etc. etc.

But there's something real in the observation that maybe growing up somewhat alien to mainstream American "blackness" means that your interests are somewhat different, and I agree with Debbie's point that there's too much ambiguity in the term "black" -- especially with regards to African immigrants.

Posted by Kiran | May 30, 2008 10:04 AM

Thus this idea that there are great numbers of women who really believe that Clinton was robbed strikes me as also as hokum.

You might want to take a peek at the comment threads over at Talk Left, lol. Now, of course this anecdotal evidence and I'm sure the commenters there are not representative of US women as a whole (and they are also not exclusively women), but I'd say that there is a sizeable number disgruntled women, who might not vote at all or even vote for McCain instead, because they feel that they've been robbed.

The need for pundits to comment on Hillary's appearance has always seemed bizarre to me.

There's certainly some sexism involved there, but I don't think everybody making fun of her appearance is a sexist - Hillary's appearance just invites sarcastic remarks. It's not a thing only women have to endure: Helmut Kohl (remember him?) was mercilessly criticized for his appearance (and his accent) for a very long time, and Steve Bell, the Guardian cartoonist, has that shtick down pat.

Posted by novakant | May 30, 2008 10:11 AM

please fill in the missing words, the heat seems to be getting to me

Posted by novakant | May 30, 2008 10:14 AM

"There's certainly some sexism involved there, but I don't think everybody making fun of her appearance is a sexist - Hillary's appearance just invites sarcastic remarks. It's not a thing only women have to endure: Helmut Kohl (remember him?) was mercilessly criticized for his appearance (and his accent) for a very long time, and Steve Bell, the Guardian cartoonist, has that shtick down pat.

Posted by novakant | May 30, 2008 10:11 AM"

There is something to that, but then again you have to look all the way to Germany to find something similar. I'm torn: on the one hand I find we don't make fun of people in power enough and if that means making fun of how a lot of white politicians look, then fine. On the other hand, there does seem to be a lot of evidence that female politicians get comments about their appearance a lot more in the press than men, even if it isn't judgmental. Part of this is that there is such a wider variety of professional attire available for women, especially in DC, where for men you can wear a dark suit with a white shirt and a red tie... or an even darker suit with a white shirt and a blue tie. There have been a lot of news articles I have just stopped reading halfway through because they kept commenting on, say, Pelosi's clothes for no real reason.

With that said, Clinton probably has had the most documented fashion faux pases (what's the plural of "faux pas"? Does the x at the end of "faux" do this? Can it even be plural?) of any major female politician in the US, but part of that has to do with her being on camera so much over the years. Then again, the nerd in middle school would be too embarrassed to wear those dumb glasses she used to have.

"Gee--As it happens, Pew has just come out with a survey indicating a sharp erosion in Obama's support among white women; whereas in February he was viewed positively by 56 percent, now he's down to 43 percent. Among Democratic white women, since February Obama's negatives have gone from 21 percent to 35 per cent [His negatives among men--20 percent--have hardly budged over that period]. Given that a considerable majority of Democratic voters have been women, I'd say 35 percent of them is a "great number." I'm in Obama's corner, but I really think this is cause for concern, and can't be brushed off as "hokum."

Posted by David in Nashville | May 30, 2008 9:55 AM"

Considering how narrow the time frame for this trend to occur has been, it worries me less than this would otherwise. A lot of this is probably Clinton supporters playing brinksmanship with pollsters, just as McCain supporters did in 2000. At the same time, Obama has also been gaining across many demographic groups, such as Latinos. Things will probably look a lot different in October and November once this nomination fight is over - but a lot of that hinges on Clinton bowing out gracefully and campaigning hard for Obama with white women (or self-imploding so horribly no one would want to admit to still supporting her).

Posted by Reality Man | May 30, 2008 10:27 AM

Novakant,

Three comments: 1. The more time that goes by between Obama getting the nomination/Hillary conceding and the election, the more time disgruntled women voters have to get it out of their system.

Conversely, if things drag on to Denver, and it's a bloody convention, there will be too little healing time, and McCain may just win (ironically, I would not have minded McCain as Pres in 2000, but he is the wrong man for the job this time out).

2. I particularly liked the last line in E. J. Dionne's piece ("It's a campaign, someone wins, someone doesn't win, that's life," she said. "But women don't want to be totally dissed.") because that reflects my thinking.

