what David Brooks was saying<\/FONT><\/B><\/A>
\nin his commentary about John Kerry’s speech.
I thought [Brooks] was saying that the
\nDemocratic Party has traditionally been the party for mommies — i.e. it has appealled more
\nstrongly to women — while the Republican Party has positioned itself to appeal more to daddies,
\ni.e. men. His point as I took it was that Kerry was trying to appear strong on defense and other
\nsuch “manly” concerns, and the party made almost no mention the entire convention of
\ntraditionally women-focused issues like abortion, pay equity, etc., because Kerry was making an
\novert play for male voters. Brooks even stated that Kerry was taking a page from Bush’s 2000
\ncampaign, when his “compassionate conservative” crap won over many female voters. (Idiots!)
\nBut, of course, Kerry is doing it in reverse, trying to appear “strong” (as if championing women’s
\nissues makes one look weak — ugh!) and less compassionate to appeal to men.
With
\nall of that in mind, I didn’t take [Brooks’s] meaning to be that the nation is an infant. Rather that
\nmen with kids have certain concerns that tend to lead them to vote Republican, and women with
\nkids tend to care about the same issues as the Democrats. Using this interpretation, I didn’t think
\nit was such a dumb comment. In fact, I thought he correctly identified one of the main goals of
\nKerry’s speech; moreover, I think it’s probably a pretty good strategy to get Kerry elected. At
\nleast I hope it is!
Thoughtfully yours,
Kriston Eller<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mr. Herman,I think one of us misunderstood what David Brooks was saying in his commentary about John Kerry’s speech.I thought [Brooks] was saying that the Democratic Party has traditionally been the party for mommies — i.e. it has appealled more strongly to women — while the Republican Party has positioned itself to appeal more to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-756","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-cc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}