61% of the voting age
population failed to vote in November 2002. Even without scientific exit polls,
it is clear that the Life Issues on
which women are the experts were not even up for discussion, nor pinpointed as
critical.
This gap in citizenship
opens up a stunning opportunity for women to come together and make a
difference in the political system. We already are the nation's experts at
caring and coping. Now all we have to do is inform ourselves about the specifics
of government programs that affect our Life Issues. Then we can join groups
that believe as we do and will lobby for us and put candidates and messages
under the microscope. Once we each decide who deserves our support, we need to
send them as little as $5 in the primaries, and show up at the polls.
Political parties only pay
attention to people who are determined to show up at the polls. They know that
negative advertising disgusts women and young people. Some target their
advertising to keep us away from the polls.
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USING WHAT WE KNOW: THE PHILOSOPHY BEHIND POLITICS
We know a lot. All we need
to do is remind ourselves about the way the party system works and why. Knowing
how parties work, we don't have to walk away. We can take our place at the
center of the process. Women are the natural majority, and our Life Issues on
which most of us agree, are the ones that determine everyone's quality of life.
Why is quality of life
connected to voting? That's what voting is for. The idea of voting is only a
few hundred years old and is not the big idea in many countries. The philosophy
behind voting is that individuals are born with equal right to contract with
each other to make their lives better. It is a stunning idea. A contract among
equals to improve life for everyone. A social contract that comes into being
whenever my right to do as I please bumps into your right to do the same. The
plan is that individuals come together when they need each other and decide
what to do by majority rule.
Americans were expected to differ
The United States has a
unique story. Our contract has to work over a whole continent among people of
vastly different family backgrounds and ways of making a living. From the
beginning, the Founding Fathers (with the inspiration, we trust, of the
Founding Mothers) knew that Americans in different locations would differ with
each other. These "factions were expected and the Congress and the Electoral
College for electing a president were designed to prevent any one faction from
dominating all the others.
In order to become a
majority in such a diverse nation, individuals from one faction would have to
agree to work together with others with whom they may have little in common.
The way our system works is
that first individuals have to band together into a group. Then they have to
make deals.
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DO DEMOCRACIES GUARANTEE RIGHTS?
We forget that just being a
democracy does not guarantee equal rights. Our Constitution was written by
white men of property and they wrote the rights into the document just for
themselves. They were pleased that they had improved on the English model,
which began with and still allows for inherited nobility, aristocrats.
So called "democracies around the world preserve the power of the dominant people. Until enough people
object and physically demand letting others in. Let us not forget that just a
few years ago, the democracy in South Africa kept 80% of the residents out of
their right to citizenship.
Black men in the U.S. did
not get the right to vote until after the bloody Civil War. And even after
that, many states passed laws to keep them from the polls.
Women did not get the right
to vote in the United States until 55 years after former male slaves. Women in
their 60's and older in the U.S. know that their mothers were in their 30's
before they won the right to vote.
Power - what does it mean?
Nothing happens naturally.
Nothing happens by waiting for the people who have power to share it.
Power is a word many women
shy away from. It is not a scary idea. It simply means being at the table to
make what you believe in happen.
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WOMEN AND DEAL-MAKING
Since there is not a women's
political party, we have to use our numbers and our agreement on the importance
of Life Issues to make the party system do as we wish. Because there are so
many of us and we share the same life experiences, there are several workable
strategies for us, short and longer term.
Short term:
- Knowing more and more and pooling what we know.
Since we already manage the health, education, and the well-being of our
immediate communities, we need to inform ourselves about the rules and
dollars that would help what we already care about. We can do that on
WomenMatter.
- Make sure our views are heard by supporting the
highly professional organizations that will speak loudly and publicly for
us. Mostly, they need some dollars for staff and publicity and, from time
to time, a letter or email from us to our representatives. We can do that
from WomenMatter. Choose your Life Issue and click onto Taking Action.
- Follow the candidates and support the ones who
agree with us, particularly in the primaries. Often primaries are the
critical moment for women candidates trying to get current political
parties to pay attention.
- Turn out to vote and target our votes to where
our Life Issues take us. This is hard at present, because current party
leadership does not pay as much attention to us as they should. Only when we group ourselves, target
our issues and our favored candidates, and turn out in great numbers will we
be noticed. It is important to put our votes where they can make the
greatest difference.
Longer term:
We need like-minded women in
the pipeline. Notice how political families make sure their sons and now even
their daughters gain governing experience. There often is bad-mouthing about
politicians, but public service is a career and amateurs who say, "Vote for me.
I don't know anything, don't give a lot of confidence.
- Encourage young women to run for school boards
and county commissions. They are the stepping-stones to city, state, and,
finally, federal offices.
- Promote debating teams and political education
in our schools. Make sure young women are in the outspoken forefront of
participation in local public discussions about what ought to be done. Information
plus ideas equals policy. Many young women say they are never told by
their parents or teachers that "you would be great in public office. We
need them to imagine themselves in leadership positions.
- Encourage women to get as broad an education as
possible so that they can understand the history of how things happen, the
development of new ideas, and the differences among Americans and between
ourselves and others. From that background, law school will put women in
place to enter the public debate.
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NOW IS THE TIME FOR ALL GOOD WOMEN TO COME TO THE AID OF WHICH PARTY?
