USA Today Columnist Worries That Democratic Women Have Stolen All the Power
Democrats are quite likely to nominate a woman for president in 2016, which would be the very first time in American history that a major political party has done such a thing. Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers, explains in USA Today that this possibility should alarm us all. Baker argues that by allowing women to have power, the Democrats “have scared off serious male challengers” and created a “gender problem” in the party.
Baker pays lip service to the idea that it's good to let women have some power by allowing that the “advancement and championing of women has been a source of justifiable pride for Democrats.” Then he lets loose with his real argument, which is that allowing women into positions of power is inherently anti-male, because we all know how afraid men are to challenge women. “Take Hillary Clinton and Rep. Nancy Pelosi,” he writes. “Both are towering and intimidating figures, who have sucked the oxygen out of the spheres they dominate.”
Baker argues that these women have amassed power not because of merit, but because they are using the immense terror of ever challenging female power to intimidate their worthier male opponents. “But the very elevation of these extraordinary women has placed male Democrats in the position of being unwilling to challenge them,” he writes. “The mantra ‘it's her turn’ has broad appeal among Democrats.”
Reality check: There are twice as many male Democrats as female ones in Congress, suggesting that Baker's fear that women are stealing all the power is a tad overblown. Baker presents no evidence for his concern that the deference to either Clinton or Pelosi is due to gender and not to their political acumen, just as he assumes that Obama's success must be due to race and not his inherent talent as a politician. That's particularly odd when you consider the long history of famously overbearing Democrats, from Lyndon B. Johnson to Tip O'Neill, whose ability to intimidate challengers has always been attributed to their political skill and not their race or gender.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/02/03/ross_baker_in_usa_today_hillary_clinton_is_scaring_off_all_the_good_male.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
2014 exit polls
Wedge politics (e.g. "the war on women"
is okay if there are more voters on this side of the wedge.
But it has little to do with Pelosi and Clinton.
maybe he should try psychoanalysis. 