REVERSE GENDER GAP

Kausfiles notes an interesting detail of some recent polls:

Newsweek plays down its likely-voter results** (showing a 6-pt Bush lead) and finds:

Bush has a clear advantage with women, who prefer him 49 percent to 43 percent. Kerry has a slight edge with men, 50 percent to 46 percent.

Which country did they poll again? ... If this Newsweek poll is accurate, something more than Security Momming would seem to be required to explain the 10 point reverse gender gap. (The poll followed a debate on domestic policy, after all.) Maybe something about how Kerry reminds women .... not of their first husband so much as of a guy who never got to be their first husband because he bored them on their first date so he never got a second one. Meanwhile, for men, Kerry actually out-machos Bush in debate if you turn off the sound (and maybe even if you don't). ... Backfill: Alert reader J.G. notes that in this CBS poll--conducted between debates 2 and 3--Kerry also led among men and trailed among women, though the reverse gender gap was not quite as large. ...

Very interesting. Bush sounded nicer in all three debates, especially the third. Kerry sounded tough, even if in an empty-braggart kind of way. He talked a lot about "killing." (Terrorists, that is.) Bush talked a lot about educating kids.

It occurs to me that 1) Andrew Sullivan may not be totally off the mark with his banging on about how conservatives should really support Kerry, and 2) we're talking about "selfish jerk" conservatism here, the kind I had forgot existed thanks to Bush. But the real problem is that our political lexicon is hopelessly warped. The first problem was that "liberalism" had its meaning reversed: the name of the laissez faire political philosophy was transferred to regulation-intensive social democracy. Then "conservatism" appeared as champion of the old free-market view (among other things.) Now Clinton's and Bush's triangulation has transformed the political spectrum again.

To flip-flop the whole political spectrum and call Bush "liberal" and Kerry "conservative" would be somewhat false.

Substitute "conservative vs. liberal" with "Reaganite vs. the reactionary left." How does that sound?