Jodi Jacobson is one of WCF’s MsRepresentation bloggers in the final weeks of the 2010 election.
Disclosure #1: I can’t vote in Delaware
Disclosure #2: I want to see more women in positions of power, but for me, a candidate’s positions, commitment, vision and integrity together are all ultimately more important than their sex.
I am not terribly worried about my inability to vote in Delaware given that many current polls show New Castle County executive Chris Coons to be between 16 and 19 points ahead of his opponent, Tea Party/Republican candidate Christine O’Donnell. Elections are volatile and I have no crystal ball, but in this case it seems a fair guess that the Democrats will keep this Senate seat.
That it will go to a man instead of at least adding one woman to the Senate to make up for the loss of another woman (Senator Lisa Murkowski, unless she wins a write-in bid), is a hard blow. However, the seat must go to the right person, who will defend women’s rights. And O’Donnell is not that person.
There were several times during last night’s debate between O’Donnell and Coons when she could not offer an articulate answer to critically important questions. (Full transcript here.) For example, asked to name recent Supreme Court decisions with which she disagrees, O’Donnell couldn’t think of any and promised to put it up on her website.
While she never passed herself off as a constitutional scholar, she is running for the Senate, and Senators have terrific responsibilities of advice and consent in the process of nominating Supreme Court justices, and in crafting laws that may end up being contested in court. Given what is at stake in this country today, any politician for the U.S. Senate must have a working knowledge of legal decisions made by the Court in the last 10, 20, 30 years. And even if, given the conservative nature of the court, she did not disagree with many decisions in the past, say, 10 years, she could have said that.
Instead, in a response right out of the Sarah Palin-Katie Couric interview, she came across as unprepared and, worse, dismissive of the fact that she did not have knowledge of high court decisions. These may seem abstractions to many of us on a daily basis, but these decisions affect the real lives of real people every day.
Her positions on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) were incomprehensible. She compared DADT to regulations in the military governing personal behavior, such as those against adultery. These are not the same. One set of rules applies to everyone, the other applies to one class of people and discriminates against them based on who they are fundamentally as people, not how they behave.
To my knowledge, no one has ever asked heterosexuals to hide their heterosexuality. And given that O’Donnell has professed deeply problematic views on homosexuality in the past, and also shunned a once-loyal aide because he came out as being gay, this is not about “military readiness and unit cohesion.” It’s discrimination, plain and simple.
Equally comprehensible and troubling were her positions on education, as gleaned from this exchange on evolution:
BLITZER: Let’s give you a chance to respond to some of the things she said because in a television appearance back in 1998 on Bill Maher’s show you said evolution is a myth. Do you believe evolution is a myth?
O’DONNELL: I believe that the local — I was talking about what a local school taught and that should be taught — that should be decided on the local community. But please let me respond to what he just said.
BLITZER: We’ll let you respond but answer the question. Do you believe evolution is a myth?
O’DONNELL: Local schools should make that decision. I made that remark based on –
BLITZER: What do you believe?
O’DONNELL: What I believe is irrelevant.
BLITZER: Why is it irrelevant?
O’DONNELL: Because what I would support …
BLITZER: Voters want to know.
O’DONNELL: What I will support in Washington, D.C. is the ability for the local school system to decide what is taught in their classrooms and what I was talking about on that show was a classroom that was not allowed to teach creationism as an equal theory as evolution. That is against their constitutional rights and that is an overreaching arm of the government.
Actually no. It’s a great piece of red meat to throw to the extreme right, but local school districts should not get to decide whether or not sound and tested scientific theories are “myths.”
Those debates are for the entirety of the scientific community to test, explore, debate and on which to come to consensus. Do we leave up to local school districts whether dolphins are mammals, calculus is a form of math, and cadmium is an element found on the periodic table?
There were many problems with O’Donnell’s performance in the debate and her clearly superficial understanding of many complex problems with which we have to grapple was deeply disturbing. What is most disturbing to me coming from O’Donnell, and other candidates of the ultra-conservative right, is the cavalier way in which they address profound issues in order to score political points. I no longer believe these folks even believe half of what they say themselves and certainly often don’t understand the implications.
On Roe v. Wade, for example, O’Donnell stated:
Well, let me say, about Roe versus Wade, Roe versus Wade, if that were overturned, would not make abortion illegal in the United States, it would put the power back to the states.
Yes, technically it could—depending on how such a decision were rendered by the Court. But, that begs the most profound points. First of all, O’Donnell is, if taken at her word, deeply anti-choice. Her website states O’Donnell’s position as such:
Strongly believes in protecting the sanctity of life at ALL stages.
What exactly does this mean? From the moment of fertilization? Or pregnancy? It matters, because those who support the personhood of fertilized eggs would outlaw virtually all forms of contraception except barrier methods. Does O’Donnell support banning contraception?
Moreover, does O’Donnell see the “sanctity” of a fetus’ life as being more important than say that of a pregnant woman with cancer who needs treatment? Would she deny women the right to terminate a pregnancy found to have fetal abnormalities incompatible with life? Does she realize how profoundly these positions, if enacted into law, would affect women’s lives on almost every level?
O’Donnell did not clarify any of this. Instead she tried to fudge during the debate by deflecting to and twisting issues of rape and incest.
STUDENT QUESTION: What is your stance on abortion, including in cases of rape and incest.
O’DONNELL: I believe there has been a profound loss of respect for the dignity of human life, and that is reflected in a lot of our policies, whether it is cutting taxes exemptions for disabled, low-income citizens in New Castle County, or with abortion. I respect the human dignity on all levels, the unrepeatable precious human dignity on all levels. And my opponent and others will use the scare tactic about rape and incest when that is less than 1 percent of all abortions
performed in America.
I am not sure where she is getting her figures on abortions due to rape and incest, but what is the point in any case? That we should not allow safe abortion services for victims of rape and incest because only a relatively few are victims of these crimes?
And to call rape an incest “scare tactics?” It seems to me cruel that any person watching that debate who has suffered the trauma of rape or incest would have to hear a politician entirely dismiss their experiences.
Give me a thoughtful, informed progressive woman. Or at least give me a thoughtful, informed progressive man or transgender person who truly believes in women and their rights.
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