Our guest blogger is Page Gardner, president and founder of Women’s Voices. Women Vote Action Fund.
Earlier this week, Ann Coulter told The New York Observer that she believes women shouldn’t have the right to vote:
If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another Democrat president. It’s kind of a pipe dream, it’s a personal fantasy of mine, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women.
It also makes the point, it is kind of embarrassing, the Democratic Party ought to be hanging its head in shame, that it has so much difficulty getting men to vote for it. I mean, you do see it’s the party of women and “We’ll pay for health care and tuition and day care — and here, what else can we give you, soccer moms?”
Sigh. Where to begin?
If we were to subscribe to Ms. Coulter’s theory — that single women be left out of the political process — and further assume that given the leading GOP presidential candidates decision to skip Hispanic and African American forums, those Americans be left out as well, we could very well believe that conservatives want the elections decided by married white men.
Let’s hope that’s not true.
The fact is that anyone seeking elected office ignores unmarried Americans at their peril. With each passing year, America is becoming more unmarried. One in four voters is a single woman. It is the marriage gap — not the gender gap or income gap — that will decide the 2008 election.
Fifty percent of all households are now headed by an unmarried person; single women comprise most of them. And whatever predispositions anyone had about who single Americans, they are not what they used to be. They are separated, divorced, widowed and now make up the majority of women. 50 million total.
And while a clear majority of unmarrieds are white, they are considerably more racially diverse than married adults. More than a quarter of unmarried Americans are Latino or African-American. These 50 million Americans — who are more likely not to have health care, are economically stressed, and are solely responsible for their child’s care — have more at stake in this election than their married counterparts.
Ms. Coulter may be a provocateur but a political strategist she is not.
– Page Gardner
UPDATE: Garance Franke-Ruta and Dave Johnson have more.
