New Day a’Dawnin’

My wife was all “yippee” and “yahoo” about it as I read aloud sections of a NY Times story to her from this morning’s paper.
by Charlie Leck

This blog is about a story in this morning’s New York Times. If you go to this link, you’ll notice that the story is headed by a photograph showing the women of the House of Representatives, of the convening 113^th Congress, gathered on the steps at the Capital. They set a record – these women –and I expect it is only the beginning – only the beginning.

You’ll notice something unusual in the photograph right away. There is color – bright and glorious color – in the picture. The steps are not covered with dark blue or black, pin-striped suits showing a bit of white shirt with a dark tie. Not at all! Here you’ll see bright blues, reds, some orange and pink, and splashes of green.

“Hooray,” my wife shouted, and she looked rather Tigeresque as she pumped a fist into the air. We had donated sizably to Congressional races this year and I think she was feeling that it had been worth it.

The NY Times calls it the “rise of the female legislator – 20 in the Senate and 81 in the House.”

As I looked at the photograph, I was reminded of a scene from a play we had seen this past autumn at the Guthrie Theater – Appomattox by Christopher Hampton. Frederick Douglas had just departed the White House after a visit with President Lincoln, during which they talked about the coming freedom of the American slaves. Mary Todd Lincoln joins the President as he waves his goodbyes to Mr. Douglas. The President turns to his wife and tells her of Douglas’ amazing request that the vote also be secured for the free slaves. That, Lincoln told his wife, will be a while coming.

“And for the women,” Mary inquires of her husband, “when will the vote be coming to women?”

The President merely looks at her as if it is only a bit of humor on her part; he shakes his head and smiles.

And now, here is my wife pumping a fist up into the empty space about her and shouting in joy when I read her the ridiculous quote from Claire McCaskill, the U.S. Senator from Missouri, who spoke about the progress women were making in the Senate…

“I don’t think we should be satisfied until we have the same number of women in the Senate that represent the percentage of the population that are women, so we still have a long way to go!”

My wife took her coffee cup from her lips and shouted, “Yes!”

Ashley Parker writes in her Times article about one of the women of House who “wandered the aisles with her daughter on her hip.”

Remarkable!

“The times, Mrs. Lincoln are really a-changin’ – and with remarkable speed; and I think we are all the better for it. Mention it to the President if you see him, will you?”

As an aside, I shall mention that one of the United States Senators from Minnesota is Senator Amy Klobuchar, who was reelected by a staggering landslide this past November. In addition, Betty McCollum represents Minnesota’s 4th congressional district, which includes St. Paul and the area east to Minnesota’s border with Wisconsin (including the city of Stillwater).

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Ryan to the Right

Mitt Romney will try to move as near to the center of the political spectrum as he can and count on Paul Ryan to hold the attention of the far right voters.
by Charlie Leck

I have fact-checked the following as carefully as I could – I’m quite sure it is accurate.

Just so you know!
In 2010 Paul Ryan, current candidate for Vice President of the United States, voted for a bill in the House of Representatives that would limit abortion rights and a woman’s access to contraceptive care. Ryan voted for a bill that would ban abortion in all cases (obviously, all is the key word here). It seems that would include cases of incest and rape. The bill was called The Sanctity of Human Life Act and Ryan was signed on as a co-sponsor. Ryan also voted for a bill that would allow hospitals to refuse to perform abortions even as part of a procedure to save a woman’s life. This latter matter really upsets me. Some pro-life groups even blasted the law, calling it the Let Women Die Act.

Ryan’s inflexibility and unwillingness to compromise!
This is a part of the Ryan make-up and character that we’ll have to take a very careful look at. We’ve gone through a lot of bad years in this country because of political inflexibility and stubbornness. We can’t keep going this way. Let’s take a look at the Ryan record over the next few weeks to see where Ryan is on this character trait.

On matters of the budget, future government spending and fiscal responsibility, Ryan appears to be rather inflexible and rigid. One must remember that he was the central author of “The Path to Prosperity: Restoring America’s Promise.” [Italics mine!]  Just take note of the title! It isn’t a path, or a possible path, or a path to consider. It is THE path, which really does imply there are no alternatives worth debating. “A matter of semantics,” some of you might say. Well, let’s watch over the coming weeks and see what kind of flexibility he shows.

I’ll be writing here about these matters as I begin reviewing the Ryan record over his last two terms in Congress.

The Michele Bachmann factor
My regular readers know full-well how I feel about Michele Bachmann and the disdain in which I hold her. She has the most twisted ideas about democracy and personal freedoms that I have ever encountered. Bachman is a biblical literalist. These types really don’t understand scripture and they try to use it (the Bible) in dangerous ways.

Bachmann is a dangerous person and she’s shown that very clearly in some of her recent statements about people of the Islam faith in America. She sent shivers of embarrassment down the backs of most Americans a few weeks ago when she did her extremely good Senator Joseph McCarthy imitation.

Well, when you look carefully at the congressional records, you discover that Ryan and Bachmann are an awful lot alike (granting, of course, that Ryan is not the complete dumb-bell and asinine fool that Bachmann is). When one analyzes his voting record, one discovers that Ryan is every bit as conservative as Bachmann (see this article by Nate Silver).

In the article referenced above, Silver points to voting statistics that indicate Ryan is further to the right of center, based on his voting in Congress, than Obama is left of center.

