How The New Agenda Helped to Shape the 2010 Election
November 3, 2010
by The New Agenda
|Word is spreading! More and more people are hearing about The New Agenda: following us in the media, on Facebook or on our blog. Yesterday was one of the busiest traffic day we have ever had for our blog! After the election, women want to know: What’s next?
With so many new faces, we want to also take this opportunity to explain how The New Agenda has helped to shape the 2010 election. And how our organization is improving the lives of women!
It started in the summer of 2008 when Hillary Clinton dropped out.
Memory Lane: our original home page
In an effort to win our votes, Sen John McCain dispatched then-surrogate Carly Fiorina to Amy Siskind’s home for a meeting with the women who would eventually co-found The New Agenda. Carly’s question: How can McCain win over women voters?
A few weeks later, Amy hosted the first meeting of The New Agenda. We decided to focus on the issues that unite women, putting political party and reproductive rights aside. We also decided that gender balance and ending sexism were key.
So we responded to Carly: We want McCain to select a woman VP. Here’s our short-list of five. And yes, Governor Sarah Palin from Alaska was on our list.
We also decided to go after Chris Matthews who had been amongst the most sexist towards Hillary in 2008: This man will never be a senator on our watch! Shortly thereafter, he dropped his senate bid. A new women’s group of Hillary Clinton supporters was cited. Our first of what would become many successes at making sexism increasingly unacceptable.
But things were heating up. The media was vicious to Sarah Palin. We felt like we were watching a re-run of what had been done to our heroine, Hillary Clinton. So we spoke out all over the national media. Back in 2008, we were the only women’s group to defend Palin from sexism. We knew even before conclusive studies were published that sexism hurt all women candidates.
Over the next year, The New Agenda would grow in national presence and national voice, becoming a go-to voice for the media. And always, we would continue to speak out against sexism directed at all women, regardless of party.
June 2009: Veronica Hernandez created our logo
In June 2009, we would also start a national dialogue with our first op-ed at The Huffington Post: Sexism Against Conservative Women is Still Sexism. The op-ed was the most read at Huffpost and touched a national nerve. So much so that a conservative dad from California paid to have the op-ed reprinted in a full page ad in the Hollywood Reporter.
Our nation was starting to listen, especially women!
And with President Obama seeming tone-deaf to women, we noticed that the Democratic Party was losing its grip on women. We also noticed that the definition of ‘women’s issues’ was going through a metamorphosis. And, for the first time, women were considering voting based on gender.
So we encouraged the most powerful women in the Republican Party to fight for our votes. On April 4, 2010, at The Daily Beast, we wrote an op-ed Time for Palin to Embrace Her Gender.
One week later, Palin did, officially launching her “Mama Grizzlies!” Palin outdid our expectation endorsing women all over the country. Putting women first (emphasis added):
And the biggest furor so far has erupted here, with a leader of an anti-abortion group, Georgia Right to Life, accusing Ms. Palin of “endorsing any female Republican candidate that she could find.” Rival candidates complained that Ms. Palin was backing the most liberal Republican in the race.
Which brings us to November 2, 2010. A year when the country voted many Democrats – male and female – out of office. If not for Palin’s Mama Grizzlies and other Republican women running, women would have gone backwards from an already pitifully low 17% representation. Thankfully, we did just fine.
This week as our country looks back on election day, there is a growing realization. Alarm bells are ringing that women’s groups must operate in a non-partisan way. It’s truly the only way for women to advance.
And most importantly, with the disappearing gender gap, now BOTH parties will need to fight for women’s votes! What does that mean? It means you can expect the parties to become increasingly aware of gender balance and inclusion of women’s issues (still evolving) in their platforms. WOMEN WILL NO LONGER BE IGNORED OR TAKEN FOR GRANTED!!!
We invite you to join us at The New Agenda as we make history. Become a member. Volunteer your time. Follow us at Facebook. Read our blog. Check out our national media presence.
We’re just getting warmed up!
Join our national movement to improve the lives of women and girls.