Yes, Hillary has a strong base of support. Yes, Hillary has a lot of people who like her. Yes, she has some admirable qualities.

But there is a risk inherent in running for office - that you may lose. And this is what's happened.

In any case, I also like the fact that this piece reflects on how women voter's anger is not directed at Obama PER SE (generally, I get the impression that Obama has been smart enough not to say anything derogatory about Hillary the person or Hillary the woman. He may disagree with Hillary the politician, but not the person or the woman).

3. One BIG way to calm down women voter's anger is to have Nancy Pelosi bring the hammer down in re: superdelegates.

What I'm saying is that if Pelosi, Dean and Reid are going to corral superdels into making a decision, it's a lot better if Pelosi (glass ceiling breaking Pelosi) is the face of the party unity decision.

It would be terrible if Reid or Dean are the faces of this.

Is Pelosi willing to burn up her own political capital on this?

I think so, because she probably will make sure Obama knows she took a bullet for him (as it where).

Posted by JRVJ | May 30, 2008 10:30 AM

"Now we have moved on to Obama vs Jews, Obama vs. Appalachia and Obama vs. Women. "

All very popular, but Obama vs. MechaObama will probably only attain cult status.

Posted by Njorl | May 30, 2008 10:35 AM

Ewwwww, that Stanley Crouch link goes to the white supremacist site American Renaissance. If you're a non-Steve Sailer reader who wants to avoid it, you can read the same article here.

Posted by Matt Weiner | May 30, 2008 10:36 AM

First, as always I think it is worth noting that Obama has lost (and not by a huge margin) DEMOCRATIC women when running against a popular female Democrat. The point, of course, is that we don't really know that Obama would do worse overall among women once the field was expanded to include the entire general electorate, and certainly we don't know that Obama would actually get less of the female vote than, say, Bill Clinton got (even after accounting for Perot).

Second, Obama's current problems with any members of Clinton's primary coalition will likely be very significantly diminished once Clinton endorses him and the Clintons both campaign for him, and I really think this point is overlooked far too often in current commentary. Indeed, right now we have Obama trying to persuade those people and the Clintons trying to thwart him, and so not only will the Clinton eventually stop opposing him, but presumably they will start helping him. So I think it is quite obvious that reversal of efforts will make a very large difference.

Posted by DTM | May 30, 2008 10:49 AM

Re novakant's comment "You might want to take a peek at the comment threads over at Talk Left,"
------------
I followed your link and found this:
"Tomorrow, there will be extended coverage in the Media of the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee hearing on Michigan and Florida. And not one of them will know what they are talking about (NOTE: It is not just the Media, it is also bloggers like Matt Yglesias who continues his competition with Josh Marshall to become the next David Broder.) "
--------
Ha ha ha ha. I LIKE these girls. Yowsa.

Above excerpt is from here: "The Media and Michigan and Florida , http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/5/30/84335/8779

Posted by Don Williams | May 30, 2008 10:52 AM

I think the plural of faux pas is spelled the same (faux pas), but pronounced differently (with a 's' or 'z' sound at the end).

Posted by cs | May 30, 2008 11:06 AM

not SHRILL enough...try to get less sleep

and you can get a DEGREE in UFO...

http://www.ufoinfo.com/news/chileuniversity.shtml

Posted by rickhavoc | May 30, 2008 11:12 AM

What I'm saying is that if Pelosi, Dean and Reid are going to corral superdels into making a decision, it's a lot better if Pelosi (glass ceiling breaking Pelosi) is the face of the party unity decision.

you can find plenty of Pelosi hate on the desperately-pro-Hillary sites. here's a TL thread from yesterday. samples:

I think Pelosi hates Hilary and is Jealous of her and fears that she would be more powerful than her since she is the first woman in charge of the House of Rep.

and

my theory is that Pelosi wants to be President, and the only way to accomplish that is if she makes Clinton angry enough to do a third party that results in an Electoral College deadlock. That throw the election into the House, and Pelosi herself Elected the "compromise" President.

Posted by cleek | May 30, 2008 11:14 AM

I also should stop blogging so much, and get out more.

You know, I don't see that happening.

Posted by Dadd | May 30, 2008 11:30 AM

The Obama Gaffe Machine
By JOHN FUND
May 30, 2008

For months, Barack Obama has had the image of an incandescent, golden-tongued Wundercandidate. That image may be fraying now.

