Brown Vs Coakley: Why Gender Demographics Are Against Coakley

“it’s hard to escape the dichotomy between leadership and those they lead.”

Yes, you’re right. After all, we have a President with a black father and a white mother, but only 12.5% of the American population is black. What can do to curb this terrible injustice? I suppose Barack’s lineage would be “more representative of the country” if three of Barack Obama’s paternal great-grandparents were white. If that were the case, are we saying he’d somehow be “more fair” to the constituency of the country?

Now, hold up. Before you type an angry response to my awful, bigoted comment–let’s be clear that I obviously picked the most ludicrous example I could to illustrate the gross misuse of statistics above.

By saying “more representative of the country,” what exactly are we saying? Are we concluding that women vote for legislation that benefits only women? That Asian-Americans vote for legislation that benefits only Asian-Americans? When we note the “dichotomy between leadership and those they lead,” are we saying, somehow, that there are “black interests” and “white interests” or “male interests” and “female interests” and that these interests are in some way mutually exclusive?

We do the same thing with statistics about doctors, CEOs, college graduates, and the list goes on. We run our analytics and conclude that if the final numbers don’t MATCH the representative population, someone somewhere MUST BE being unjust or unfair to the group that’s “numerically deficient.”

A couple of years ago, there was a report about how more females than males are enrolled in college in the United States–and that gap has been widening (and continues to do so) beyond the representative 50.7% F vs. 49.3% M. What followed was a pile of raving fools jumping to the insane and unfounded conclusion that college admission was unfairly benefiting women, and that men were being marginalized.

Let’s put it this way, shall we? I have dark ash blonde hair. Let’s say that 15% of people in the US have dark ash blonde hair (blind guess for hypothetical sake). If there aren’t 15 US Senators with dark ash blond hair, am I being ignored and under-represented? Am I being marginalized by the Brunettes?

If 50.7% of women are eligible voters…why aren’t ALL of the Senators women? Because sometimes a woman will vote for a man. Sometimes (as surprising as it may be to anyone who hasn’t yet joined us in the 21st century,) a man will vote for a woman.

By citing these statistics as a reflection of our inequality, you do a major disservice to the President of the United States. Barack Obama wasn’t elected because he was “more equally representative of the country’s racial makeup”. He got elected because he was the best man for the job.

I know I’m living in the clouds, but it would be nice if–”in the shadow of Martin Luther King Day”–we could start assessing people based on their abilities and the content of their character instead of assessing them based on the narrow physical attributes by which bigots identify their allies and enemies.

But, you know, in reading over that vitriol, I just caught that I said “best man for the job” instead of “best person for the job”. Well, disregard any point I might have made above. Since I used “man” instead of “person”, clearly I’m a misogynist whose opinions shouldn’t be trusted.

Kind of an interesting little something that talks about show and not substance.

Sorry, but whoever wins wins because of the issues, not because they are male or female.

And to think, you mention MLK and yet don’t even bring up the essence of his message: It is the content of character that counts.

Strange.

Joe Callan, you the MAN! … I mean, “person.”

How long did Philip Bump work on this before he realized that there wasn’t really, y’know, a point at the end of it? I mean, this might have had a little more relevance if it was published in November 2008 when there was more than ONE Senate race going on, but back then, everyone was basking in the glow of The Historic Moment. They didn’t want to look at maps showing how few women and non-whites were left in the Senate after Obama’s departure.

So why the need for this tortured analysis? There doesn’t seem to be any unless the message Bump wants to send is that a year after electing a (half-)black man President, we’ve all taken a collective step backward because Massachusetts has probably decided they don’t want to send an AG with a chequered career to be their new Senator just because she can’t urinate standing up.

What seems to go right past some of the right-wingers of this site is that sexism/racism or bigotry in general has a serious effect on elections. That is a point being made here. If you are a minority running for office, chances are more people will vote against you because you are part of a group outside the majority than people voting for you for that exact reason. Stating that bigotry is gone because Obama was elected is a joke, it is obvious that there is a segment of the population that will outright not vote for him because he is black (Don’t bother saying half-black, mainly because racists will not be so specific when it comes to their bigotry). If you represent the percentage of those who did not approve of what the last administration was, then perhaps the percentage of Americans who voted for Obama should have been much larger (Just pointing out the obvious). But that’s an example, let us not make this whole topic about that.