Great work! It is a relief to me that there is a real voice for women now. That has been missing for many years.
Agreed, this site’s voice is an important addition to women’s voices on the web.And lets encourage the Democrats to run a female VP in 2012 also. I can think of a good one
“If not for Palin’s Mama Grizzlies and other Republican women running, women would have gone backwards from an already pitifully low 17% representation.”
It’s amazing how STUPID left-wing women are for not realizing this. And right-wing women if they go down the same primrose path — and they had better keep a damn sharp eye out to make sure they don’t.
Spot on, Janis. You’ll love what I posted at my place: http://peacocksandlilies.com/2.....-shall-we/
Warning, the language is not work-friendly. It’s a rant, after all. Heh.
Libby: I want both parties to run a woman as VP if not a woman Presidential candidate. But after the sexism the Dems and Corporate Media unleashed to get Obama elected I will never vote for Obama regardless of who is his VP after all it is a do nothing office. Still it is a gesture the Dems could make that I would notice and it might influence my votes further down the ticket.
Anna Belle, this pro-choice, atheist, pro-gay-marriage, pro-welfare-state liberal would personally like to offer some ginger molasses cookies and a nice bottle of wine to ANY Republican woman who won or ran for office. I’ll be sending some dosh to SarahPAC, too.
When the left-wing women care as much about getting left-wing women in office as they do about glitter eyeshadow, push-up bras, and making “boys” think they’re “cute,” I’ll shovel some cash at them, too. Might be a long wait.
Those women are like the French aristocracy. Feminism was never a movement for those women. It was a hobby.
Amy, thanks for providing a forum for advocacy and sanity here at The New Agenda.
“Feminism was never a movement for those women. It was a hobby.” Janis, so true. Feminism belongs to women who actually have to work for a living, and contribute to the lives of friends, family, community. The talking heads and their lock-step ideologies can go to hell. Neither the conservative nor the liberal label can sum up the complexity of any individual woman. The labels themselves reek of confinement.
Janis, I don’t want to get into a fight with you but I find your comments offensive and deeply insulting to very many left-wing women who worked hard this election and in many previous ones to get women elected. Those ‘hobby’ feminists as you call them have been arguing, lobbying and pressurising politicians and other to get many fundamental female rights enshrined in law for years whilst most Republican women either did nothing or actively opposed their efforts. Look at the list of policies you say you support then ask yourself who has consistantly worked for those things and helped bring their legal recognition about or are still working to do so. Answer, left-wing women. The majority of women in Congress at present have a D after their name not R and this has been true for the decades and decades when Democrats have nominated and got elected more women than Republicans. I’m glad the GOP has at last got in on the act but please don’t use that as a reason to trash other women. Oh and I’m pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-social security as well which is why I will never vote, work or support a women who
oppose and try to deny these choices to other women. Maybe you’ll not be surprised to learn I own a push-up bra and frequently wear eye shadow!
libby -I’m very sympathetic to the work that you have done. I and the original women who started this org all fit that same mold. That work is admirable and truly up until now I think the best (maybe only?) way to advance women. We’re trying something new here. We think it is working. It’s revolutionary, yes…but we think it will help progress for women and girls significantly. Stick with us!
Amy, I really admire your blog and support your efforts to challenge the casual sexism that the media and others in public life use. Although you are not the only blog doing this or the only organisation, another energetic and brave group of women working as hard as you obviously do to defend women is great. Your aim to be non-party political is also great although most commentators here do seem to be right-wing but thats ok I’m happy to fly the left’s flag when needed. But the one thing I can’t sign up to is the ‘any women will do’ mentality as it’s self defeating.You can’t defeat sexism with sexism. To vote FOR a women just because she is a women is as sexist as NOT voting for a women just because she is a women. Most women will have nothing to do with this tactic as McCain discovered in 2008 when he used a women, Sarah Palin, simply for his own pathetic attempt to attract Hillary Clinton supporters. And we all know how well that worked! For this reason I’m not sure that a campaign that is so uncritical of ability and values can get anywhere as you run the danger of appearing to stand for nothing except ‘women right or wrong’. I know from other postings that you stand for very much more than that so forgive me if I keep ranting on about this. I do support you honestly, I just don’t always agree with you.