As smart and credentialed as he is, Sen. Obama is often an indifferent speaker without a teleprompter. He has large gaps in his knowledge base, and is just as likely to dig in and embrace a policy misstatement as abandon it. ABC reporter Jake Tapper calls him "a one-man gaffe machine."

Take the Auschwitz flub, where Mr. Obama erroneously claimed last weekend in New Mexico that his uncle helped liberate the Nazi concentration camp. Reporters noted Mr. Obama's revised claim, that it was his great uncle who helped liberate Buchenwald. They largely downplayed the error. Yet in another, earlier gaffe back in 2002, Mr. Obama claimed his grandfather knew U.S. troops who liberated Auschwitz and Treblinka – even though only Russian troops entered those concentration camps.

That hardly disqualifies Mr. Obama from being president. But you can bet that if Hillary Clinton had done the same thing it would have been the focus of much more attention, especially after her Bosnia sniper-fire fib. That's because gaffes are often blown up or downplayed based on whether or not they further a story line the media has attached to a politician.

When John McCain claimed, while on a trip to Iraq in March, that Sunni (as opposed to Shiite) militants in Iraq are being supported by Iran, coverage of the alleged blunder tracked Democratic attacks on his age and stamina. (In fact, Iran may well be supplying both Sunni and Shiite militants.) Dan Quayle, tagged with a reputation as a dumb blond male, never lived down his misspelling of "potatoe."

Mr. Obama, a former editor of the Harvard Law Review, has largely been given a pass for his gaffes. Many are trivial, such as his suggestion this month that America has 57 states, and his bizarre statement in a Memorial Day speech in New Mexico that America's "fallen heroes" were present and listening to him in the audience.

Some gaffes involve mangling his family history. Last year in Selma, Ala., for example, he said that his birth was inspired by events there which took place four years after he was born. While this gaffe can be chalked up to fatigue or cloudy memory, others are more substantive – such as his denial last April that it was his handwriting on a questionnaire in which, as a state senate candidate, he favored a ban on handguns. His campaign now contends that, even if it was his handwriting, this doesn't prove he read the full questionnaire.

Mr. Obama told a Portland, Ore., crowd this month that Iran doesn't "pose a serious threat to us," saying that "tiny countries" with small defense budgets aren't much to worry about. But Iran has almost one-fourth the population of the U.S. and is well on its way to developing nuclear weapons. The next day Mr. Obama had to reverse himself and declare he had "made it clear for years that the threat from Iran is grave."

Last week in Orlando, Fla., he said he would meet with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez to discuss, among other issues, Chávez's support of the Marxist FARC guerrillas in Colombia. The next day, in Miami, he insisted any country supporting the FARC should suffer "regional isolation." Obama advisers were left explaining how this circle could be squared.

In a debate last July, Mr. Obama pledged to meet, without precondition, the leaders of Iran, North Korea, Syria and Cuba. He called President Bush's refusal to meet with them "ridiculous" and a "disgrace."

Heavily criticized, Mr. Obama dug in rather than backtrack. He's claimed, in defense of his position, that John F. Kennedy's 1961 summit with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna was a crucial meeting that led to the end of the Cold War.

Not quite. Kennedy himself admitted he was unprepared for Khrushchev's bullying. "He beat the hell out of me," Kennedy confided to advisers. The Soviet leader reported to his Politburo that the American president was weak. Two months later, the Berlin Wall was erected and stood for 28 years.

Reporters may now give Mr. Obama's many gaffes more notice. But don't count on them correcting an implicit bias in writing about such faux pas.

Over the years, reporters have tagged a long list of conservative public figures, from Barry Goldwater to Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush, as dim and uninformed. The reputation of some of these men has improved over time. But can anyone name a leading liberal figure who has developed a similar media reputation, even though the likes of Al Gore, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have committed substantial gaffes at times? No reporter I've talked to has come up with a solid example.

It's clear some gaffes are considered more newsworthy than others. But it would behoove the media to check their premises when deciding just how much attention to pay to them. The best guideline might be: Show some restraint and judgment, but report them all.

Mr. Fund is a columnist for WSJ.com.

Posted by big A | May 30, 2008 12:59 PM

Excellent point tanehsi, except a little bit:

Obama lost women voters by 6%
Obama won male voters by 10%

That's a gender gap of 16%. That's considered pretty big.

Posted by Shock Mouse | May 30, 2008 1:10 PM

But then what would I read everyday?

