Today on TAP Online we have not one, not two, but three articles from our latest print issue:
Ann Friedman argues that, historic though her candidacy certainly was, Hillary Clinton isn't enough to change our political culture:
But those who would agree with the statement, "We need more women in positions of political power" -- most of the Democratic Party leadership and most readers of this magazine, I'd guess--need to take a step back in the wake of Clinton's candidacy and, rather than examine what went wrong in the Clinton example, look at how to ensure we don't have to rely on outliers like Clinton in elections for the next 30 years. The real goal should be to identify significant numbers of female candidates as future leaders and promote them through the ranks in a far more conventional manner. In other words, to change our very political culture -- not just have one woman triumph over it.
Harold Meyerson looks at the factors that explain why some states have far more female politicians than others:
Such is the logic of a closed political system, where an outsider becomes an insider only if an insider vouches for hi -- or, even more, for her. And when we look across the nation to ascertain which states have elected the most women to political office and which the least, it turns out that states once (or still) dominated by party machines don't create a political culture in which women can thrive. Where entry into politics depends entirely on who sent you -- on winning the backing of the boy -- women often end up outside the clubhouse, the legislature, and the Congress.
And Ezra Klein explains that, while women win as often as men when they run for office, they're far less likely to be asked to do so:
The problem, it turns out, is less underperformance than underrepresentation. When women run, they perform at least as well as men. But they don't run nearly so often, and our country -- with its weak party system and aversion to quotas—does nothing to specifically redress the resulting disparity. This might be why the percentage of women in Congress puts us in 68th place worldwide, nestled right between Bolivia and El Salvador, and only a couple of spots beneath famously feminist Tajikistan.
Also on TAP online today, Terence Samuel writes about the effect of sweetheart loans received by some Democrats on the chances for mortgage reform:
True enough, but even as they work on providing homeowner relief, Democrats need to very quickly address their little "Countrywide problem," which hurts their credibility and exposes them to great political risk. This is the, so far, mini-scandal in which Dodd and other high-powered Democrats got special treatment on mortgages from Countrywide Financial Corporation, the controversial mortgage lender at the heart of the sub-prime mortgage crisis.
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--The Editors
