The War on Women [Left and Right]

A central theme in the Democrat’s reelection strategy seems to be accusing the Republican party of instigating a War on Women. I am not really sure where I have been the last six months, but a war? Seriously, the Left really needs to take a look at why it must keep using Class Warfare as a means of trying to win elections.

A big issue in the upcoming elections is going to focus on voting blocs. Women, African-Americans, Hispanics, Jews, Whites, Men and Veterans are all going to be targeted voting blocs for the Democratic Party. What I am finding hard to believe is that the Democrats are acting like this election is the same as 2008. It isn’t and the strategy that captured these blocs is going to completely backfire in 2012.

I will go into the specifics of each bloc in a second, but let me first rehash 2008. Everyone with a pulse was sick of George W. Bush. Bush was not the racist, misogynist, anti-Semitic war monger that the Left and the rest of the country thought he was. Bush’s problem is he allowed everyone to define him without ever trying to define himself. Bush was an elitist who thought himself above everyone else. This type of person is easy to turn giant voter blocs against, especially running a candidate with hardly any track record who is willing to directly appeal to each bloc.

2012 is different because now Obama has a record to run on. He has to defend his policies, which in a lot of cases, angered large percentages of the voting blocs. Here are a few examples.

Jews: Only African Americans turned out in higher numbers to vote for the President than Jewish voters did. They saw in Obama a return to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt days, when government would become an instrument of good that would create jobs at home and peace overseas. Yet after three years of President Obama blaming Israel for every ill the world can conceive and trying to force them into a peace agreement with hostile neighbors Jews are not as enthused. Obama hasn’t figured out that Israel for Jews in not as much about the country but a barometer of how a person feels about Jews in general. Many American Jews are for a peace agreement with the Palestinians and want to avoid a war with Iran, but that doesn’t mean that Obama needs to criticize Israel for doing what is necessary to defend their country. Many Jews are questioning whether Obama really does have ill will towards their community and their votes and more especially their money might not be as strong in 2012.

African-Americans: Let’s be honest about this one, African-Americans are not going to vote for Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney really offers no policies to help the African -American community. But for a voting bloc that turned out 93% in favor of Barack Obama they really expected more from him. Obama has basically spent a lot of time trying to pursue policies that would bring him more Hispanic voters, more women voters and many other voting blocs, but he has largely ignored the African-American community and their issues. Romney doesn’t need their votes to win in November, he just needs them to stay home.

Women: This is the biggest mistake the Democrats are making in this upcoming election cycle. Somewhere someone convinced the Democrats that the only thing necessary to placate women voters was to make sure that they continued to receive their birth control pills. Women, who make up the largest voting bloc in the country are anything but uniform. Women are mothers, wives, single mothers, executives, house wives, soldiers and every other type of person in our society. To believe that they will be placated with birth control pills and support for Planned Parenthood is not only stupid, but it really risks sending votes to Romney’s way. There is a reason that Romney is making a jobs argument directed towards Women. Women care about real issues as much as men do and they will absolutely vote that way. The Democrats have milked this one for a while now and they are beginning to see it back fire.

Back to the original point of this column and that is class warfare. We are living in a time where Americans are facing enormous challenges. Unemployment is still above 8%, the national debt has doubled in less than 4 years, consumer confidence is low, the income gap is widening and Social Security and Medicare are close to bankrupt.

Recently Howard Dean, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and former Governor of Vermont scoffed at the idea that Women would vote for Mitt Romney. He ridiculed the person who said it as if they had no brain in their head. Who said it? Michelle Bachmann, a Republican woman. Is Dean that out of touch that he thinks that Bachmann is the only woman who voted conservative? If the Democratic Party thinks it can ignore these problems and focus on birth control and other trivial issues they may find themselves watch President Romney’s inauguration on television in January.

Left and Right is a three times weekly column by Inquistr writer H. Scott English examining the hottest political issues of the day, the candidates running for public office and the 2012 elections.