Then there is the obvious point that women are underrepresented in politics. You don’t even have to dig that deep, it’s explicit as can be, and all this article did was point that out. Those are my thoughts on the matter.

Snipzor wrote:

Stating that bigotry is gone because Obama was elected is a joke, it is obvious that there is a segment of the population that will outright not vote for him because he is black…

1. I didn’t say bigotry was gone because Obama was elected. There will be bigotry as long as there are bigots, and there’s no reason to believe they will suddenly vanish into thin air. But some people imply nothing has changed since Tulsa, Little Rock, Alabama, or the race-based busing riots in Boston. All you need to do to know things have changed is look at the Governor of Massachusetts (Mr. Bump didn’t see fit to mention that).

(Don’t bother saying half-black, mainly because racists will not be so specific when it comes to their bigotry)

I don’t give a rat’s what racists think, Snippy — do you? The whole social construct of calling a half-Caucasian/half-African “black” is racist in itself! Why do you embrace it when the fact of the matter is that Obama is just as white as he is black?

Then there is the obvious point that women are underrepresented in politics. You don’t even have to dig that deep, it’s explicit as can be, and all this article did was point that out.

OK, fine, if you want to be in the bean-counting business. In order to correct the situation, you should support EVERY female who runs for office just because she’s a female, because that’s what matters most … right?

Maybe it was in that spirit that Tim Robbins sent a donation to Michele Bachmann.

The implication was all I needed (Totally play too much Phoenix Wright, excuse me). You implied that bigotry does not effect campaigns as much anymore. Let us look at the statement you’ve made:

“There doesn’t seem to be any unless the message Bump wants to send is that a year after electing a (half-)black man President”

Now why would you mention this for any reason besides what I’ve pointed out above. No, we are not stating that progress hasn’t been made, but we are not denying that it is still to this day a problem. It matters to point this out if we expect any progress to be made. I am also not pointing out we should vote for women for the sake of having equal representation in congress.

In reality the issues do matter, you are correct. Women who do not push for full equal rights have a higher chance of avoiding a bias in the voting than women who do. I thought I had pointed that out, but I probably erased it after realizing it was slightly out of place. For the moment of course.

Also the word I was looking for was ‘distinguish’. Racists will not distinguish between half-black/white and black or white (read the statement carefully).

Sweet Jesus, after reading all that my head is spinning. We need to stop having elections period. We’re just to racist and sexist to save ourselves. We are doomed.

Here is my observation for the night – after watching 30 minutes of Chris Matthews, the “teabaggers” have suddenly become “tea partiers”. Even Chris recognizes this election is being won or lost on the issues, and not the gender or race demographic. And for MSNBC to recognize that…the biggest race baiters on television…is stunning!!!

I’m just not seeing the correlation between a white male majority in governance and everybody being all racists and sexist all the time. You’re basing everything too much on numbers and not on the actual reality.

I saw a poll tonight that said that 75% of the people LIKE Obama. 41% DON’T like his policies. Now we know that there will always be some bigots and racists. But these numbers seem to say that it is not the color of his skin it is his policies. Hmmm sounds like wake up call to me. As far as the women go this election tonight is a good reminder that a woman probably has to still work a little harder than a man for the same results. Unfortunately this woman didn’t work much and she deserves to loose no matter what the results of electing Brown is.

Oh man, I love being called a “right-winger”, specifically when I was a vocally opposed to the entire path of the Bush Administration. I’m not a blind Democrat, so I MUST be a blind Republican–that’s a great snap-to conclusion that demonstrates the sad state of politics in this country.

I also love being called a “racist” in lieu of getting an actual critical response to my comments. That helps raise the level of discourse and makes it more likely that we’ll come to a synthesis of ideas.

People who think and vote on party lines are so awesome.