Yesterday, Jessica Pieklo wrote the following in a blog-post on Care2… Dispatches from the War on Women: Meet Paul Ryan.

“In 2008 when then-Republican presidential candidate John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate for good or for bad the choice was in part to try and connect with women voters. This Saturday we learned the Republican party is no longer even interested in trying. Sure, Mitt Romney and Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) may be the first perfectly-coiffed ticket from the right, but Romney’s choice in Ryan represents one of the most extreme anti-woman candidates available. In addition to his horrific budget, Ryan co-sponsored a federal fetal personhood bill, voted to defund Planned Parenthood, and wants to write discrimination into the Constitution by amending it to ban gay marriage. It’s the classic Republican rouse: talk about “economics” while legislating to restrict women’s rights, so if you liked the aftermath of the 2010 midterm elections you’re going to love a Romney-Ryan administration.”

Here’s my personal opinion… Ryan was chosen to shore up the voters to Romney’s right. Romney will continue to work on convincing America that he is a moderate and he’ll try to capture the high ground in the center. Ryan will be in charge of holding on to the right – the same task Sarah Palin was given four years ago, but couldn’t pull off.

The battle lines for this election have been drawn. Now we can begin to watch the polling results. At least twice a week, now through Election Day, I’ll report here on what the polls are showing.

The current polls
Current polls (by averaging all the national polls) give Obama an approximately 4 percentage point advantage (with 237 electoral votes). These polls show Obama winning Wisconsin by about 5 percentage points and it will be interesting to see if there is a shift there now that one of the state's own will be on the Republican ticket. This morning's rally for Ryan in Wisconsin was extremely well attended.

The FOX News poll gives Obama an approximate 9 percentage point lead -- the largest of any national poll in the country. Because it is such an anomaly, the poll result isn't taken too seriously.

A 4 point lead, when there is a 2 point margin of error, is a danged close race. It appears to me that the Obama-Romney debates are going to have a very significant impact on who will win this election in 2012. Another factor will, of course, be the performance of the economy over the next two months. It will be watched closely.

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Women Leaning Toward Obama

        Ann Romney

Women were the main reason for the GOP takeover of the House of Representatives in 2010.
by Charlie Leck

For the first time in some years, the House of Representatives fell under the control of the Republicans as a result of the 2010 elections. That devastated the President’s game plan and set up two years of turmoil and disagreement between the administration and the House.

Democrats were shocked by the results of 2010 – not so much that they were defeated, but that it had been women who brought them down and sent a very clear message that they shouldn’t be taken for granted. Women wanted better treatment within business and they wanted equal pay for equal positions and equal work. It seems they saw better opportunities with Republicans than Democrats.

President Obama got the message. The 2012 election campaign for both the President and the Congress will be designed to bring women back – at least by a three percentage point margin, which is what it will take (all it will take) to win. The President’s campaign strategy team has been at work on the project (bringing women back to the Democratic Party). And, they haven’t been kidding around about it. They see their goal as a formidable one.

Now, the Republicans seem to be doing the job for President Obama and Democratic members of the House. Thanks to guys like Rick Santorum (Mr. Opposition-to Birth-Control Santorum) and the defacto leader of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh (Mr. wanting-contraceptive-pills-paid-for-by-your-health-insurance-company-makes-you-a slut-and/or-a-hooker Limbaugh).

Kathleen Parker, writing in the Washington Post, calls this “…a perfect storm of stupefying proportions.”

Listen, Democrats are absolutely thrilled to have Republicans take such radically crazy positions on matters of women’s reproductive rights because those positions make it seem that, as Parker writes, the “Republicans are waging war on women.”

Meanwhile, Democrats will continue to say that these are matters regarding a woman’s body and they will be very content to let women decide about those issues.

One has to be aware, that there are also plenty of men out here who also think there is wisdom in wise contraceptive planning. Too many children are born into families that are under economic stress. Plenty of married couples would like to build up a nest egg before they start a family. They don’t want politicians telling them when they can or can’t or should or shouldn’t! And, too many unintended children are born to unmarried young girls who don’t want those children.

The fact is, as Parker points out, “the GOP long ago made its bed with social conservatives, a large percentage of them Southern evangelicals, and now must sleep with them. After marriage, of course.”

When all the dust settles after Election Day in November it will be interesting to see just how much this single issue had to do with the results of the voting. Those of us who enjoy observing politics in action will find it fascinating to watch how the Republicans are going to reverse gears now that they see how they are offending women with their moralistic positions. Just yesterday (Saturday), Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann, introduced him at a major campaign stop and it was clear that she was trying to direct the conversation back to economics and how the Republican Party can benefit women workers.

David Maraniss, an associate editor of the Washington Post wrote this week about the President’s extraordinary luck…

“Yet now, how lucky for him that the Republican candidates maul one another in their frenzy to replace him. How fortuitous that they keep veering further right, giving the president the opportunity to seize the middle and possibly win back the persuadable voters who will decide this election.”

The ultra-conservative positions of the Republican candidates didn’t hurt them too much until they started to be about women’s sexual and reproductive rights, something about which a panel of four gentlemen shouldn’t assume to be significant authorities. One must quickly add that Ron Paul has wisely stayed away from the issue.

As for Rick Santorum, I just can’t wait for him to open his big mouth again!

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