Upon returning to LA last night, I turned on CNN and was somewhat dumbfounded by the absurdity and audacity of Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) who twice asserted that James Carville's questioning of Sarah Palin's experience to be Vice President of the United States is "offensive to women."

Eric Kleefeld at TPM picks up on this new gender card strategy being utilized by Republicans when talking about/defending Palin and grabs this bit from the CNN interview last night.

BACHMANN: You know, Larry, I find those comments from James Carville actually offensive -- and especially offensive to American women. There are a lot of very competent American women. Sarah Palin easily is a competent woman. She's proved herself in business. She's proved herself in politics. She has come up from nowhere to be somebody. And she's someone we can all be very proud of. She is one competent tough cookie and I think the American people are going to love her.

KING: Are you saying, though...

CARVILLE: Congresswoman, I don't know how to tell you this, but I supported a woman for president of the United States and spent many hours on this very set supporting a woman of the United States.

What Carville was doing was questioning Palin's qualifications on their own merits, regardless of gender. Bachmann's insistence that Palin not be judged on the basis of her accomplishments at all but instead that criticism is disallowed because she's a woman actually sets the women's movement back decades. So while Kleefeld calls the exchange 'hilarious', I actually think it's far more insidious. The way Bachmann calls Carville's comments offensive to women so calmly, authoritatively with a big smile and the way she comes close to sending Carville over the edge in his response; the charge is so baseless yet she says it with such conviction as only a shameless Republican can, thus leaving the Democrat sort of exasperated. You can watch Bachmann's charge and Carville's response below.

It wasn't so long ago that tactics like this would have intimidated Democrats into pulling punches and prevented them from going on offense. This is clearly the right's strategy here, to threaten any and all critics of Palin as sexist right off the bat so as to cause Democrats from criticizing her at all. Carville was clearly knocked back by it and betrayed some of his on his sleeve emotion when responding. Next time I'd like to see Claire McCaskill or Amy Klobuchar take Michelle Bachmann down instead. I'd like to see her accuse them of being "offensive to women." Bring it on.

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Not to make too much hay of this but I think there are two notable points to the below story from ABC News:

In Montana, Clinton Invokes Suffragette Icon, Botches Suffragette History

On Sunday in Montana, which will hold its primary on June 3, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, invoked a legendary state icon, former Rep. Jeannette Rankin, R-Mont., the first woman ever elected to Congress.

"Remember, Jeannette Rankin was elected before women could vote,"Clinton told a crowd in a Missoula airplane hangar. "So who says men don't vote for a woman?"

But Clinton's description of Rankin's election is rather free from the constraints of historical fact -- Montana as a state gave women the right to vote in 1914 and even as a mere territory had given women the right to vote in 1887.

Check out this classic New York Times story from the year Rankin was elected, November 5, 1916, in which she is described as "a handsome and vigorous woman, with a wealth of red hair," and noting the states that allowed women the right to vote as of 1916: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.

Anyone could mess up a fact like this. But it's also true that those whose hearts contain special space for suffragette history will no doubt be disappointed by Clinton not knowing some of this basic history.

Several suffragette historians on the web -- Cliopatra, and others HERE and HERE have corrected Clinton's error, some expressing chagrin that she would get this wrong, others pointing out that Rankin was a pacifist, voting against going to war in World Wars I and II, and would doubtless take issue with Clinton's October 2002 war vote. (Though, c'mon, guys -- Rankin was clearly on the wrong side of history on those votes, my historian friends...let's not take this too far.)

1.  We can argue about the merits about Clinton continually playing the gender card with speeches like this but, if the situation were reversed and Obama got up on the stump and trumpeted the first black this and the first black that, don't you think people on this site would be all over it?

2.  Although certainly not to the level of Tuzla or anything, doesn't Clinton need a better staff of fact checkers?

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Hillary Rebounds Quickly--Although Hillary Clinton did not respond well to Tim Russert's wedge-sniffing question about illegal immigrants at last week's Philadelphia debate, she recovered quickly. In short order, Hillary's staff complained about "piling on" by male Democratic candidates and then Hillary herself gave a speech at Wellesley College (her alma mater) focusing on the pathbreaking nature of her status as the first female contender for the presidency. By the end of the week, the wobble had been forgotten in the deluge of commentary on Hillary "playing the gender card." One can't help but think that Hillary and her staff played the situation well.  Certainly Sen. Clinton needs to be stronger when challenged by people like Russert, but she proved effective at changing the terms of the post-debate debate. By way of contrast, John Edwards is still suffering from his $400 haircut.

The Rally Around Hillary Effect. The most surprising post-debate development was that liberal bloggers like Matthew Yglesias, Digby, Melissa McEwan, and Matt Stoller all rallied around Hillary. This was a first for the liberal blogging crowd, all of whom are considerably to the left of Hillary Clinton and have been experimenting with giving their support to Obama. Defending Hillary's right to be proud of being a trailblazer, the liberal bloggers united to stress the fact that male candidates have been playing the gender card in every presidential election since Washington's 1792 campaign.

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I find the media's collective uproar over whether or not Clinton played the gender card to be just plain silly. Given the extent to which the male gender card is played, swapped, and collected 24/7/365 on the network and cable news, their feigned outrage is not without irony.

The truth is that identity politics has been central to the political process since long-before the Roman Empire.  Further, every President in US history got there by playing some form of the male gender card.

Indeed, any objective view of the current Presidential field reveals that Clinton is not alone in trying to win over voters by means of identity politics.

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