Reply #31: Aren't you struggling a teensy bit to miss the point?

[gottaB]

Ta's post was about the presidency and the presidential race.

In case you missed it, there's a woman running who is being dissmissed by the media and many in the Party. Not just dismissed but ridiculed. The ridicule has extened to NOW and other feminist groups. It has been suggested in authoritative publications such as the NYT that Carol Moseley Braun and her supporters are not qualified to represent feminists, not qualified to represent women, and not qualified to represent the nation.

NOW's reasons for endorsing Braun are crystal clear. Their detractors, what can we say about their reasoning?

Well, meanwhile, as Ta notes, combat experience has been put forward as a significant qualifaction for the presidency. Of course it doesn't stand to reason. AWOL has none he can boast of. Clinton had none. Bush 41 had some, but a lot of good it did him. Reagan made movies.... It doesn't stand to reason, or rather, for those who make the argument, a wealth of tortuous reasoning and supporting argumenets is required to back it up.

Do we see that in the media? Not much. If there's any justification given it usually comes down to untenable assertions of fact and argumentation based on emotional appeals or faulty logic. No surprise then that reasoned argument is frequently bypassed by those making the claim. Indeed, Ta appears to be correct that "traditional masculinity" has become accepted by many Democrats as a legitimate qualification for the office of president.

Thus, your cavilations eggregiously dodge the point. Unless, of course, you're suggesting that your multitude of feminist writers and thinkers and activists and Senators have galvanized around this issue and made the point in no uncertain terms that masculinity is not a qualification for the highest office, and by the same token being a woman is not a disqualification. And I mean like right now, not over the last ten years in some cloistered colloquies. Ta's argument is all about the here and now.

Oh a woman can escape our scorn, but not this woman, it will be said. Oh, one need not be a man, but such a manly man this is! Isn't that the way it is? Right now?

Patty Murray. I plan to vote for her and proudly, but mark my words: Carol Moseley Braun was the first victim of the Karl Rove backlash machine; she will not be the last. Murray is on the radar, and if the Republicans have their way, the fight for her senate seat will be about her being a "silly" woman who couldn't possibly understand national defence.

That brings me to my final point. About the Republican Party, Ta was making a generalization, a perfectly reasonable one to make here at Democratic Underground. You know darned well that the Republicans work hard to keep feminist issues out of their platform. Of course there are exceptional Republican women, but they are exceptions to monotonous uniformity of anti-feminist and anti-women opinion and political action. The Democratic party, by contrast, in my lifetime at least, has been more open to women and to espousing and acting upon feminist concerns.

You know what the gender gapping is like between the parties. You know that in the last presidential race it was even more pronounced. You know that support for Bush continues to be weak among women. You know that support for our present military actions continues to be weak among women. And yet when somebody makes a point that our Party leadership is being unresponsive to it's feminist base, and taking women's votes for granted, you forget everything you know to administer a little spanking. What's up with that?