General Discussion

babylonsister

(171,066 posts) Mon Aug 20, 2018, 02:47 PM Aug 2018

Professional Women Are Coming for the GOP

Professional Women Are Coming for the GOP
by BooMan
Mon Aug 20th, 2018 at 11:26:24 AM EST

The political condition of the Republican Party is not static. Their position has deteriorated steadily over the last year. At this point, one out of six Republican seats in the House of Representatives is going uncontested by the incumbent and, according to Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report, the pool of vulnerable GOP-held districts has nearly doubled over the last eight months.

Wasserman explains this trend in a fairly easy to understand way. The first point he makes is one I’ve been making off and on myself, which is that Trump’s strongest supporters have never liked House Republicans (or Senators, for that matter) and that they therefore cannot be counted on to show up to vote for them.

“They believed in Trump fervently, but they’ve never liked congressional Republicans at all. In fact, Trump gained ground by running against them in 2016. So why are they going to turn out this year for congressional Republicans?”

There’s a lot of overlap between these voters and the voters who made up the Tea Party surge of 2010. They aren’t matching Democratic enthusiasm this time around.

The second explanation Wasserman offers is one that is observable to even the most casually engaged voter.

“The most telling number in the most recent NBC/WSJ poll is that Trump’s approval rating among women with college degrees was 26 percent. That’s absolutely awful and the intensity of that group is extraordinary. They’re already the most likely demographic to turn out to vote in midterms. But never have they been this fervently anti-Republican.”

“Yes, it’s about how upset suburban professional women are, with regard to family separations at the border and Trump’s temperament and behavior.”

I think it’s severely inadequate to attribute this hostility from college-educated women to distaste for child kidnapping at the border and Trump’s personality and behavior. What distinguishes college-educated women is that their very existence as independent, professional women is now threatened. If Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to the Supreme Court, there will be a conservative majority to overturn Roe v. Wade for the first time. Women’s reproductive health will come under assault not just from Republican legislators. Restrictions on access to contraceptives can be expected to be upheld in the courts. Women will find it harder to find relief for workplace harassment, discrimination and unequal treatment. Title IX protections will be eviscerated.

For a long time it has been difficult to convince people that this is where Republican majorities would eventually lead, but it’s safe to say that college-educated women have collectively awoken to how far advanced the threat has become, and they’ve snapped into an appropriately urgent state of political resistance.

more...

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2018/8/20/112624/928

Reply to this discussion