With Hillary Clinton’s official announcement of her candidacy for president, pro-abortion PAC EMILY’s List is launching fundraising efforts to attempt, once again, to get Hillary into office.
As Breitbart News reported in March, Clinton headlined the EMILY’s List’s 30th anniversary gala, as the organization prepared to play a key role in her campaign. David Bernstein at WGBH, however, questioned the value for Clinton of having the abortion PAC at the helm of her campaign, given its shoddy record.
“[T]here’s little to be upbeat about for the organization,” Bernstein said, observing that the numbers of Democrat women in office have been “stagnant or dropping over the past eight years – that is, since the last time EMILY’s List got geared up to elect Clinton President.”
Bernstein continues:
In the 2014 elections, the number of Democratic US Senators dropped from 16 to 14; Tuesday’s speakers avoided mention of losing candidates Alison Lunderman [sic] Grimes, Kay Hagan, Mary Landrieu, Michelle Nunn and Natalie Tennant. In the US House, the number of Democratic women inched up to 62, from 61.
Numbers at the state level, where EMILY’s List puts significant effort as well, are worse. Since 2007, the number of elected Democratic statewide officeholders has plunged from 45 to 34, according to Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics. That includes just three Governors, six Attorneys General, and four Treasurers. Democratic women state senators number just 261 now, down from 292 in 2007; and state representatives 811, down from 894.
EMILY’s List made a special effort to elect women Governors in 2014, only to see Mary Burke, Wendy Davis, and Allyson Schwartz join [Martha] Coakley in defeat. Only New Hampshire incumbent Maggie Hassan and Rhode Island’s Gina Raimondo won; the third current Democratic woman Governor, Kate Brown of Oregon, inherited the office when the incumbent resigned in scandal.
“Women are increasingly beating a path to Democratic Party nominations, but losing, along with their male counterparts, to Republicans,” Bernstein added, pointing out that the only chance EMILY’s List has of making some headway is by getting young millennial women to vote.
But that picture looks even bleaker when one considers that EMILY’s List is anchored in abortion at a time when young people are becoming more pro-life and more states are passing abortion restrictions with the blessing of the American people on both sides of the political aisle.
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America – a growing group of pro-life millennials – has seen the surge in her organization’s membership across college campuses throughout the nation.
“The abortion industry and those that support it, like EMILY’s List, cannot get millennials out to vote because 59 percent of millennials view abortion as morally wrong, according to a recent Marist survey,” Hawkins told Breitbart News. “They grew up with the technology that clearly shows a human life in the womb and understand the moral gravity of taking that life.”
“Millennial pro-choice women are also less passionate about being pro-choice than pro-life young women are about being pro-life, and that intensity gap plays out at the voting booth,” she added. “Pro-life millennials see abortion as the greatest injustice of our lifetime, while even pro-choice millennials recognize that abortion is a failure of our society and painful decision made when a young woman feels like she has no way out.”
As for Baby Boomer Democrats, in 2013 feminist provocateur Camille Paglia reflected on Hillary Clinton’s potential 2016 candidacy.
“As a registered Democrat, I am praying for a credible presidential candidate to emerge from the younger tier of politicians in their late 40s… It’s time to put my baby-boom generation out to pasture!” Paglia told Salon. “We’ve had our day and managed to muck up a hell of a lot.”
Paglia continued:
It remains baffling how anyone would think that Hillary Clinton (born the same year as me) is our party’s best chance. She has more sooty baggage than a 90-car freight train. And what exactly has she ever accomplished — beyond bullishly covering for her philandering husband? She’s certainly busy, busy and ever on the move — with the tunnel-vision workaholism of someone trying to blot out uncomfortable private thoughts.
Paglia was also critical of the former Secretary of State’s handling of Benghazi:
I for one think it was a very big deal that our ambassador was murdered in Benghazi. In saying “I take responsibility” for it as secretary of state, Hillary should have resigned immediately. The weak response by the Obama administration to that tragedy has given a huge opening to Republicans in the next presidential election. The impression has been amply given that Benghazi was treated as a public relations matter to massage rather than as the major and outrageous attack on the U.S. that it was.
“As far as I’m concerned, Hillary disqualified herself for the presidency in that fist-pounding moment at a congressional hearing when she said, ‘What difference does it make what we knew and when we knew it, Senator?’” Paglia continued. “Democrats have got to shake off the Clinton albatross and find new blood.”
Consequently, when Boomer Democrats open their wallets to EMILY’s List, they’ll be entrusting their cash to an organization with a pitiful record of success and hopes for outreach to a demographic that, philosophically, no longer shares the “abortion is women’s freedom” value.
“It remains far from clear to me … that the group is taking the money from these Boomers and using it to figure out how to appeal to millennial women,” Bernstein said.
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