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| For some reason, turnout was low. |
From the New York Times:
Women Scarce In the Top Posts Of Los Angeles
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
LOS ANGELES — There are 1.9 million women in Los Angeles. The two senators from California are women, as is the state’s attorney general.
But this city, a bastion of progressive politics, has a curious distinction these days. Only one woman holds elective office in the entire government of Los Angeles, a member of the 15-person City Council from the San Fernando Valley who was sworn in only on Friday.
The mayor is a man, Eric M. Garcetti, who defeated a woman, Wendy Greuel, for the job in May. The city attorney is a man. The city controller? You guessed it.
Los Angeles County, with a population of 9.9 million that includes Los Angeles, has just one woman on its five-member Board of Supervisors. And the race to fill the City Council seat for Hollywood, which Mr. Garcetti vacated when he was elected mayor, gave voters a choice of 12 candidates — all men.
Los Angeles, especially the hilly section like Garcetti's old district, has a lot of gay men, but it's a lousy place for lesbians: too expensive, and Los Angeles's straight women are far too obsessed with their looks to pay heed to lesbian feminist scolds. Beverly Hills Persian women, for instance, pay a lot of money to gay men for various luxuries, but they would also be about the last people on earth to take lesbians seriously. Vermont would be a lot more attractive to lesbians.
The overwhelmingly male lineup in local elected offices has caught many people here by surprise, overlooked in the general lack of interest in this year’s campaigns. And it has become a subject of considerable chagrin, civic embarrassment and impassioned discussions about exactly what happened.
“When I was in elementary school, there were like five women on the City Council,” said Nury Martinez, the city’s lone woman in elected office, speaking in her empty Council office at City Hall. “It’s a shame and embarrassing that in a city of four million people we are down to one woman.”
Eventually, Nagourney gets around to relating this non-story to something more interesting:
The case in Los Angeles might be particularly egregious, but the number of women holding office across the country has flat-lined in recent years.
“Can you believe it?” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who works extensively with female candidates, including Ms. Greuel. “It’s part of a national trend. We are seeing this in a lot of places — in offices in statewide office, in a number of city councils. But it’s really shocking. That is a state that is very pro-women.”
The situation here has caught the attention of national women’s advocacy groups, including Emily’s List, which is planning to begin a training and recruitment campaign here aimed at enlisting women to run for office.
“We do not want to see any city without equal representation of women — and in this case, we are really, really off, “said Stephanie Schriock, the president of the organization.
Katherine Spillar, the head of the Feminist Majority Foundation, called the situation “shocking.”
“I’m very concerned,” she said. “We have gone backwards instead of forwards. Shame on Los Angeles.”
To some extent, the gender lineup at City Hall is an anomaly, the result of the natural ebb and flow of electoral politics. Ms. Greuel, the previous city controller, had to leave her position because of term limits — in this case, to run unsuccessfully for mayor. She would have been Los Angeles’s first female chief executive.
Several analysts suggested that the sheer number of women in high elected office in California had inured voters to the issue, and blunted what might otherwise have been a historical urgency to Ms. Greuel’s campaign.
I've met Wendy Greuel. She's a nice lady. But, "historical urgency" is hardly the first term that she inspires.
There is no reason to expect the situation to change significantly any time soon; few obvious female candidates are on the horizon. Indeed, to a large extent, the issue here and across the country reflects a lack of interest on the part of many women in seeking office, political analysts said.
“The issue isn’t that voters won’t vote for women — it’s that we don’t have enough women running,” Debbie Walsh, the director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said in an e-mail. “It’s a recruitment issue.”
In one measure of the representation of women in state and local government, 73 women hold elected statewide positions across the nation, or 23 percent of available positions, according to the center. That is almost identical to the percentage reported in 1993. The figure then increased through 2001, to 28 percent, but has been in a steady decline over the past 12 years, the center said.
The current surge in these kind of feminist bean-counting articles is an artifact of the 2012 Obama campaign reinflating old feminist resentments for the sake of increasing turnout among Obama's core supporters, who are America's fringe voters.
But the reality is that nothing much is going on in terms of gender trends. The current feminist era began 44 years ago, and by a couple of decades ago, most of what was going to change had changed.
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27 comments:
Are Hispanic women Democrats more or less likely to run for office than non-Hispanic white women Democrats?
Does feminism function to boost white liberals in an ethnically diverse party?
Good point.
Hispanic women aren't terribly enterprising.
Mexicans scarce in Hollywood studios.
I wonder if this is really random fluctuation.
I looked up Los Angeles City Council. For those who don't know, it's a full time job that pays about $180,000 a year. Great pay, right? Well, maybe not for the women who typically run.
