Liberals are right to be terrified of Michele Bachmann: While it’s still early, she’s already the next woman most likely to win the White House.
More broadly and more important, in just three years, conservatives have pulled even with liberals in “presidential women” — those who could lead or have joined a major-party ticket. In so doing, they threaten liberals’ hold on the most important voting bloc in American politics.
Bachmann appears to be for real. She’s running ahead of GOP front-runner Mitt Romney in Iowa. A win or second-place finish in that first presidential test would confirm her as a top contender. A recent poll has her in second place and rising in New Hampshire (next door to Romney’s Massachusetts home); a second-place finish for her there could quickly make the GOP contest a two-person race.
If Bachmann emerges, she’d be one of only four “presidential women” in US history: Hillary Clinton and herself as serious contenders for a major-party nomination, and Geraldine Ferarro and Sarah Palin as vice-presidential nominees.
Worse yet (to liberals), her strongly conservative values offer America’s women an ideological alternative.
Women are America’s majority voting bloc: 52 percent of the electorate in 2010, 53 percent in 2008, 51 percent in 2006 and 54 percent in 2004. And Democrats have received most of this majority’s support — besting Republicans by 14 percentage points in 2008 and 6 in 2004.
But what the Left must fear most is that the block is growing more conservative: In 2010 women voted Republican — albeit by just 49 to 48 percent. This, just two years after Palin challenged the longtime liberal control of the women’s vote.
This is why Palin and now Bachmann drive liberals to distraction: To have their hold on women voters threatened — and by a conservative woman — jeopardizes it for the long term.
Who could blame women for being excited by the prospect of a woman heading a major ticket? No one begrudged liberal women that when Hillary Clinton sought the nomination in 2008. A woman actually winning a major-party nomination, and with a serious chance of winning the White House, would raise excitement even more.
With Barack Obama topping the ticket in 2008, African-Americans raised their percentage of the electorate by almost a third (from 10 percent to 13 percent) from 2006. How might a female major-party nominee inspire a voting bloc that was already 52 percent of the electorate in 2010?
More important than a turnout rise would be the potential for women pulling their support from liberals. An ideological realignment of female voters would have lasting implications far beyond a single election.
That potential means Bachmann is also rapidly making herself Republicans’ prohibitive vice-presidential candidate (if she doesn’t win the nomination outright).
Nor is the No. 2 slot a consolation prize; it’s often a stepping stone to the presidential nomination. In 10 of the 11 elections from 1960 to 2000, at least one party’s presidential nominee was a former or sitting vice president or a former VP nominee. The vice presidency not only recognizes current political reality, it often shapes the future.
Bachmann is already important to conservatives. She debunks the Left’s two-dimensional stereotype of the Right: A woman delivering a conservative message broadens that message’s appeal beyond what the message alone could do.
America’s great presidents have combined symbolic strength with substance. Bachmann’s symbolic strength is irrefutable; the campaign will determine her substance. If she helps shift women’s voting tendencies, conservatives will already have won.
J.T. Young served in the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget from 2001-2004 and as a congressional staffer from 1987-2000.