I realize it gets confusing, but the premise of our organization is not voting for all women. Many do – and I think that voting on gender is just as acceptable as voting on party It’s a free country and we can surely use as many examples (current admin being front of center) of how misguided it is to vote for a party and hope beyond hope for a few crumbs. I think our country is shifting and that is why you see, for the first time in my lifetime anyways, women split and trending Repub. And if they do, why shouldn’t we then embrace this and hold the RNC accountable (which we will)…TNA strives to be a voice for all women and we celebrate – not look down upon – women with different POVs and ask just that we work towards finding common ground.
I want women in office and so I vote for all women whom I have a chance to vote for. I think that is a more intelligent way to vote than the people who vote for Dems because they are pro choice, when the Dems sold out reproductive rights in the insurance reform legislation when they had majorities in both houses and the Presidency. If the Dems wont support reproductive rights for when under those circumstances they just don’t care about women’s votes.
Further the women whom liberal dogma people complain about, O’Donnell, Angle, Palin etc are not crazy inept women. If you believe they are you are just believing the sexist drivel that is called Corporate Media. You don’t need to degrade and mock women who have different political opinions than you. You can just say they follow a different political philosophy, they went to public school and they don’t live on the east coast so they are from a culture you don’t understand. If you feel liberal women are being mocked here it is because so many of them unquestioningly accept what the sexist media says. When I hear liberals acknowledge the sexism in the 2008 election and tell me it was a mistake then I will start to listen to them again. As it is I have stopped all donations to Dems and this year donated to Republican women candidates.
libby, all the issues Janis cited are hold by many who comment in a way which seems conservative to you. I think issue voting is for voters who for whatever reason are not well informed. it is easy to digest the slogans the republicans and democrats put out. it gets a whole lot more complicated when you read and listen what they do.
to me issue voting is like believing advertisements. I have become independent after 2008 and have great doubts anyone represents us women at the ballot. gender voting is an interesting concept when you look at it from the premise that women’s needs, realities are going unnoticed in the political discourse. we are reduced to physical appearance and reproductive organs. that are the traditional women’s issues. I reject that. just like white males no matter how liberal they are cannot speak for hispanics or blacks or any minority, they cannot speak for women. it does not matter what ad they carry on their T shirt. some female candidates will be better than others, but most female candidates of either party will bring a lot more to the table for us than non-women. gender voting is a from of identity voting. suppressed groups always had doubts at their own candidates. would they measure up. I think a lot of this is going on with the defamation of gender voting. I don’t think Coons or Reid or Brown are representing women better than O’Donnell, Angle or Whitman would. I think Whitman was the star under these three and her loss is very regretable, but I am sure the other two would have helped women’s issue in a broader sense than used in the past.
to me issue voting is like believing advertisements.
Exactly! Issues were the most important factor for me before 2008. Then that worldview was turned on its head. Why?
- Issues are used against women candidates more than male candidates, i.e. ideological purity is demanded more from women than from men. For example, many left wing women who supported Edwards (who voted for the war) gave Hillary’s vote for the war as a reason for voting against her. There is a blatant double standard where a female candidate who falls short in some way is raked over the coals while her male counterparts get a pass. Palin is hated and reviled more than all her republican male peers combined. (Bush may be an exception but he was president for 8 years and did far more damage than 10 Palins combined could ever do.)
- It is the rule rather than the exception that campaign promises are broken, especially by male democrats and especially when it comes to women’s rights because women have been such easy targets for being taken for granted. Most left-wing women are relatively quiet now that Obama is running roughshod over every issue they consider important, and they continue to support him.
We as a society have proven ourselves incapable of being objective about female candidates. The only way that I can think of that we can get equality for women in politics or anywhere else is to support them, regardless of issues.
“libby, all the issues Janis cited are hold by many who comment in a way which seems conservative to you.”
