In endorsing John Kerry over George W. Bush for President in 2004, The Economist slyly suggested the choice was between the incoherent and the incompetent. Elections in general tend to be a matter of "choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable," John Kenneth Galbraith wrote President Kennedy in 1962.
To judge from Melinda Henneberger's book, If They Only Listened to Us: What Women Voters Want Politicians to Hear, this lesson is lost on many Americans who feel that their meager electoral fare is served up by unheeding politicians. Women, in particular, think their preferences are ignored by Democrats in particular, says Henneberger, a columnist for the Catholic opinion journal Commonweal and a regular contributor to the online magazine Slate. It is arresting to hear that politicians in the U.S. pay too little attention to public opinion, not to mention that the Democrats' problem is that the party does not attract enough women.
Based on the amount of space she gives to abortion politics, Henneberger especially wants the Democratic Party to be more responsive to women who oppose abortion. Twice she quotes interviewee Kelly Dore saying, "I'm with the Democrats on ninety percent of the issues. But if you're pro-life, they don't even want you." (pp. 10 and 137)
Moderate your position on abortion and maybe gay rights, Henneberger implies, and you Democrats will have regained a reliable majority of the American voting public. She ignores that such a policy shift might seem calamitous to many other women, not to mention men, who currently vote for Democrats. Henneberger cites the success of Pennsylvania's Senator Bob Casey, Jr., an anti-abortion Democrat as proof that Casey's position on abortion points the way to dominance over the Republicans.
The premise of Henneberger's book is weakened by the fact that women already vote disproportionately for Democrats compared with men, as the phrase "the gender gap" connotes. This finding is breezily acknowledged but largely ignored by Henneberger who believes that more women would vote for the Dems if they would "only listen."
Henneberger did listen. Using what survey researchers call a purposive sample, as opposed to a statistically random one, she called on friends, relatives, and friends of friends in selected U.S. cities and towns and listened to what these women, singly and in groups, had to say. To a degree, she seems to have found what she expected to find, concern that Democrats insist on abortion as a right. Still, because Henneberger is a perceptive journalist, her report on her travels around the country is worth a quick read, particularly for the pleasure of meeting some of the people with whom she talks.
Henneberger introduces the reader to a series of inspirational women, and one man John George of Blight Busters in Detroit, who are initiators and performers of good work. In New Orleans, the reader encounters Anne Milling of Women of the Storm and Becky Zaheri of Katrina Krew helping to rebuild New Orleans physically and spiritually. In Florence, Arizona, Victoria Lopez of the Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project untiringly provides legal services to undocumented immigrants in a federal detention facility of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, formerly known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Not only have these activists not given up on politics, they aren't waiting to be "listened to." The difference between an Anne Milling and the "us" in the title of the book is that Milling understands what it means to live in a free country. She knows the "free" does not refer to a costless passivity that waits for someone else to fix what's wrong and to ask for "our" approval. Better to see freedom as the nation's openness to political activism, initiative, and voluntarism. A Victoria Lopez sees a crying need and responds with her heart and soul. The "us" waits for someone to listen.
Generalizing from Henneberger's interviews to the wider universe of American women is problematic. It is surprising that such issues as the distorting role of money in politics, spying on American citizens by the National Security Agency, torture of suspected "enemy combatants," or the suspension of habeas corpus play little or no role in the narrative. ("Torture" is mentioned three times in the book, all in reference to abortion.) These missing links may be attributable to the sample, to Henneberger's selective listening, or to a general lack of concern by the respondents about matters that impinge on the health of American democracy.
Despite the limitations of the purposive sample, in-depth probing can reveal what a large survey instrument generally cannot: the way people form their opinions, how they think about politics, and how they respond to the choices they are offered. Unfortunately, the interviews are too often marred by gratuitous comments from the author like, "And when you have animal-rights-activist lesbians of color thinking [about voting for] John McCain, do I need to say how far the Democrats have to go?" (p. 75) Surely, a political writer as well-informed as Henneberger is aware that a substantial source of the gender gap stems from the much larger number of unmarried women, both lesbian and straight, who vote for Democrats rather than for Republicans.
Politicians in the Democratic Party could create a catalogue of the suggestions arising from these interviews in the hopes of improving election chances with these folks. Accordingly, "listening" Democrats should
* Be more tolerant of those opposing abortion
* Nominate better candidates
* Be more effective in responding to Republicans
* Be personable and likeable
* Be believable
* Not talk down to voters
* Not be condescending to their opponents
* Not talk too fast or be too facile
* Not make fun of the Republican candidate, especially George W. Bush
* Not nominate John Kerry (or Hillary Clinton, for that matter)
How much useful advice can the Democrats glean from such a mélange? Not much, though they ought to remember the part about not being condescending. If these suggestions induce Democratic candidates to take the risk of simply being themselves and showing that they are comfortable with themselves, so much the better. As to who the Democratic presidential candidate should be in 2008, Galbraith had it right: less unpalatable than the Republican. Same goes for the Republicans. Whichever party succeeds in this task will win, barring an independent Bloomberg candidacy or an overreaching Supreme Court that forgets who the electors are.
If you enjoy the ins and outs of political maneuvering to produce public policy, you might try a book I co-authored with A. Lee Fritschler:
Smoking and Politics: Bureaucracy Centered Policymaking (6th Edition) (Real Politics in America Series).