Posted by knoh | May 30, 2008 2:31 PM

Is that really a relatively large gender gap when a man and a woman face off in a primary?

I ask because primary support tends to be more volatile than general election support (due to eliminating the partisanship factor). So, it wouldn't surprise me if primaries had much larger gender gaps in these situations than general elections.

Posted by DTM | May 30, 2008 2:32 PM

I'm sick of hearing how "disrespect" (or even failing to show appropriate levels of positive "respect") for Clinton equates with sexism.

Someone who tells me that we must "count every vote" and then releases vote totals which count MI and FL for her but don't count 4 states which went for her opponent, clearly doesn't respect me or my intelligence.

I don't disrespect HRC because shes a woman. I disrespect HRC because she disrespects me.

Posted by libarbarian | May 30, 2008 2:42 PM

"Mr. Fund is a columnist for WSJ.com."

Mr. Fund also likes very young girls.

But more to the point, To blame the Berlin Wall on JFK’s performance at the Vienna Meeting is nonsensical. That thing was going up regardless, what with the whole issue of East Germans just needing to cross the boarder to live in West Germany and all.

But Obama is referencing JFK’s diplomacy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. If Kennedy didn’t talk to Khrushchev, a good portion of the world might have been vaporized. And Mr. Fund wouldn’t have gotten to pursue very young girls.

Oh and Barry Goldwater’s reputation improved at the expense of most of his young colleges who called themselves Conservative Republicans.

Posted by Raindog | May 30, 2008 2:51 PM

The only thing I find interesting about Fund's column is that this all just a rerun of some of Clinton's attack lines from 2007, right down to complaining about a media double-standard. And I recall how that story turned out, so I think it is a good sign this is the best the likes of Fund can come up with.

Posted by DTM | May 30, 2008 3:27 PM

The Preppie from Paradise's painful struggle to be "black enough" is the main theme of his 1995 autobiography, which is subtitled "A Story of Race and Inheritance" for very good reasons. In the climax, he finally finds a surrogate father in Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright to fill the hole in his soul left by his parents' disastrous bigamous marriage and his father's abandonment of him. I realize it's a long, tedious, self-absorbed book, but the man wants to be President so it should be read carefully and taken seriously.

In contrast, the Obama/Axelrod positioning of Obama as Tiger Woods, the well-adjusted postracial product of a loving mixed race marriage, is a much more recently invented image for Obama, not going back much before his 2004 keynote address and his subsequent second book.

Perhaps they are both true, but somebody ought to ask him about the gross conflict between his two books.

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 30, 2008 3:30 PM

But I'm just going to level with you--there is no way I thought a black man would ever carry Oregon and Iowa and then also get 90 percent of the black vote.

Thinking 'way back towards the end of the first OJ trial, when you would have thought that every Caucasian in America was dead sure he was guilty: a couple of old haole ladies a check out line in Tucson, sharing with each other the thought that he was framed.

Just when we all smell like wet dogs, we'll throw you a curve to keep y'all guessing.

Posted by cmholm | May 30, 2008 3:55 PM

"Mr. Obama told a Portland, Ore., crowd this month that Iran doesn't "pose a serious threat to us," saying that "tiny countries" with small defense budgets aren't much to worry about. But Iran has almost one-fourth the population of the U.S. and is well on its way to developing nuclear weapons. The next day Mr. Obama had to reverse himself and declare he had 'made it clear for years that the threat from Iran is grave.'"

This is a truly stupid statement.

Iran's population is irrelevant to its war fighting capability, which anybody with ANY knowledge of the military knows cannot hold a candle to the US military.

Iran IS a threat IF the US attacks Iran - because Iran CAN defeat the US military using the same tactics Hizballah used on Israel in 2006. Not to mention asymmetric war in the US and elsewhere.

But that is hardly the same thing as being a conventional military threat to the US in any way, shape or form.

And Iran has no nuclear weapons program - contrary to what Matt might believe, but doesn't have the balls to admit here.

What the quotes from Obama DO show is that HE is at least as ignorant about Iran as Fund, if not quite in the same manner.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | May 30, 2008 5:38 PM

If he picks Sebellius, he should do it BECAUSE OF HER IMPECCABLE POLICY DECISIONS and not her ownership of a vagina.

What the fuck is wrong with you people?

Posted by brenna | May 30, 2008 8:25 PM