I am thinking a couple of things that may be discouraging women candidates in Los Angeles and across America, too:
1. Political jobs interfere with career/moneymaking. Women are afraid to quit their day jobs. Also City Council and other government jobs may pay less than they were making and they can't afford the cut. With employers demanding more time and effort from employees, the part-time political jobs may be too much for them to handle, especially the single moms.
2. There's fewer deep pocketed women candidates. That means they must spend even more time on fundraising. Do people on average give less than to women candidates? Is cost of running going up?
3. Political office has become too much of a pain. Maybe women who would have run in the past are unwilling to put themselves through campaign scrutiny, constant demands from donors and constituents. Also lack of satisfaction in job due to constant partisan bickering. Current Congress sure supports that idea.
I was just talking to someone about the danger that running for President was so awful now that nobody you'd want to vote for would be willing to run. I know, we've all heard that forever but it really is getting worse.
Have we come to the point that women in politics -- who I think may say enough's enough sooner than men -- just won't do what needs to be done to run?
I do not know but I would not rule it out as a possibility.
I suspect a territory in which women are a majority of elected officials might just be a more pleasant place to live. Why?
Pure Steven Goldberg: the government would be so weak and unobtrusive that men, who are more aggressive and thirsty for power, would lose interest in holding office and go chase some more inviting brass ring.
But don't confuse this with the ghetto situation where women dominate because men are too incompetent and/or ineligible to serve. Or with the African tendency for the men to sit around drinking tea while the women do all the scut work.
Jobs that female Americans just won't do.
I suspect a territory in which women are a majority of elected officials might just be a more pleasant place to live. Why?
Pure Steven Goldberg: the government would be so weak and unobtrusive
The reality turns out to be just the opposite: women's attempt to make everyone happy and content makes government intrusive and eventually tyrannical. You don't even have to elect women to get that result; it's enough to give them the vote so that politicians have to pander to them.
Save us, St. Rodham, you're our only hope!
Haven't women been the majority of voters since like the 1920's? If so, they could have voted in nothing but women and men would have been shut out of government. Women themselves don't run or vote for women.
"Fewer women in Los Angeles city and county government"
Because all the lesbians that would be holding such positions have moved to Colorado, Oregon and Washington State.
"BEEP, non-sequitur, non-sequitur, BEEP!"
"most of what was going to change had changed"
As cultural evolution, yes. But there is still plenty of change for the government to force.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323401904578159573738040636.html
Los Angeles is something of an outlier because it's so big. How do the city councils of all the other 80 cities in the basin look? More broadly, are women more likely to run for local office when they're stay-at-home moms? Or in areas where more mothers stay home?
The women that are having kids are not the ones inspiring their daughters to run for office. The women of the sort who love to butt heads with men out there in business and politics are having few kids.
Pretty simple.
NBC is putting out a mini-series on Hillary:
http://entertainment.time.com/2013/07/29/nbcs-hillary-clinton-miniseries-a-possibly-unwanted-political-gift/
This is after 60 Minutes ran a whole 20 minute interview segment with Obama simply buffing her up and counting the ways she is so wonderful.
Republican National Committee would have a good lawsuit against NBC/CBS for this sort of payment-in-kind corporate campaign contribution.
as the msm cranks up the let's get ready for hillary boolcheet, expect to see a lot more of these feminism flavored nuggets of nothing "spontaneously" popping up here and there all of a sudden, over the next couple of years.
the msm will start noticing stories like this in increasing frequency... until around, oh i don't know... november, 2016.
coincidentally, you understand.
Allow me to parody an old Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen song: "C'mon, whine, whine, whine, do your stuff!"
Steve, you keep repeating the mantra that Obama's voters are the fringes of America.
Nothing could be further from the truth. It is people like you and me who are the fringe. Hard that may be to accept, it is nevertheless the truth. The President is a Black man with thinly veiled resentments towards Whites who is the subject of gay rumors. The AG is a Black man with overt resentments towards Whites. The former Secretary of State and current leading candidate for President in 2016 who is considered a slam dunk is a woman who is the subject of persistent lesbian rumors.
In entertainment, in politics, in the media, in the core of the nation, gays, lesbians, feminists, Blacks, and Hispanics are prominent, and ordinary White guys are considered weird and the fringe.
As for women in California politics, they tend to reflect old political dynasties: Nancy Pelosi, Feinstein, and Boxer. Comparable to Jerry Brown. The coming Latino tidal wave of elected officials (like it or not, Villaraigosa is the favorite to succeed Jerry Brown) is wiping out the dynastic female succession. But overall, women are happy with that -- at least they screwed over the fringe, which is ordinary White guys.
Again, the fringe is people like Steve and myself, ordinary White guys. The center and "normal" are gays, lesbians, Blacks, Hispanics, and radical feminists. They have control of the microphone which means power. They run things.
Caring about this place is a fool's game. Investing in it is even worse. Its just a place on a map. No different than Tijuana or Cuidad Juarez.
