“… Without the women’s vote — because women comprise the majority of the electorate — it’s virtually impossible for a candidate to win the election.” – Jennifer Lawless, director of the Women and Politics Institute at American University

This is the alternate, political version of why buy the milk if the cow is free?, with the biggest feminist names in Democratic politics giving away their power for a President who not only served up women’s freedoms and codified the Hyde Amendment, but also put entitlements on the table, which keep women out of poverty in old age. …and I guess everyone forgot the debt ceiling debate began without one single woman in the room.

So, to review where women have been in the Democratic debt ceiling debacle. Pres. Obama’s debt ceiling meeting started with not one single woman in the room.

At Blair House, the old boys club meeting has consisted of Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), U.S. Senators John Kyl (R-AZ), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Max Baucus (D-MT), Reps. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), who have convened for the budget negotiations with Vice President Biden, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Budget Director Jack Lew, and economic adviser Gene Sperling. Where are the women? – National Council of Women’s Organization

Amanda Terkel’s report on Gloria Steinem headlining a huge fundraiser for Pres. Obama’s reelection is conclusive proof that today’s establishment women do not take their power or purpose in politics seriously anymore. Instead of taking a page from Richard Trumka, the Democratic girls are all in, succumbing to practical politics, because if they take on Democrats and Republicans win things will only get worse, or so the lunacy goes.

Women elect presidents, but this is the best progressive and Democratic women in positions of power can do?

These ladies have gotten comfortable with their titles, power and access, so they’ve gotten lazy and we’re all going to pay.

Ms. Steinem made her name by standing up against the odds women faced. With no one close to her power in place to take on what’s been happening in the Democratic Party, Steinem is left as a historic figurehead at the top of a fundraiser that means very little to most women today.

But it does represent the lowered value of Democratic ideals, with all that’s left is a show, with very little substance being represented. Now even the most powerful women on the Left have been suckered by the lure of money, while becoming part of the embarrassment of the elite machine without utilizing the power they’ve earned to get something better for women from the establishment they support.

First Lady Michelle Obama, longtime feminist activist Gloria Steinem and several other prominent Democratic women will be the featured guests at a fundraiser in New York City next month for President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, in an effort to mobilize and energize Democratic women for 2012. The Park Avenue fundraiser on Sept. 20 will also feature EMILY’s List President Stephanie Schriock, Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards and Democratic National Committee Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.). – Gloria Steinem To Headline Obama Fundraiser In New York City

A Park Avenue fundraiser, oh, it’s just so perfect for the current Democratic Party image, but especially for the women who wield power in it.

Never have Democrats been so far removed from the working man and woman.

Attending Democratic women may not all be part of the fan politics brigade of Pres. Obama’s He Can Do No Wrong Crowd, instead driven by practicalities in politics when looking at the Tea Party crowd, but hitching a ride on the Obama reelect bandwagon that has little luster and no connection to the average woman or her plight makes this crowd look Republican, the old school version.

Gloria Steinem, First Lady Michele Obama, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Stephanie Schriock, Cecile Richards and other Democratic women participating in this fundraising event don’t remotely represent the majority of women who’ll vote in 2012.

We’re mad as hell and don’t see any benefits to supporting a system that has locked our issues out and put our lives in economic jeopardy.

From a recent AP-GFK poll:

Women no longer are a bright spot for Obama.

At the 100-day mark of his presidency, they gave him significantly higher approval ratings than did men, 68 percent to 60 percent. That’s since fallen dramatically.

In the latest AP-GfK survey, less than half of all women and less than half of all men approve of the job Obama is doing. Just 50 percent of women said Obama deserves re-election.

Predictably, Clinton’s bundlers are all in too. The establishment is nothing if not a cozy click.

Perhaps the thought of Rick Perry taking Obama’s place is already doing the job, starting with revving up the insiders femmes, because a Tea Party takeover is a harrowing thought.

But since women have the power to elect the next president it’s interesting high profile Democratic women are using theirs to reelect Barack Obama, instead of leveraging the power we do have to make all the presidential wannabes court us.

What are women going to get for all this Park Avenue partying?

What are poor women going to get?

I wish I could say this whole spectacle surprises me, but practical politics is easier than waging a fight against elite Democrats you need to keep your organization afloat, especially since you have no intention of organizing women to do something monumental, like demand these corporate jackals tell us what they’re going to do to make our lives freer, our economic lives more secure, and our retirement security intact.

You don’t give away your vote or your money on the promise of something not quantified in policy specifics or a record that guarantees your getting your money’s worth.

There’s a reason Obama reelect doesn’t have a slogan.

All they’ve got is a question: Are you in?

Symbolic of this problem is what happened to Elizabeth Warren when her rise was met by Tim Geithner’s foot, and why Ron Suskind’s book Confidence Men made the Administration queasy. It’s seen in Wall Street firms earning more in Pres. Obama’s first years than in both terms of George W. Bush.

Then there’s Obama’s foreign policy, the issue that weighs most for me, which picked up where Bush left off. Pres. Obama and his “serious reservations” didn’t keep him from signing the NDAA, something any conservative Republican president would sign. Indefinite military detention without trial is now the policy of the Obama administration, which is something Mitt Romney would also do. There is no habeas corpus at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. What is called “targeted killing” has actually increased under Pres. Obama, something Glenn Greenwaldwrites about regularly. As for “secret prisons,” it’s not quite as a bad as Bush, because now people are held for a “short-term, transitory” basis. But Pres. Obama’s surveillance program is identical to his predecessor. Candidate Obama was against the Iraq war, but he had no trouble bombing Libya without congressional oversight or approval, even though it was not of strategic interest to the U.S. or a clear and present danger. We’ve supposedly gotten out of Iraq, but there is a 104 acre embassy, the biggest on planet earth, with support and logistics to match.

It’s also why Pres. Obama showing up in Osawatamie, Kansas to use the Occupy message didn’t fool smarter folks, because if his leadership matched the words he spoke Robert Reich wouldn’t be floating hail Mary posts about switching Biden with Hillary.

What happened with Plan B, however, reveals something else.

As a recovering partisan these days and after watching Pres. Obama’s compromising conservatism, I no longer feel the urgency to support a political party who has threatened dire consequences if I don’t vote for them. Beyond foreign policy, economic, and civil rights issues mentioned above, Pres. Obama has also chosen to short-change women again and again on our freedoms, starting in the health care bill, then by executive order that empowered conservatives of both parties, and finally by making the decision on Plan B that would have come from Mitt Romney, too.

Pres. Obama has helped Democrats deliver a climate that this party has threatened since the ’70s would happen if I didn’t vote for them.

Watching Gloria Steinem and being imprinted politically during this era, while arguing with my boyfriend’s mother about feminism and the E.R.A., with my brother a co-sponsor in the Missouri State Senate, I remember how equal rights and freedoms became important to me. Because of when I grew up and the family I grew up in, politics was part of the destiny I chose, even as I mined my artistry.

For over 30 years, modern feminists like myself have been hearing that we must support Democrats, because if we don’t our freedoms will be on the line yet again. After supporting Democrats since my one vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980, what has finally happened through Pres. Obama is exactly what I was told this political party would guard against. So now, as the 2012 elections approach, Barack Obama and the Democratic Party are once again relying on the theory that because Republicans are worse women like me can be suckered into falling in line one more time.

click here to read the rest…