Indeed. I’m pro-choice, atheist, think that climate change is REAL, pro-welfare state, pro-woman, and pro-SS marriage. Period. That makes me NOT a Democrat, NOT a Republican, NOT a conservative, and certainly NOT a progressive. In any way, shape, or form.
I think I have the right to slam left-wing women since I actually believe in and am ready to fight for all the shit they whine about and then dropped like a hot potato. And if/when right-wing women start pulling the same “not my clique” garbage, I’ll let them have it, too.
But if any of them run for office, I’ll vote for them. In a heartbeat.
OK fair comment ladies I hear what you say and will try again to explain my take on this. First I am not a registered Democrat and my support for them is luke warm at best. Yes I agree with all those who point out that the Dems have sold out women and taken their support for granted. I welcome the Republican’s sudden interest in women because I welcome competition especially when it comes to votes. I am
open to voting R in future WHEN the GOP moves beyond just words and starts to sponsor and support legislation that advances or at least strengthens women’s rights ( and yes I know this is subjective). As yet you cannot deny their record on this is pathetic at best. So lets see what they actually deliver before getting too warm and fuzzy about them.
I am confused by the mistrust/dislike some of you show towards ‘issues’. If you don’t vote on issues what the hell are you voting on – the colour of the candidates eyes? Isn’t gender an issue, or getting more women elected? Issues are used against all candidates that is what election campigns do. Find something your opponent has done and use it against them whilst ignoring the times you and yours have done similar. 2008 was not magically going to become the first ever fair and respectful set of elections just because a women was involved.
And Bes I am not mocking those who do not agree with me. If it comes over as that I apologise, just typing words with no face to face contact can lead to people reading things into them that are not there. Like me calling O’Donnell and Angle ‘crazy’ which I didn’t.I said they were unprofessional and incompetant. If you don’t agree fine, give me some proof rather than inventing a set of attitudes and life story for me that fits in with your own prejudices. I went to public school, I don’t live on the east coast and I read and research extensively issues and candidates from sources left, right and centre including Fox and Limburgh. You can mock liberals who unquestioningly accept what the media tells them,they deserve it as much as the conservatives who unquestioningly believe what the rightwing media tell them. No difference.
And Janis you are not the only person in the world who believes in things and fights for them. Refusing to acknowledge the commitment and work of other women just because you don’t like their party loyalties is petty and insulting to women. I thought TNA is trying to be better than that.
Oops – just seen how long my last comment was, sorry rant over
Since calling women candidates crazy, incompetent, unprofessional etc without examples (and 20 year old MTV clips taken out of context don’t count with me) is a tactic of the misogynist left, just saying that without real evidence is enough for me to see you as a liberal who memorizes and regurgitates Corporate Media/Democrat sexism. I know that most of the things media and dems said about Hillary and Palin were not true so I don’t even assume that the similar attacks Media/Dems make on other women candidates are true. I don’t need to prove these women are professional and competent that is assumed of all male candidates and I assume that women candidates are more qualified or they wouldn’t have gotten as far as they have. It is true they O’Donnell and Angle don’t act like they were bred to be candidates and for me that is a plus but for some it seems unprofessional. I don’t think being a professional candidate is a good thing. I vote for real people.
But where is your outrage about the male candidate who thinks he was kidnapped by aliens? Why don’t you prove he is professional and competent? What about the congressman who had $90,000. in his freezer? What about the Congressmen who have been caught attempting to have sex with strangers in restrooms? Was that professional? What about the Senator who drove his car off a bridge and left the young woman he was out with (while his pregnant wife was home taking care of the kids) to drown while he got as far away as he could, was that professional or even legal? While your standards for women office holders seem logical, they are clearly a double standard. I actually thing O’Donnell and Angle should have fit right in with the men who serve in Congress.
As long as women remain pawns of either party, women must work to transcend the false value of “party loyalty” which is a framework designed by, for, and about powerful men.
