WP says: "Women Returning to Democratic Party".

"Women Returning to Democratic Party, Poll Finds" is the title of a Washington Post article today. Evidently, Celinda Lake, et al, pitted nameless Republicans against nameless Democrats in fictional congressional elections held today...and women chose Democrats.

On the one hand, I'm inclined to delight at any positive indications regarding the future for Democrats, few as they are. Women favoring generic Democrats over generic Republicans is certainly a good thing.

But on the other hand, I'm hard pressed to say what exactly that means. We're not British - we choose individuals, not parties. We never vote for generic candidates - we choose between individuals who inspire us, or not; who we trust, or not; who we like, or not. The vast majority of us are not partisans, so who we say we’d vote for in a generic partisan sense is all but meaningless.

What my party needs right now is not grasping at straws – and the more I reflect on it, the more any amount of glee regarding women choosing generic Democrats in hypothetical elections feels like grasping – but leadership. We need to identify, cultivate, and groom the next generation of leaders.

We can rail all we like against the reality that elections are about personalities as much as they are about issues, but our railing won’t change the reality. And it’s been reality for quite some time. Majorities of voters disagreed with Ronald Reagan on most of his primary policy points – anticommunism the complicated exception – but they liked him. They trusted him. They voted for him. Majorities of voters said they disagreed with Dubya on all sorts of issues – from choice to the war to education policy – but they liked him, they trusted him, so they voted for him.

So, huzzah that women prefer generic Democrats to generic Republicans in pretend elections. Until we run real Democrats in real elections who can earn the support of these same women, we haven’t moved the ball anywhere.