Dakota Women Relevant and Necessary

Mr. Powers and Prof. Schaff ask, "Do the Dakota Women Speak for Dakota Women?"

[Powers] notices the preponderance of abortion/reproductive freedom talk at that site. Don't women care about more than these issues? He asks which issues qualify as "women's issues"? [Schaff, 2008.01.02]

Schaff notes that abortion is not particularly "salient" to men or women in their voting patterns:

Those issues that are salient for women include social welfare spending, education, and the environment. For men it tends to be national defense and taxes.

Oh, how I would love for all of the candidates, mainstream media, and blogs this year to talk about nothing but those five issues. Get those issues right, and so much else will take care of itself. Single-issue abortion politics is an ignorant waste of political resources.

But as long as Leslee Unruh insists on redeeming herself by promoting the same futile and unconstitutional legislation over and over and over, we need someone like the Dakota Women to fight the HUH crowd's efforts to render all women wards of the state. I suspect (though I hesitate to put words in their mouths) Anna, K, et al. would much rather have a conversation about the salient issues Schaff identifies. I know the Dakota woman I live with certainly does. But as long as Leslee keeps desperately and irrationally shouting into her bullhorn, we have to sacrifice good policy conversations to the effort to wipe Leslee's mad smile and menacing message off the TV once and for all.