The XX Factor: What women really think.

The Beltway and the Baseball Diamond

This guest post comes to us from Lisa Lerer, a staff writer for Politico.com. 

BBC correspondent Katty Kay has an interesting piece up on the Daily Beast complaining about the use of sports metaphors by pundits and politicians:  

Because women feel excluded from these sports discussions, our normally confident voices are subdued. To turn the tables, imagine if these public conversations were liberally sprinkled with references to fashion, or yoga. It's as if Dana Perino had compared getting out of Iraq to extracting yourself from pigeon pose, or tracking Osama to finding vintage Pucci on eBay. But she didn't. She's a woman and more inclusive than that.

As a non-fan, I frequently have to ask for a translation when the stock metaphors come out on the trail and in the briefing room. Some of my female political journalist friends make a practice of routinely reading sports pages just to be more conversant.

But I think Kay is getting at a larger problem here: The Beltway can be an incredibly chauvinistic, macho place—a fact that won't change even if the pundits and pols drop all their sports clichés. What we really need to improve political discourse is a deeper bar of up-and-coming female politicians. To that end, it’s heartening to see this article from Alexandra Starr in the New Republic about Kirsten Gillibrand and other female career politicians.

The fact that women like Gillibrand don't feel obligated to speak about how they entered politics because of their work on behalf of kids, not to mention having to toil for years as local volunteers, shows that the landscape has changed. Gillibrand's aggressiveness may have engendered Tracy Flick snickers, but her rapid political rise used to be the exclusive province of men.

But back to the baseball diamond: I know sports metaphors are common not only in politics but business and other fields. Do they annoy you, XXFactors, as much as they annoy me? And, do they cut women out of the conversation?

"I Find Her Kind of Endearing"

You're right, Jessica, that Kirsten Gillibrand—while proudly conservative—isn't totally orthodox. A smart progressive friend writes me with another example:

Despite the fact as a hard lefty I shouldn't, I kind of find her endearing. ... She voted for the Employee Free Choice Act and was a co-sponsor. Phew!

He adds:

I think that Paterson did not have a killer option and this is not a particularly bad pick. If Jerry Nadler was transformed into a 45-year-old woman from Buffalo with a "z" at the end of her name, great, but you go to war with the army you have.

I only beg the Slate art department not to get on the task of producing an image of Jerry Nadler transformed into a 45-year-old woman from Buffalo.

Choice Is Dead

Gillibrand: Loves the NRA and NARAL in Equal Measure

Eve, you're right that Kirsten Gillibrand has a remarkably conservative record for a New York Dem, except on one issue: reproductive rights. She co-sponsored a 2007 bill to "expand access to preventive health care services that help reduce unintended pregnancy, reduce abortions, and improve access to women's health care," and she also got a 100 percent rating from NARAL Pro-Choice New York. It's been argued by Ross Douhat and others that pro-lifers are more willing to compromise, especially now that Obama and his choice-loving compatriots are in charge, but the evidence of that is scant. In fact, it seems like the pro-life movement has been invigorated by Obama's inauguration, as tens of thousands of anti-abortion activists attended a rally in D.C. yesterday to mark the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. (According to the AP, one woman held up a sign that said “The Audacity of Hope: No More Roe.”)

Related: Wonder what the Catholic Gillibrand thinks of this ad making the rounds from CatholicVote.org, which argues that if Obama had been aborted, he wouldn't be president today.

Clinton's Senate Replacement: Boobs Like Hillary, Views Like John Breaux

OK, so, at first blush, Kirsten Gillibrand—the replacement for Hillary in the Senate, announced today—looks like the ideal solution to all of New York Gov. David Paterson's problems. Like Caroline Kennedy, she's a woman. Like the big names in the replacement race, she's a talented buck-raker (as of this summer, she was crowned the "top fundraiser" among the 42 Democrats in the House class of '06). But unlike Kennedy or Cuomo, she isn't saddled with all that dynastic baggage. Perfect!

But she's also got politics. (Amid all the oohing and aahing over a lady politician's ascent, we sometimes forget that these political girl wonders have views along with their unusual anatomy.) And her politics are quite different from those of the other contenders. She's definitely the most conservative pick out of the possible replacements the Albany Times-Union handicapped. How conservative? Well, this fall she called her voting record "one of the most conservative in the state," and while I was skeptical when I first read that—including Republicans?—it's not too much of an exaggeration, especially now that the antediluvian Vito Fossella has been booted from office. 

Among the mavericky votes Gillibrand has racked up: a vote in favor of giving immunity to the telecom companies that helped Bush spy on U.S. citizens; votes against both Pelosi-supported TARP bailout bills; a vote for the May 2007 war funding bill, which lacked a troop-withdrawal deadline, the liberal mania of the moment (no other New York Democrat voted in favor); and a vote for this fall's proposal to roll back the District of Columbia's prohibition on semiautomatic guns. (In general, the National Rifle Association is a huge Gillibrand fan, making the extremely rare move of endorsing her over her Republican opponent this year.)

I have no way of knowing whether Gillibrand is conservative at heart or whether she's simply fastidiously cautious about reflecting her district, which—until November—was the most Republican slice of New York represented by a Democrat. But her elevation represents another triumph for the Blue Dog-style, Rahm Emanuel-style philosophy of expanding Democratic power: make economic crusaders (TARP vote: check) with strong veins of conservatism running through their politics (gun love: check) the new faces of the Democratic Party. (The photo at the top shows Gillibrand next to Pennsylvania's Chris Carney, a top poster boy for the fashionable red-tinged brand of Democrat.)

Well. We'll see what Gillibrand sounds like when Chuck Schumer is done with her.