One more point on "America's fringe voters." In 2011 according to Peter Brimelow, and he is correct, non-White births outnumbered White births. America is already functionally non-White majority. The only question is how soon and to what degree White males are treated as "disposable garbage?" Will it be a Jew in the Kaiser's Germany, alright for cannon fodder on the Western Front, but twenty years later marched into the death camps wearing the Iron Cross? Or will it be a Black man in Indiana in 1925?
Yes of course this happened, rapidly, and of course because of the disgust and revulsion most younger White women (age 15-55) have for White guys. Look at the lust/love for Dhjokar Tsarnaev and "too hot for jail" Aaron Hernandez. Nothing, not even shooting a Black guy or blowing an eight year old boy apart is forbidden for the Alpha Male. As long he looks good and smirks about his crimes. See vampires galore, Dexter, Sons of Anarchy, etc.
The bitter harvest of feminism is making women social equals led them to lack sexy/dominant men, given that European biological evolution had women competing for lifetime commitment from men, not men competing on the African model of most sexy by best fighter/singer/dancer etc. Hence the core of voters and the core of America 2.0 is really what Steve calls the fringe.
The anti-White guy animus is merely the collective judgment of White women that White guys are simply not sexy enough and so deserve annihilation in one way or another. It is simple as that -- women never forgive a lack of sexiness and forgive anything (even killing a Black guy like Hernandez did) if the killer is dominant/sexy. [What White Nationalists don't get is that White women don't do so badly under non-White rule. Unlike White guys they can be the new mistresses of the new ownership. See Strom Thurmond and Omar Thornton for how that works under various racial dominantion.]
"Los Angeles is something of an outlier because it's so big. How do the city councils of all the other 80 cities in the basin look?"
The white cities like Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Burbank, etc. have women on the councils.
Whiskey said: Yes of course this happened, rapidly, and of course because of the disgust and revulsion most younger White women (age 15-55) have for White guys.
Then Whiskey said: See vampires galore, Dexter, Sons of Anarchy, etc.
Hunsdon said: Blacula? Every example of alpha assholiness was white: Dexter, SOA, vampires . . . .
"Haven't women been the majority of voters since like the 1920's?"
John R. Lott wrote a paper about this. Although women had the franchise by 1920, I don't think it was until the 1950s or 1960s they voted in a number proportionate to their percentage of the population. My memory is hazy though, I read the paper years ago.
This is almost certainly just randomness. Human brains are basically machines for coming up with plausible explanations for random shit they see, and as far as I can tell, that's what all this analysis about why LA has a dearth of women on the city council is.
I especially want to highlight Whiskey's contribution, because it is a perfect demonstration of what political pundits do for a living: Here is some odd thing happening, due to some mixture of random shit and really complicated interacting forces I don't even begin to understand. Now, let me write an article that somehow ties this odd thing I've observed back to all my pet issues, while never letting on that I don't really know what caused it anymore than my readers do.
The difference between Whiskey and a professional pundit is simply that their writing more smoothly hides what's going on, and their pet causes usually get enough support from mainstream sources that the whole thing sounds kinda plausible if you don't think too hard. If Whiskey's obsessions about white women hating beta white men were widely respectable MSM supported ideas, his posts would sound more-or-less reasonable, the way Tom Friedman can sound more or less reasonable as long as you don't think too hard abiut what he's saying.
Pure Steven Goldberg: the government would be so weak and unobtrusive that men, who are more aggressive and thirsty for power, would lose interest in holding office and go chase some more inviting brass ring.
Just finished reading Goldberg's excellent Why Men Rule. It's a shame his ideas seem to have been largely forgotten among academics (though it's unsurprising). His theory of male dominance, first advanced four decades ago during the era of "women's liberation", has fared quite well in the post-feminist age.
How much longer will western elites continue to brood over the lack of gender equity in politics? I mean, at some point I assume they give up and say maybe this isn't going to ever happen. Then again, the Swedes have gone some ways towards achieving it via fiat.
RE : Persian Jews
It's worth noting that the optimum economic strategy in a free market is small scale communism.
Multiple entrepreneurs sharing wealth and connections decreases risk and increases reward. A home run shared by family can offset multiple strikeouts.
Jews, being isolated and persecuted throughout their history, turn to this strategy naturally and unconsciously.
From the article:
"Younes and his brother, Parviz, relied on contacts with other Persian Jewish immigrants—“Our best asset in this country was our few friends,” he notes—and established a factory building machine parts for such clients as the Department of Defense. Several years later, the brothers were brought into a fledgling telecom company, Qualcomm, and their millions ballooned into billions. "
"Just finished reading Goldberg's excellent Why Men Rule. It's a shame his ideas seem to have been largely forgotten among academics "
lol, he was on the guiness book of world records for the most rejection of manuscript
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