Busted: Melinda Henneberger

The former New York Times reporter and author of the new book, If They Only Listened to Us: What Women Voters Want Politicians to Hear, talks about politics, abortion, and what women say in private about our political leaders

Interview by Bill McGarvey

Melinda Henneberger, a former reporter for The New York Times and a former contributing editor for Newsweek magazine, spent 18 months talking to 234 women in 12 states—both “red” and “blue”—about the political issues that concern them most, from national security to abortion rights. Her findings, contained in the new book If They Only Listened to Us: What Women Voters Want Politicians to Hear (Simon and Schuster, May 2007) indicate that for many American women not all political issues are created equal—and that politicians on both sides of the aisle fail to take notice at their peril.

BustedHalo.com: How did the idea for your book come to you? Was it incredulity at how the presidential election turned out in 2004?

Melinda Henneberger: I was scheduled to go on TV the morning after the election to explain the results and I was kind of happy about that—not only because I thought Kerry was going to win but because I thought I knew what the election itself meant. I was going to say, “Americans do not consider the Geneva Convention remotely quaint and we do not consider torture an appropriate means of interrogation and, basically, we know a mess when we see one.” But whatever I mumbled on TV that morning, it was clear to me that I had no idea what the election really meant. I noticed that the gender gap, by which women had traditionally favored Democrats, had narrowed slightly, so I decided that I needed to get out and ask women what they really care about. These were very open-ended conversations—the opposite of a poll.

BH: One of the interesting things about your book was that the subtitle could have been “It’s the Abortion Issue, Stupid.”

MH: I was surprised that abortion seemed to be the main reason that a lot of women peeled off from the Democrats in 2004. These were obviously not your classic single issue voters; if they were, they would have peeled off long before now. Rather, they are women who have felt increasingly

excluded from the party over abortion. They said to themselves, “I’m with the Democrats on almost everything else, but if you’re pro life, they don’t even want you.”

BH: But why was 2004 the breaking point?

MH: I think it made a difference when the bishops said, in effect, “If you’re a good Catholic, you’ll vote this way.” It came pretty close, in some places, to the message that “a vote for Kerry is a sin.” I heard from women who were swayed by that message even as they were angered by it. Often, they didn’t vote for Bush, they just didn’t vote for Kerry. They would write-in a pro-life Democrat.

BH: Interesting. It seems that Hillary Clinton has made some movements toward a more moderate stance on abortion over the last year or so.

MH: I think Hillary Clinton is listening on this. I think she’s pretty keenly aware of the importance of reaching out to people of faith.

BH: Despite their rhetoric, I often wonder whether some Republican strategists' greatest fear is that Roe v. Wade gets overturned? It would take away an enormous red herring that they get to throw out to distract people every election.

MH: I see very little chance of Roe being overturned, but if it were, the Democrats would be ensured a lock on power for the next generation. The majority of Americans don’t want to see abortion outlawed altogether. At the same time, they’re obviously not comfortable with the laws that exist, either.

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Bill McGarvey is the editor-in-chief of BustedHalo.com

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