Emily's List

Celebrating their 20th year anniversary:

There are now 43 Democratic women in the House and nine in the Senate. Six states have female Democrats as governors, including Arizona, Michigan and Washington.

Emily's List -- which celebrated its 20th anniversary at a luncheon gala yesterday --is widely regarded as one of the most important engines of this political shift. The group has moved out of Malcolm's basement into headquarters that house 70 full-time staff members. The group ended 2004 as the largest single source ofdonations to candidates in the country; through its members, the group directednearly $11 million to pro-abortion-rights female candidates and raised better than $30 million to fund its own political activities.

Personally I wouldn't exactly be popping the champagne if I were them, considering their abysmal performance in the last two election cycles. So more Democratic women are in office than 20 years ago -- big deal. Given that more women are found in all types of prominent positions an increase was bound to happen anyway. Indeed, just as there are more Democratic women there are also more Republicans, with 5 Republican women in the Senate and 24 in the House.
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Think about this: When Emily's List was founded in 1985 Democrats controlled the House of Representatives by a 253-182 margin -- and the 1984 year was an especially good one for Republicans as they rode Ronald Reagan's coattails! Today the House favors the GOP 231-203. So Emily's List is capturing an increasing share of a shrinking minority -- hooray for them.

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Further, I would argue that Emily's List is helping to drive this phenomenon by backing liberal candidates in Democratic primaries. By pushing the party ever further to the left and away from more moderate candidates it turns off swing voters. The end result, as we have seen, is fewer Democrats and less support for abortion rights -- the opposite of what they set out to do.

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Keep up the good work guys.

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Oh, and might as well add this from a post-2004 election Bob Novak column:

Meanwhile, it was a bad election day for EMILY's list, which funds pro-choice female candidates. The organization's star candidates for the Senate, Tenenbaum in South Carolina and former State Education Commissioner Betty Castor in Florida, lost winnable races. Since its founding, the Club for Growth now has defeated EMILY's list, 10 to 3, in head-to-head contests.