If competence were a political value, Hillary Clinton would be the president of the US. The fact that Angle and O’Donnell won primaries, despite lack of support from their own party, is evidence of competence. In addition to sexism, the fact that they are less “controllable” was a factor in their defeat. Further, they have paved the way for more citizen-politicians to run for office which is the one hope we have in achieving gender parity and in making the government more diversified and egalitarian. Whether I agree with the policies of these two women or no, I recognize and value their contribution and their integrity.
OK I wasn’t going to comment anymore on this because I thought we had probably run this thread into the ground, but Bes, Bes your political tunnel vision is astounding. Do you seriously believe that only the left behave in that way? Do you know nothing about the right’s treatment of Hillary Clinton during the 90s and their continual rehash of the ‘she’s a corrupt-lying-psychopathic-murderous -lesbian’ meme during her Senate campaigns? Have you not noticed the right’s misogynous and sexist treatment of Nancy Pelosi still continuing so classily with Rush Limburgh’s ‘Ding dong the witch is dead’ recently? I don’t mind you disagreeing with what I write but you can’t discredit my opinion by claiming ALL misogyny and sexism comes from the left and as I take all my views from them (uh read my previous comment by the way) my views are automatically discredited. And yes I do know about the disgraceful/corrupt/incompetent behaviour of male candidates but I was discussing the unprofessional and incompetent campaigns of O’Donnell and Angle.We can compare notes on the useless, dishonest male candidates of the left and right some other time this was about getting more females into Congress and the importance of having competant, professional candidates to make sure this happens.
Monarch you are right that women are treated as pawns by both political parties and female supporters of both left and right political parties must challenge the men that still run them on this. But women will do our cause no good at all if we shout ‘sexism’ everytime a women loses. Voters reject female candidates sometimes simply because they show themselves to be woefully uninformed (O’Donnell and the Constitution) make ludicrous statements that they cannot back up with facts (Angle), refuse to take part in the public vetting process by refusing media questions and make poor campaign decisions that make the electorate doubt their ability to run anything. Male candidates failed to get elected for exactly the same reasons. It’s not gender it’s ability that made them fail.Competence is a political value but sometimes it gets beaten by other things if a rival candidate can appeal to emotions instead and the voters follow their hearts instead of their heads. That’s how we got landed with Obama!
Libby, the “incompetence” label ranks very high in the campaign book to oust female candidates. agreed that the republicans were outragiously sexist to Hillary. But remember the Obama campaign dismissing Hillary’s foreign politics experience as tea drinking first lady entertainment. and then branding her vote for war against Irak if everything else fails, as war mongerer. and he sailed in bringing peace.
so much to the accusation of “incompetence”. I can’t take accusation of incompetence against women serious. you really should look at the numbers how many men ever were dissed as “incompetent”. with question on separation of church and state as evidence of incompetence. first we know that separation of church and state is not in the constitution, but addressed in a founder’s letter. so Christine was technically right and Chris was wrong. second I remember feeling very alienated by Obama embracing several churches social outreach and suggesting some co-operation with state agencies.
there are just two words in the campaigns which should alert anyone. one is lack of truthfulness or dishonesty and the other incompetence. these are classics in the fight against female candidates.
O’Donnell was right it does not say anything in the Constitution about separation of Church and State. The Mocking Contempt spewing media was wrong.
The right doesn’t like Nancy Pelosi because she is effective at pushing the agenda of the Dems. But not liking her is not troublesome to me, I only have problems with sexism. Ding Dong the Witch is dead would be considered sexism by most I guess. I happen to like Witches but I guess I am odd on that point. So yes I am sure the right does engage in sexism but the left had a female candidate superstar in Hillary. She was easily twice as qualified to be President as Obama and the left destroyed her chances with their sexism. They told her to sit down and shut up or else. I haven’t seen the right destroy their own woman candidate with sexism. I went to my Caucus and I saw the appalling sexism in action. By the way there were a lot of people I’ve never seen before at that caucus and there was something unfamiliar about how they were. So I am now an Independent who votes mostly Republican.
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