Democrats Make a Push to Grab Female Voters and Make Female Leaders

Late last week, the DNC announced the formation of the Democratic Women’s Alliance, a new program they say will work to encourage women to enter and stay in politics. It’s been promoted, unsurprisingly, as a big F.U. to the those he-man woman haters in the Republican Party, as if the Democrats are creating a new team of female superheroes impressive enough to note only rival the Justice League but wipe them out of relevancy.

The “why” of this is pretty clear; with each article that comes out about how awesome the women in Congress are at getting shit done and with each election where the women’s vote becomes increasingly important for grabbing a win, it’s obvious to each party that they need to do more to lock down women. For Republicans, that means trying to court women even while systematically striking down their rights — a tricky game if anyone’s tried it. For the Democrats, it means further emphasizing a party platform that is already based on upholding women’s rights, as indicated in the promotional video they’ve released for the program, which starts off with clips of Republicans talking about how big and bad abortions are.

“But the truth is that activism and engagement among women at times of crisis or during the height of a presidential election is not enough,” writes Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz in an editorial for Politico on the DWA. “We need women to get involved, make their voices heard, and advocate for the issues they care about year-round, in election years and not, and at all levels of political involvement, from those who want to make educated decisions at the ballot box to women who decide to run for office.”

The “how” of the DWA is a little more unclear, though the program will probably include talks, mentorships and lobbying, the way these things usually do. Wasserman Schultz says only that the DWA will work to “engage state leaders and those at the grassroots level, steering them toward the same goal of engaging women and enhancing their political activity,” and that they’ll be using polling to figure out “exactly which issues women care about most.” The strategy is divided into three parts: MOBILIZE, ENGAGE and TRAIN, which sounds basically just like something the Power Rangers would say before running off to save the day. And since everyone who was anyone liked the pink and yellow Power Rangers best anyway, DWA is off to a strong start.

DNC Chair Wasserman Schultz Launches Democratic Women’s Alliance [democrats.org]