Her post on Wendy Davis and progressivism is good:
[…] I want to focus not so much on the abortion rights issue, or on Davis as an individual, but on something else. Davis is a great example of the potentially large payoffs to progressives of diverting more activist energies away from national issues and towards the state and local elections ones.Let me explain. First of all, I believe that progressives pay too much attention, relatively speaking, to national politics, especially at the presidential level. While electing a Democratic presidential is crucial, progressives who pin their hopes on electing a liberal president are all too likely to get burned. Historically, Americans have never tended to elect progressive presidents. For one thing, we have an electoral college which gives disproportionate representation to smaller, whiter, more conservative states. For another, the unprogressive mainstream media, wealthy poltical donors, and unelected political elites often more or less decide which candidates each party nominates, well before a single political primary vote is cast.
Read the whole post, it’s worth it. The only thing I’ll add about Davis is that I wish she’d run against Cornyn. I’m sure the Democratic consultant conventional wisdom is that a male Latino centrist would be Cornyn’s best challenger, but why not run Davis to make a hard-edged comparison between the two parties’ positions on women? Cornyn is probably not as dumb as Perry (who among us is?), so he probably won’t immediately stick his foot in his mouth when discussing Davis’ past as a single mom, but I’m sure his alligator-and-ostrich-skin shitkickers will occupy his oral cavity a few times if he’s faced with a Davis challenge.
Geier’s piece on totebagger crush Chris Christie and his standard-issue Republican anti-gay bigotry is also good. It’s too bad we only get to read her stuff on weekends at the Washington Monthly.
Someone Give Kathleen Geier a Weekday JobPost + Comments (63)