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More than ten years ago, my politicized fifteen-year-old friends and I chanted "Pink Slip for George Bush!" wearing pink slips outside Senior's hotel room in lower Manhattan. It was freezing, but we shivered away for the sake of abortion rights.
That was under the guise of a now-defunct organization called Women's Action Coalition, but Code Pink (www.codepink4peace.org) has taken up the same chant, and they're not out there in the cold. In fact, they managed to crash and disrupt Junior's Republican National Convention twice.
They're one of the many grassroots organizations hoping to affect the course of this year's election by rallying one key, long overlooked demographic: the single woman. According to an analysis by Democratic pollsters Stanley B. Greenberg and Celinda Lake, if unmarried women (who make up 46% of all voting-age females) voted at the same rate as married women, it could have a "decisive impact" on the election. It certainly could have affected the last one: Twenty-two million unmarried women (a group that leans left) stayed away from the polls in 2000.
So is it any wonder that Kerry and Bush are courting the single woman like a gentleman come a-wooing? You hear the demographic referred to as the "high heeled vote." CNN did a related segment on "lipstick liberals." And if you think that's patronizing, wait until you hear how everyone's trying to motivate us voting-age girls: "Don't let this election be a nailbiter!" is the slogan for the nonpartisan voter-registration group 1,000 Flowers, which is reaching out to single female citizens via a program they call "Adopt a Salon." "Beauty Kits available soon!" their website promises. In other words, the election is in women's hands, so those hands might as well look pretty.
"I'm surprised we haven't gotten more negative feedback," says 1,000 Flowers' affable Francesca Vietor when asked recently by phone something like, Uh, what the fuck? "We're a pretty ragtag group, actually," Vietor said. "But everyone gets their hair cut, and there's a beauty salon on every corner, so it's convenient, even if you're just dropping in to fill out a form and not staying for a manicure."
Despite the ample voter registration drives, be they of the traditional or grooming variety, there hasn't been much of an effort to educate single women about which candidate would actually serve their needs. The pollster Anna Greenberg is working on a project to register unmarried women called A Woman's Voice is Woman's Vote. She says: "Given what I have learned about them and how marginalized they feel and how cynical they are and how alone they feel, it strikes me that you better know what to talk to them about, because they have a particular set of concerns that are not necessarily shared with other people." Specifically, Greenberg has written, women are more likely than men to be concerned with "education, healthcare, Social Security, the environment and gun control."
"It's traditionally an economy vote," said Cokie Roberts recently on NPR, because women are more vulnerable economically, and more dependent on government programs supported by Democrats. One new element this year, though, is security. Women are more concerned with terrorism than men, which is why, Roberts says, the gender gap vanished after September 11th, only to reappear later and then disappear recently.
Bush got a remarkable post-convention "bounce," thanks to the ladies. According to Republican pollster Lance Tarrance and former Bush official Leslie Sanchez, Bush's acceptance speech appealed to women because of three things: "building an emotional connection, humanizing himself and portraying himself as someone who can keep America safe." In other words, he talked in soothing palliatives. We need a daddy to keep us safe, and he's up to the job.
Perhaps we will hear more about the economy, but so far, no one's engaging women on that level. Instead, from the Left we get panties emblazoned with "Kiss Bush Goodbye" (although the New York branch of the Kerry campaign, reached by phone, disavows such gimmicks), and from the right we get Cheney in the V.P. debate going on about how he knows about the burden of malpractice because of his conversations with who? Not brain surgeons or pediatricians; no, this year it's OB/GYNs. Then you've got Bush's drunk daughters trotted out to dizzily claim they don't know the first thing about politics, but they sure do like their Dad, causing legions of housewives across the country to sigh, "Awwww ..." and sign up for Bush's "Woman's Team."
That's right: Bush has a woman's team. Bush is not messing around with earth-tone sweaters like Gore. No, he has a special part of his website devoted to women's issues. It's called: the "W Stands For Women." This women's team is dazzlingly well-organized: They don't return calls from online sex magazine editors, but they sure pick up fast and cheerily forward them to the press person's voicemail.
So what is the nefarious-sounding women's team up to? Well, they're out there selling the "compassionate conservatism" angle, for one thing, which as Cokie Roberts points out, has always been about one thing: getting the women's vote. They are also, according to the website, organizing women to: "Communicate the President's vision to move America forward; Engage in the political process by volunteering for the President's campaign; Recruit more women to support the President." It's anyone's guess if the women's team had any influence here: In a recent Times/CBS News poll, twenty-nine percent of men said Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11th attacks; forty-seven percent of women said so.
"I keep hearing those numbers," said a friend of mine at a debate-watching party in Brooklyn. " And I thought, women are fucking stupid! It made me ashamed."
You'd think with such a tough wife, glamorous daughters, and a Convention speech that strategically mentioned his work for women’s rights as a Massachusetts D.A. — not to mention the fact that reproductive rights are doomed if he isn't elected — Kerry would be a shoo-in with women. But despite Kerry’s record, and despite the fact that he looked strong and daddy-like — that is, presidential — in the debate — he far from has the women’s vote sewn up. He certainly doesn’t have what Bill did: Against Dole, Clinton won the women's vote by 16%.
According to a recent New York Observer cover story, part of his problem is the adorable Mrs. Heinz Kerry. You can see how she'd freak out some women. While trying to encourage people to send electric generators and food to Hurricane Ivan victims rather than just food, she said: "Clothing is wonderful, but let them go naked for a while, at least the kids." It's practical advice, but you see the average middle-of-the-road gal rushing to the warm, comforting embrace of Laura Bush, the calm, clean, pro-clothing children's librarian.
Kerry was on Late Night with David Letterman the other night, cracking jokes and seeming like a nice, steady guy who hasn't slept in a while. He seemed kind of rumpled and affable and smart, like your second-favorite professor — the one who's not flashy like the one you're kind of obsessed with, but more like the one who writes you a really nice recommendation and fundamentally gets you on some important level. And he's mad at Bush, and I'm mad at Bush, so right there we have something in common. Hell, I thought, I'd date — I mean, vote — for him.
But what he needs to be to become a real ladies' man — and to combat the insidious "flip-flop" campaign — is, according to an Op-Ed by William Safire from September 20th, "Mr. Tough Guy." Essential to the election, Safire said, is winning back the women who used to be Democrats. "Bush has them believing that the fighting in Iraq is for the security of their families … Scared women are the key, so enough with the sensitive guy nuances."
"John Kerry was like a blind date you hadn't yet met in March," says GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway. But now, "he's rung the doorbell to pick some of them up, and they don't like what they see." (Maureen Dowd, conversely, compared Bush in a Times Op-Ed piece to "the guy who reserves a hotel room and asks you to the prom.") Like so much of the demographic analysis in this year's election, it's an absurdly condescending way to think about women of voting age, but it's working in Bush's favor.
Looking at Conway's and Dowd's analogies, you can see what treating women like potential girlfriends could mean on Election Day: what your average left-leaning but undecided single woman will do, faced with date offers from two suitors she's not real keen on, is shut the door and stay home — to do her nails. n°
©2004 Ada Calhoun & hooksexup.com
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