We live in a time of
shifting voting patterns. The two major parties with their pollsters only want
to bring out their secure base and a few voters who will join them over particular
local issues. There is almost an even balance between the Democrats and the
Republicans, when you count only those voters who bother to show up at the
polls.
It is clear that women who
believe, as WomenMatter does, in equality for women and our right to make any
decision that we wish to make, need a stronger voice in how our nation makes
its rules and spends our money. How to achieve that stronger voice requires us
to decide where our time, money, and votes will put us at the table when the
deals are made.
In the primaries
Clearly, we have the
greatest choice in the primaries when each candidate has to state her or his
position on specific issues. So, it is important in a primary to register with
a political party, preferably a major one that has a chance to win. Find the
candidate that can represent your point of view on key Life Issues in a local,
state, or national election where that candidate has a chance to win in the
general election.
You can register right here
from WomenMatter. You can connect to organizations that research candidates and
to political parties on WomenMatter.
In the general election
In the general election we
need to put our votes where they can help create a majority in the legislature.
Only the winning party can set the rules, choose the committees, write the
original legislation, and approve the judges.
In general elections, some
scholars think that we will see more and more splinter parties, as many
Americans disagree with the philosophy and some of the policies of the major
parties. Splinter parties make a serious difference. Not only do they take a
stand on specific issues, they take votes away from one of the two major
parties. After all, it was Ross Perot who took 19% of the vote from the
Republican Party in 1992 and made possible Clinton's victory over the first
George Bush. And 95,000 voters in Florida voted for Ralph Nader and the Green
Party, thereby defeating Al Gore in the Florida election of 2000.
Before choosing a splinter
party, every woman should know whether her vote will go to a party that has a
chance to win. Only a winning party that benefited from women's votes can
reward women for those votes with laws favoring our Life Issues and
appointments of women to key offices.
Splinter or third parties: can women ever afford them?
In some local elections,
which automatically guarantee minority parties a few seats on a city council or
county commission, competition among minority parties is a way to get their
priorities into the debate. If a splinter party gets enough votes locally,
state and national candidates will pay attention.
Lobbying through large,
well-organized groups that agree with you is a better way to gain media
coverage and bring more voters to support our Life Issues.
You can connect to many of them
on WomenMatter.
Judging the power within a party
Women need to know where the
leadership of each party stands on our Life Issues. Candidates and their
advertising will try to tell us that they are for all good things. But it is
the party leadership that decides what is really important and dictates the
details of each law, the choices of all appointments, and the spending of
limited tax dollars.
Before 1980, there had been
a trend within the two major parties to move to the middle, offering some government
help to those people who need more, and, at the same time, watching taxes and
interest rates. But since then, although each party talks as if it wishes to
appeal to many different factions, "the big tent, the leadership of the
parties is owned by "the base. The base is made up of the party regulars who
always show up, always give money to pay for campaigns, and recruit their true
believers to run for office and to serve in appointed positions. They do the
everyday work every day.
Democrats
Jimmy Carter was the first
Democrat in the recent Presidency to argue for paying down the national debt
and curbing inflation by careful spending policies. When Bill Clinton became
President he actually did pay down the debt, causing interest rates to drop and
more private investment to occur. He also supported welfare reform, requiring
people on welfare to get training and go to work. Clinton also appointed many
women to public office.
Some Democrats whose highest
priority was to value helping the disadvantaged, objected to Clinton's
positions on welfare and spending, even though they supported his promotion of
women, expanded health care, and women's reproductive rights. Some of those
Democrats voted for Ralph Nader as a protest against the people who controlled the
Democratic Party during Clinton's administration.
Republicans
Ronald Reagan invited
religious groups who were strongly opposed to gay rights and abortion, and even
opposed to contraception and sexuality education, to join his administration.
Those groups then worked hard to run for and win local elections. They also
volunteered and became officers of many state party organizations. What
happened then to the liberal or "Rockefeller Republicans who were pro-choice
but also believed in lower taxes and fewer government programs for the poor?
Many of them today try to promote pro-choice candidates and liberal positions
in the party platform (now called "moderate), and then vote Democratic in the
general election õ or stay at home and don't vote at all.
Do splinters have a future?
The Bush II administration
tries to please the base on sexual and gender issues, while advocating new
policies on other Life Issues. What would happen if the "base were to split
off and form a splinter party of its own?
The Democrats used to count
on union money and votes as their base, but as women and racial minorities have
become more outspoken on gender, gun control, and environmental issues, many
union members do not support women and minorities in the primaries and do not give
major support to those women who win in the primaries.
Democrats who promise the "big tent have a hard time with differences on gun control, reproductive
rights for women, gay and lesbian rights, and welfare for the poor. What would
happen if the rights groups were to split off and form a splinter party of
their own?
Religious leaders openly
promote different parties to their members, depending on the issues they wish
to support. Sometimes the sexual issues move people in one direction and the
money issues in another.
Parties: Open or Closed?
WomenMatter believes that
women agree that action needs to be taken on our Life Issues. We take most of
the non-governmental action. Adding government action to our personal action
will help us make an even greater difference.
Therefore, we need to inform
ourselves, find the groups and candidates to support, register, and vote. If we
come together and use the advantage of our numbers, we can determine the future
of party politics.
We are the majority of the
61% that failed to vote in November 2002. When we know our Life Issues and are
smart about making ourselves felt in registration, primaries, lobbies, and
general elections, we will have opened the American political system. That is
the sensible, sensitive use of power.
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