Here's how white women voted in 2000:

Bush - 49%
Gore - 48%

Here's how women overall voted:

Bush - 43
Gore - 54

Here's how white women voted in 2004:

Bush -55
Kerry - 44

Here's how women overall voted:

Bush - 48
Kerry - 51

Kerry did about the same among men as Gore had done, they both lost them by 11%. But Kerry did much worse among women, particularly white women.

Now, it might be true that most of those swing white women voters don't participate in Democratic primaries, although I'd like to see party id data for these voters and there were tons of new voters in the primaries this year, but the idea that women voters should just be presumed to vote Democratic in the fall seems to me a dangerous one.

In addition, it presumes that Clinton's women voters are upset for the same reason voters in primaries in the past are upset. That they are upset with Obama because of his policy positions and will come around when they realize his policy positions are essentially the same as Clinton's.

Maybe that's true.

But there seems to be a lot of anger not only at Obama, but at the Party. We've never had the losing candidate who was a woman. We've never had a primary season this close. We've never had a primary season marred by so much misogyny from the media against one of the candidates. We've never had a primary season so marred by voting/apportionment clusterfucks. As zuzu pointed out, what's driving a lot of the claims that women aren't going to be voting for Obama is not that they prefer McCain over Obama, it's a decision to punish the Democratic Party for taking their votes for granted and doing shit for women.

Whether that will be a lot of women or just a few, who knows? But it doesn't take many of these kinds of protest voters to create a real problem for the candidate. Ask Gore. And the way you probably maximize the number of women who do this is to by continue to announce at every turn that you can take these women voters for granted.

Not all Democrats falling for Obama
By BEN EVANS and SAM HANANEL – Jun 12, 2008

...

"Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, a Democratic House leader who helped orchestrate the party's strategy for winning control of Congress in 2006, argues against reading too much into the holdouts. He said most of them always stay out of national politics and that the party is generally unified around Obama.

"They're just going to stick to their knitting," he said. "It's not that they're anti-Obama."

This line from the piece highlights just one of the many things wrong with Shapiro and his ilk:

"the vast majority of voters do not abandon their party just because their favorite candidate lost the nomination."

Those who deride angry Clinton voters think that the reason such voters are unhappy is because their candidate lost. It's all about pique.

What they don't get -- and seem unable to get -- is that many of these voters are motivated by real, substantive, policy-based and strategic concerns. This is true both for those planning to vote for McCain as well as those who plan to leave that bubble blank. Or those who will deliberately not connect the arrow, in the case of my state's ballot.

Furthermore, the dismissal of Clinton voters' anger as stemming from "the way she was treated" is utterly blind to the substantive, policy-related concerns illuminated by that treatment. Clinton voters aren't pissed simply because Obama wasn't nice to Hillary and her supporters. The disrespect shown by Obama and his campaign -- the misogyny, the race-boating -- suggests that an Obama administration is unlikely to take seriously issues of interest to women and allegedly racist, low-information hicks and working-class stiffs.

Because it's easier to write off voters as whiny, unintelligent, easily-led harpies than it is to craft substantial policy positions. How nice of them to reveal just how many of their fellow-travelers are also neanderthal Carlin-ing Carlin-ing Carlins. (*cough* Rahm E. *cough*) I've said it before and I'll continue to shout it from the streets and rooftops: Condescend to me--in any setting--and you're dead to me.

Told one of the Emily's List donors that she was the reason why Dems lose - those pro-choice women keep pushing the party too far (or somethiing like that).

As for women sitting out, he's right, a lot of them do, particularly non-college educated white women. Of course, when they sit out, Democrats lose. That was one of the lessons from 1994 - more than half the women who voted in 1992 stayed home (a lot of whom were non-college educated white women). The exception was California where Emily's List worked with the Feinstein campaign to turn them out. Probably a coincidence that Feinstein and Jane Harman won close races in 94 while Democrat elsewhere went down in flames.

Democrats may "win" in the fall, but it isn't going to be because they've suddenly turned into political geniuses. If they "win" it will be because having lost so many elections to the GOP and having caved on so many issues, the GOP was able to enact its agenda and alienate most of the country. So in a way, the Democrats are primarily poised to win in November due to their extreme political incompetence and weakness. And damn if they're going to change now.

Has he never heard of Les Tricoteuses?

This time it's women's fault. God help us if we care to remain freed slaves.

That was priceless!

!