Well, I Suppose This Election Hot Take Was Always Only a Matter of Time

In the raging sea of post-election hot takes that blame Hillary Clinton for losing the election to an aggressive bigot and serial sexual abuser, I guess this was inevitable. Thomas Groome at the New York Times: To Win Again, Democrats Must Stop Being the Abortion Party.

Of course. OF COURSE.

Like most hot takes, this piece doesn't let the inconvenient fact that Clinton won the popular vote by three million votes get in the way of its supercool argument, nor does it acknowledge that Catholics are not a monolithic voting bloc. There are many Catholics who, even if they personally would not get an abortion, are resolutely pro-choice. This may come as a shock to Mr. Groome, but I even know Catholics who have had abortions, and aren't eternally ashamed about it.

There's also the small conundrum that President Obama won―twice―as a pro-choice candidate.

Last year's election was a watershed in this evolution. Hillary Clinton lost the overall Catholic vote by seven points—after President Obama had won it in the previous two elections. She lost the white Catholic vote by 23 points.

I know this is a radical suggestion, but maybe the problem isn't that Hillary Clinton is pro-choice, but maybe the problem is that Hillary Clinton is a woman.

Misogyny is still the word that shall not be spoken in post-mortems of the 2016 election. And I don't find convincing an argument that any voting demographic would swing wildly between Obama and Clinton as a result of an issue on which they held virtually identical views. Both of whom, not incidentally, had Catholic running mates who could competently articulate how they reconciled being politically pro-choice despite their church's anti-choice views.

I do, however, believe strongly that a voting demographic defined by an institution that holds at the center of its principles a belief that women must be disallowed from holding positions of power might be disproportionately likely to reject the idea of a female leader on the basis that she is a woman.

To ignore the effects of the implicit and overt messaging around female exclusion, to pretend that it doesn't matter, is willful ignorance about how culture and socialization work.

The argument about reproductive choice is just the latest attempt to Occam's Big Paisley Tie the most obvious reason why people who voted for Obama wouldn't vote for Clinton. And the refusal to even consider that possibility all but guarantees it will happen again.

I certainly hope the Democratic Party will not take policy advice from anyone whose argument doesn't even give cursory consideration to the sexism that continues to stare us all in the face, while we shamefully avert our gaze.