(no subject)

[rivka]

If you've been worried that flocks of alienated Clinton supporters will vote for McCain - and a lot of people on my friends list have been posting worried stuff about this - you might find this Frank Rich column reassuring.

Now, there’s no question that men played a big role in Mrs. Clinton’s narrow loss, starting with Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Mark Penn. And the evidence of misogyny in the press and elsewhere is irrefutable, even if it was not the determinative factor in the race. But the notion that all female Clinton supporters became “angry white women” once their candidate lost — to the hysterical extreme where even lifelong Democrats would desert their own party en masse — is itself a sexist stereotype. That’s why some of the same talking heads and Republican operatives who gleefully insulted Mrs. Clinton are now peddling this fable on such flimsy anecdotal evidence.

The fictional scenario of mobs of crazed women defecting to Mr. McCain is just one subplot of the master narrative that has consumed our politics for months. The larger plot has it that the Democratic Party is hopelessly divided, and that only a ticket containing Mrs. Clinton in either slot could retain the loyalty of white male bowlers and other constituencies who tended to prefer her to Mr. Obama in the primaries.

This is reality turned upside down. It’s the Democrats who are largely united and the Republicans who are at one another’s throats.

Rich points out that Obama is currently leading McCain among female voters by 13 to 19 points - much better than either Kerry or Gore did among women, in the final event.

Incidentally, Amanda Marcotte asks herself where all these feminists-for-McCain might be coming from. It's a good question to consider before you give them much of your energy.