Below the Belt: A Biweekly Column by NOW President Kim Gandy

We Can Do It!

October 15, 2004

It's working! All the voter outreach you're doing, all the donations you're giving, all the people you're talking to—it's paying off! Person by person, vote by vote, dollar by dollar, it's all coming together in a mighty tide that is starting to rock the ship of state. Will this Titanic hit the iceberg on Nov. 2? It's up to us!

We must keep up the pressure, maintain our energy, and—most of all—sound the alarm when our opponents hit below the belt. And the closer we get to the election, the more "below the belt" hits we're seeing.

Take the Sinclair Broadcast Group scandal, for instance. The four Sinclair brothers, who collectively own and run 62 television stations in dozens of major cities nationwide, have ordered all their stations to preempt primetime TV programming and air an anti-Kerry pseudo-documentary just days before the election. This would make the television stations owned by the Sinclairs about as "fair and balanced" as Fox News Channel! And now they're trying to get around the "equal time" rules by calling it a news show. Take action! Tell Sinclair-owned stations not to air political propaganda on public airwaves!

Or how about the news that the U.S. Department of State has awarded part of a $10 million "Iraqi Women's Democracy Initiative" grant to the anti-feminist Independent Women's Forum. Not surprisingly, the arch-conservative organization (initially created to defend Clarence Thomas against sexual harassment charges during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings) has no expertise in international relations, yet they will be "training" Iraqi women in the skills of democratic public life. Talk about pork-barrel politics—this is just Halliburton in a skirt!

And through it all, Bush still refuses to admit that he has made any mistakes with Iraq. As Deborah Tannen points out in a recent New York Times op-ed, how like a man! Tannen writes, "If women react to Mr. Bush's made-no-mistakes tactic the way they react to it when it is used by men in their lives, a majority may well be more angered than reassured... It drives many women nuts when men won't say they made a mistake and apologize if they do something wrong." No kidding! Bush's cowboy-swaggering persona may increase his appeal to some guys (like the hyper-macho image of the "Terminator" helped Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger win the governorship of California), but most women will have the opposite reaction. Perhaps this explains the "kinder, gentler" sounding Bush in the final debate.

Anyway, in case Bush's "I'm not sorry" approach fails, Republicans in Nevada and Ohio have reportedly taken matters into their own hands. According to Las Vegas news reports, employees of a Republican-funded voter registration campaign are saying that hundreds, if not thousands, of Democratic registrations were thrown in the trash, while Republican registrations were properly filed. Now the same group has moved on to Oregon, where local activists are keeping a sharp eye on their activities.

To top it all off, a former pharmacist in Madison, Wis., said on Monday that he refused to fill a prescription for birth control pills or even transfer it to another pharmacy because he feared "spiritual pain." When the patient he turned away filed a complaint, the pharmacist's lawyer defended him as a "devout Roman Catholic" seeking to avoid "committing a sin." (And you thought that our right to birth control was settled in the Supreme Court case in the 1970's? Think again!)

Taken together, these varied scenarios may seem depressing, but think of it this way: The fact that there were far too many "below the belt" hits than could fit in this column this week means that our opponents are scared and lashing out in every direction! The right-wingers are getting desperate, and they're starting to slip up. Perhaps perversely, we should be encouraged rather than discouraged, because a backlash is the best sign that we're making progress and our enemies feel threatened.

The elections are looking better and better every day, as you and I and people all across the country keep our collective nose to the grindstone and work for candidates who support a progressive agenda. Thank you for everything you are doing. And now we've only got two and a half weeks left—let's give it everything we've got! To quote another hard-working woman, Rosie the Riveter: "WE CAN DO IT!"