National Journal's Bara Vaida and Jennifer Skalka with their cover story: With Clinton's loss, can Emily's List gets its mojo back?

... Although EMILY's List is not to blame for Clinton's narrow loss to Barack Obama, the group had a lot riding on her candidacy--politically and psychologically. Her defeat calls into question the very core of EMILY's List's strategy--that women will back female candidates in the interest of equality, and that gender and identity politics can trump issues, message, and personality. Clinton's failure, in many ways, is also a reflection of the divide between Baby Boomer women (the foundation of EMILY's List) and their daughters, who, according to exit poll data, came out in force in the primaries for Obama. Among women age 29 and younger, Obama routinely defeated Clinton in key primary states, even in contests that Clinton won, while Clinton overwhelmingly beat Obama among women age 45 and older. (See chart, pp. 22-23.)

Clinton's fall from front-runner to runner-up capped a challenging few years for EMILY's List, which pioneered the use of direct mail and donor bundling to raise early money for Democratic women candidates. In the 2006 election, Democrats triumphed mightily, yet EMILY's List faltered, as 74 percent of the challengers it backed lost their general election contests.

In the current campaign cycle, meanwhile, the group has drawn fire from other Democrats for employing divisive tactics--from pitting abortion-rights Democratic women against Democratic congressmen who also favor abortion rights, to feuding publicly with another high-profile abortion-rights group about its decision to endorse Obama.

EMILY's List has won wide praise over the years for leveraging the power of women at the polls and building an unprecedented network of progressive female donors. But now some political observers say that the group's influence may be waning. ...

As the November election looms large, EMILY's List has to demonstrate that its message and approach are still valid--even as the political world morphs to accommodate the Facebook generation--and in essence prove that it can still win. ...

Posted by Laura at June 27, 2008 08:25 PM