Tina Brown (we won’t hold that New Yorker thing against her) has a great story in Newsweek on Hillary just before her TX* and OH victories:

Much has been written about how boomer women have rallied to Hillary’s cause (she won an impressive 67 percent of the white women voting in Ohio; they were 44 percent of the total). It’s fashionable to write off this core element of her base as rabid paleo-feminists fighting the tired old gender wars of the past [just as Bareback Andy would like us to do. I wonder why?—lambert hussein strether] But Hillary’s appeal to the boomer gals is wider and deeper than that. Cynthia Ruccia, a grass-roots political organizer in Columbus, told me that in these last beleaguered weeks, women started showing up in waves at Clinton headquarters—women who told her they had never volunteered in a campaign before. “There was just an outpouring about the way she was being treated by the media,” Ruccia said. “It was something we hadn’t seen in a long time. We all felt, as women, we had made a lot of progress, and we saw this as an attack of misogyny that was trying to beat her down.”

Odd. I’d thought the only real story this election was the new activism among the youth. I wonder why I’m only hearing about this now? Could it be that the media oligarchs covet the youth demographic, and so pander to it in their coverage? Nah. Crazy talk. (Though I do note that, just as it took Tina Brown, a woman of a certain age, to write this article, so it took Nora O’Donnel and Andrea Mitchell to notice an egregiously sexist dog whistle from Obama. The rest of our famously free press, and The Boys on The Blogs**, either didn’t notice or didn’t care.) Tina continues:

It’s a revolt that has been overdue for a while and has now found its focus in Clinton’s candidacy. In 1952, Ralph Ellison’s revelatory novel, “Invisible Man,” nailed the experience of being black in America. In the relentless youth culture of the early 21st century, if you are 50 and female, the novel that’s being written on your forehead every day is “Invisible Woman.” All over the country there are vigorous, independent, self-liberated boomer women—women who possess all the management skills that come from raising families while holding down demanding jobs, women who have experience, enterprise and, among the empty nesters, a little financial independence, yet still find themselves steadfastly dissed and ignored. Advertisers don’t want them. TV networks dump their older anchorwomen off the air. Hollywood studios refuse to write parts for them. Employers make it clear they’d prefer a “fresh (cheaper) face.”

And now an interesting piece of strategic advice, which I think the Hillary campaign would be well-advised to take to heart:

What saddens boomer women who love Hillary is that their twentysomething daughters don’t share their view of her heroic role. Instead they’ve been swept up by that new Barack magic. It’s not their fault, and not Hillary’s, either. The very scar tissue that older women see as proof of her determination just embarrasses their daughters, killing off for them all the insouciant elation that ought to come with girl power in the White House.

She might have a chance of winning them over yet, if she set about dividing the Obama girls from the Obama boys. Maybe start with some mother and daughter rallies in Pennsylvania, summoning an audience that would mirror the winning image of Chelsea onstage at her side on Tuesday night in Ohio.

Thank you, Tina. Lysistrata***, anyone? Heh.

One good place to begin a little research would be Obama’s website—the place OFB keep telling us to go look when they don’t want to interrupt their conversion narratives to talk about policy. Obama’s site is noticeably weak on women’s issues (which, as I will argue below, are really all our issues). And while Obama’s judgment is, of course, famously good—or at least we told so, constantly—I’m not sure his good judgment extends to women’s issues, especially when his tendency to conciliate the right gets the best of him.

However, I draw a different conclusion from this story that Tina finally was allowed to cover here.

We’re entitled to consider a candidate’s base when deciding who to vote for; that’s certainly one lesson of 2000 and 2004, where Bush’s base of Christianist loons (“God is in the White House”) was a sure indicator of the kind of government he was really going to run (“compassionate conservatism” being a dogwhistle to that base, which translated—not the our famously free press helped on this—to “private charity” as in the Gilded Age, and money for megachurches).

Well, suppose your two issues are Social Security and Universal Health Care. If you model a Presidency as being driven by its base, as we’ve seen under Bush, which candidate is the better one for those two policies?

Social Security is not a priority for Obama’s base. For one thing, they’ve been subjected to full-spectrum Conservative dominance on the issue; for another, Obama’s base—like me when… I was their age (sigh)—think they’ll never get old.

On Universal Health Care, Obama’s plan just isn’t universal, and his coterie in the so-called “creative class”—as if the invisible women weren’t creative—are already busily backing away from it; (see here; and here; and here for the methodology Obama will use, if he runs true to form). And besides, Obama’s base—like me when… I was their age (sigh)—think they’ll never get sick.

By contrast, the invisible women, by virtue of their political views, and because it is in their interests, are far more likely to do the right thing on these two issues.

So, if you care about keeping Social Security from being privatized (and when the next shock comes, that will surely be on the table) and if you want health care that is truly universal (and when the next shock comes, you know that will have to be kept on the table) vote for the candidate whose base wants those policies put in place.

Obama’s base? Not so much. Hillary’s? No question.

NOTE Cue the calls of generational bias. Alas, the apple of generational discord was thrown into the race by Andrew “Bareback Andy” Sullivan, when he endorsed Obama on generational grounds. A lot of the OFB bought into Sullivan’s thesis (and no, I’ve got no time to collect the threads, but any DK veteran will recognize the theme). So, we didn’t start the fight, but we may have to finish it.

NOTE * Of course, only in the proper, popular vote, where all voters are enfranchised.

NOTE ** Why there no photo of Josh, anyhow? It’s not like he would have needed to shave. [Ritual disclaimer that Lord Eschaton is not in The Boys on The Blogs posse, may The God(ess)(e)(s) Of Your Choice be thanked.]

NOTE *** Lysistrata is translated loosely as “She who disbands armies.” Double heh.

UPDATE Via Digby, a link to this from Leslie Bennetts:

[A]n enormous segment of the electorate spends most of its time below the radar of American culture. Younger women may be the tip of the iceberg, the part we’re able to see, but its hulking body — the vast cohort of older women we so rarely hear from — remains submerged.

The resounding silence notwithstanding, those needs have only become more acute. Twice as many American women age 75 and older live in poverty compared with men, and most older women feel their economic vulnerability keenly. Younger women struggle to manage work and family with little help from our government; although 163 countries give women paid leave with the birth of a child, the United States does not. So far, women have helped to elect a long series of men who paid lip service to family values while doing virtually nothing to improve the lot of this nation’s women and children. Are female voters finally getting fed up? One national poll showed Clinton leading Obama by only 5 percentage points among women with annual incomes higher than $50,000 — but among those who earn less, she beats him by a whopping 36 percentage points.

Interesting.

UPDATE Nice balanced compendium of the “new voters” thinking from eriposte. The bottom line:

Bottom line: Both candidates are bringing out large numbers of voters - many of them new. It is important to recognize that and stop the nonsense and hand-wringing about the continuing primary.

Not to mention the pearl-clutching and the fainting.

UPDATE Of course, there’s invisible, and then there’s purged.