Memo to Dems: Women are not Bargaining Chips

The midterms are so 2010. Just a distant memory. The real story is the election season coming up in 2012, and everyone is focused on guessing who will jump into the presidential arena.

But Democrats shouldn’t forget about the midterms as they look ahead to duking it out in ‘12. Remember how right before the election everyone panicked that women wouldn’t turn out to vote? Polls were showing women tuned out, turned off and full of despair about the election. In a last-ditch effort, the White House put out a report on all of the measures it enacted to help women and boost their economic security. But as Betsy Reed pointed out, “Given the level of economic anxiety racking American women, this intervention was clearly too little, too late.” Meanwhile, women had watched extreme conservatives take on all sorts of anti-choice stances -- Tea Party darlings and GOP candidates Rand Paul, Christine O’Donnell, Sharon Angle, Joe Miller and Ken Buck all opposed all abortion, even in cases of rape and incest, just for starters. Yet even as presidential advisor David Axelrod acknowledged that women’s rights were an election issue, Democrats weren’t going to make it a big focus. And it was just months earlier that they voted in a bill in which they traded away restrictions on women’s right to access abortion for the health care reform bill, the biggest crowning achievement since Obama took office.

They might want to reconsider that strategy, and there’s no time like the present. The GOP has all but announced an all-out war on women and our rights. And Amanda Marcotte is right when she points out that there is a real chance that Dems are going to see these rights as yet another bargaining chip, particularly with a crazed GOP majority in the House demanding severe spending cuts. They may feel inclined to make “concessions” on our rights in order to lessen the hit to other services.

Here’s some free advice for the Democratic Party: DON’T DO IT.

I know why they might think it’s a good idea. Where else are women going to go? We’ve already proven that we don’t just vote with our vaginas – we were key to defeating many of the ultra conservative mama grizzlies in the midterms. So no matter how many women the GOP runs, we see through them to be anti-choice and in favor of policies that hurts women and our families. Dems are the only other option, right?

But again, I urge them: remember the panic you felt in October of 2010. Sure, they were destined to take a shellacking before the results came in, women or no women voters. But it would have been far worse if we didn’t show up like we threatened. We swept Dems to victory in 2006; we mitigated the losses in 2010. We did so even though our rights were tossed around like a hacky sack. But the fight is nastier now. It’s obvious. We’re all paying attention.

Sure, they might get lucky. We might decide to vote for the common good over our own, as we often do. But is that a risk worth taking? Men swung far more heavily to the right than women did in the past election. Isn't it perhaps time to take women’s concerns seriously and acknowledge that we are an important part of the Democratic base?

As Marcotte points out, Republicans get it. “A political party is nothing without its base. That Republicans hate the organized pro-choice world so much shows they believe that pro-choicers have the power to win elections,” she says. They’re right. We do. If Dems decide that conceding on women’s rights is a compromise worth making, all I can say is: Be afraid. Be very afraid. -Bryce Covert

Bryce Covert is a journalist and blogger who writes on feminism, politics, and the energy industry. You can find her at www.brycecovert.com and www.twitter.com/brycecovert.