Elections are coming up soon, and there’s a lot at stake — not just for the presidency, but for offices and local initiatives across the country. Eleven states are electing governors. 5,800 legislative seats in 44 states are up for grabs. More than 100 ballot measures will be put to voters. So we’ve created this handy voter guide illustrating the various people and issues up for a vote on Tuesday. We don’t have the time to cover every local race and every issue, so we’ve narrowed it down to races and issues that are of particular importance to feminist voters. I guarantee, though, that we’ve missed a bunch, so feel free to leave local endorsements or thoughts in the comments. If you’re in New York, Planned Parenthood has a great voter guide. And EMILY’s List is a good resource if you want to support pro-choice female candidates.
NATIONAL
The two big-party candidates for president are Barack Obama and John McCain. If you read just one endorsement, make it the New Yorker’s — theirs is the most comprehensive and eloquently-penned, and hits on virtually every crucial issue in this race. I’m not quite the writer that the editors of the New Yorker are, and there have been a lot of accusations that Obama is more about form than substance, but I think even a brief look at the issues makes clear that he is a solidly progressive, feminist choice for the presidency.
A group of economists evaluated both candidates on the positions that have the greatest impact on women, since American women tend to be economically disadvantaged compared to their male counterparts (and since American women are being hit particulary hard by the economic crisis). It’s worth a perusal. Obama earned a B average, while McCain got a D. From the report: “Professor Nancy Folbre, from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, noted that Joe Six Pack and Joe the Plumber are getting lots of attention in this campaign. “What about Josephine the Working Mother, Wanda the Waitress, and Sarah the School Teacher? These working women care about health care, pay equity, retirement security, paid time off, and child care and want to know how the candidates stand on these issues,” Folbre said.”
Obama is pro-choice (NARAL Pro-Choice America gives him a 100% voting record); he supports comprehensive sexual health education; his tax plan is beneficial to the middle class; his response to the economic crisis includes investing in infrastructure and social welfare programs that would actually help “average Americans;” he has supported federal measures that increase paid time off for illness and family leave; he’s been a proponent of wage equality; his running mate, Joe Biden, essentially wrote the Violence Against Women Act, which Obama has steadily supported; he is LGBT-friendly and supports civil unions (although not marriage); he was an early opponent of the war in Iraq and has committed to restoring peace and security to the Iraqi people and bringing American troops home; and he has promised to make his judicial appointments fair-minded as opposed to purely ideological.
McCain has opposed wage equality; his economic plan helps the wealthiest Americans but does almost nothing for middle and low-income people; he is strongly anti-choice; he will likely appoint Supreme Court justices and other judges who oppose reproductive rights; he did not support the Violence Against Women Act the first time around or when it was reauthorized; his health care proposal would create incentives for employers to not offer insurance to their employees, and instead farm the whole operation out to increasingly predatory insurance companies; he has supported the privitization of Social Security; he wants to make the Bush tax cuts permanent and reduce corporate income tax; he does not support any extensions to the Family and Medical Leave Act; despite his supposed “pro-life” values, he has never supported early childhood education or child care expansion initiatives; he voted against expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which would have given more children from low-income families access to health care; he voted for the Defense of Marriage Act; he supports abstinence-only sexual health education; and he supported the Bush administrations efforts to de-fund the UNFPA — a move that has serious life-and-death consequences for women around the world (the $34 million withheld every year could prevent 2 million unintended pregnancies, 800,000 abortions, 4,700 mothers’ deaths, and more than 77,000 infant and child deaths).
But McCain and Obama aren’t the only candidates running. I’m not going to bother with all of the third-party candidates because there are a lot of them and the majority won’t be of much interest to Feministe readers, but I will point out that Cynthia McKinney is running on the Green Party ticket. She is fully pro-choice; she supports LGBT rights, including adoption; she is pro-affirmative action; she is a supporter of VAWA and other measures combatting gender-based violence; she voted no on making the PATRIOT Act permanent; she supports a Constitutional amendment on gender equality; she is anti-death penalty; she supports legalizing marijuana and ending the war on drugs; she wants to emplement the Kyoto agreements and opposes drilling in ANWR; she has a 100% energy independence rating; she supports funding on child care, child heath and child housing; she opposes the war in Iraq; she opposes the occupation of Palestine; she wants to repeal NAFTA and CAFTA; she voted to withdraw from the WTO; she called for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney; she supports publicly financed elections; she supports single-payer universal health care and expansions of pre- and post-natal care; she opposed the Mexican border fence; she authored a living wage bill; and she was a proponent of net neutrality.
For a lot of us, myself included, McKinney best represents our beliefs (I’m not exactly on board with her foreign policy and trade views, but I would guess that I’m in the minority here). Whether to vote for her or Obama is a tough call, especially when we know that she won’t win. So I won’t editorialize too much on that issue, because it’s a touchy one — but I will say that I’m voting for Obama. I’m doing that because, even though I live in a blue state, there are going to be a lot of shenanigans around this election, and Obama needs to win by a large margin in order to make absolutely sure that he’ll be walking into the White House in January. And the larger his victory margin, the clearer it will be that he has a mandate, and the easier it will be for him to move left and push a progressive agenda. I’m also on board with him policy-wise on almost everything, so I don’t feel like I’m settling for a lesser candidate just because he has a better shot. But that’s just my two cents; vote what’s in your heart (unless John McCain is in your heart, and then please don’t). While I think that voting Obama is the best choice for feminists and progressives, I also like to think that people of good faith can disagree on that point. And if you’re in New York, I’ll also throw in a pitch for the Working Families Party; you can vote for the Democrats on their ticket, and it helps to strengthen local progressive politics.
State-by-State:
Read More…Read More…