As if I wasn’t already shaking in my shoes at the possibilities that we’re going to escalate the killing in Iraq and that plans are in place to “nuke” Iran, then I have to deal with getting sick to my stomach by hearing that the New York Times is celebrating the The Invasion of the Alpha Male Democrat.
The article is written by Ryan Lizza and here’s a taste:
Nancy Pelosi’s carefully crafted introduction to the American people last week seemed to reinforce some stereotypes of the so-called mommy party. On the day she made history as the first woman to be elected speaker, she appeared on the House floor, surrounded by children and bedecked in pearls.
But even as this nurturing image dominated the news, the swearing-in ceremony on Thursday was notable for another milestone in gender politics: the return of the Alpha Male Democrat.
The members of this new faction, which helped the Democrats expand into majority status, stand out not for their ideology or racial background but for their carefully cultivated masculinity.
“As much as the policy positions is the background and character of these Democrats,” says John Lapp, the former executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee who helped recruit this new breed of candidate. “So we went to C.I.A. agents, F.B.I. agents, N.F.L. quarterbacks, sheriffs, Iraq war vets. These are red-blooded Americans who are tough.”
Mr. Lapp even coined a term to describe these manly — and they are all men — pols: “the Macho Dems.”
I don’t bring this up because I have any problems with the candidates they are talking about. The Testers and Webbs of the world might actually hold some promise for helping us get out of the hole we’re currently in. But it will NOT be their “Alpha Maleness” that saves the planet from its current course of destruction.
As Lizzy points out, this “masculization” of the Dem party started three years ago:
The roots of the Macho Dem strategy can be found in the party’s 2004 losses when Democrats decided that their post-9/11 candidates needed to exude strength above all else.
“Presidential politics, but also the rest of national political leadership, has a lot to do with the understandable desire of voters for leadership, strength, clarity and sureness,” says Jim Jordan, John Kerry’s first presidential campaign manager. “Frankly, in the post-Vietnam era, Democrats have come up short by those measures too frequently.”
snip
And in the past, when Democrats believed their candidate was a true hero — well, just remember how the Republican Party was able to portray John Kerry. It could be a warning sign for Democrats: live by the Macho Dem creed, die by it.
Yeah, the militarization of John Kerry worked out real well for us, didn’t it? Does anyone else think that maybe the US public has had enough already with “machoness?” I know that I have. Hasn’t that been exactly the emphasis that has gotten us into the mess we’re in now? How about the possibility of defining the alternative? What would that alternative look like? And how would a dose of that make sense to you?
I’ll start with a portion of a poem by Marge Piercy titled “For Strong Women”
A strong woman is a woman who craves love
like oxygen or she turns blue choking.
A strong woman is a woman who loves
strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong
in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;
she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf
suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she enacts it as the wind fills a sail.
What comforts her is others loving
her equally for the strength and for the weakness
from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.
Lightning stuns. In rain, the clouds disperse.
Only water of connection remains,
flowing through us. Strong is what we make each other.
