There’s a saying that people use to explain things they can’t. ‘God moves in mysterious ways.’ Now, my religious practicing went the same way as my piano practice when I was twelve, but I’ve always understood this phrase to mean that we can’t always explain why God causes things to happen. Because it’s God. That’s part of the whole divinity thing.

So when you have political candidates such as Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle, and Christine O’Donnell, all claiming that God called them to run or it was a part of His “plan,” what does it mean when they keep losing? There’s a couple of ways this can go.

To begin with, maybe it’s a personal thing where He wants them to grow, to learn from their experiences on the campaign trail. Maybe He wants them to learn a little humility in defeat. After all, the meek are going to inherit the Earth.

Or how about this. . .He’s preparing them for the next time they run for office, teaching them the lessons they need to win their next election. With the lessons they can take with them, they’ll be in a better position to assume the mantle of leadership they have been told to pursue.

There is, of course, a third possibility. All three candidates were surprise choices. No one knew who Sarah Palin was before she was picked as John McCain’s running mate. His campaign enjoyed a jump in popularity immediately after she joined, but that quickly disappeared. I’d argue that the election might have been much closer had McCain picked someone else as his running mate- one of his primary opponents, for instance. Did she cause McCain to lose the election? I think people will be able to argue about that for years to come.

Both Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell had surprise wins in their respective primaries over much more experienced, known politicians. I’m not as familiar with Delaware, but I live and work in Nevada, and I know quite a few Republicans who could not bring themselves to vote for Angle. They didn’t necessarily vote for Harry Reid, but those were votes that the Republican candidate could traditionally have counted on that Angle didn’t get. They were votes that Sue Lowden, who lost the Republican primary to Angle, would have received had she been running. And it wasn’t really a close thing here, either. Harry Reid won by forty thousand votes, about five percent, which is much greater than his margin of victory in 1998. He won by 428 votes that year.

So the third possibility: Perhaps, yes, God did tell all three candidates to run. He wanted them in the race. Maybe He wanted them in the race because He knew they would throw the election in favor of the Democrats. Maybe God is a Democrat, and He told these candidates to run to aid the Democratic party.

After all, God moves in mysterious ways.

Rich is a writer who lives in Las Vegas. You can follow him on his blog and on Twitter.

Sure, that’s not the worst thing you could say to someone, but if you use someone’s gender to attack them, isn’t that sexism? When a female candidate’s sex life is made public, it’s done to shame her because some people think women should be sexually modest. When a male candidate’s masculinity is questioned and he’s told to “man-up” or “be man enough,” is that shaming him by saying he’s weak and impotent?

A recent study by the Women’s Media Center showed using sexism in political campaigns works when men use it against candidates who are women. When women fight back, though, voters favor them.

There’s a difference between fighting the sexism and just responding to it. When Nevada Senate candidate Sharon Angle told Harry Reid to “man-up,” Reid, a former boxer, said, “From the street to the ring to the Senate chamber, I’ve never had to prove my manhood to anyone.” That’s an adequate response, but by mentioning “the street” and “the ring” he actually was asserting his toughness, and therefore, attempting to prove his manhood.

Photos were recently released of Krystal Ball, a congressional candidate in Virginia, and her then-husband at a college party playing with sex toys. She responded to the photos by saying:

Society has to accept that women of my generation have sexual lives that are going to leak into the public sphere. Sooner or later, this is a reality that has to be faced, or many young women in my generation will not be able to run for office.

In talking about the support she received from Hillary Clinton’s supporters and those who fought for women’s rights in previous generations, Ball said:

They will not see their daughters called whores when they run for office just because of some college or post-college party. They will not watch the tide of everything they fought for washed away by the public exposure of female sexuality.

That is fighting back!

It would be interesting to see if the Women’s Media Center study’s results would be the same if the genders were reversed, but I don’t think male wouldn’t fight back like Ball did. Not yet. It would mean challenging the strong, silent type that is the model of the modern American man: Take your licks, suck it up and move on. Politicians and the public aren’t ready to have that conversation. We may be aware that the modern man needs to be redefined, but we don’t know what he’s supposed to be.

Not yet.

See Also:
Both Gawker And O’Donnell Fail In “One-Night Stand” Story

One of the big political stories on this weekend before the election is the anonymously written piece in Gawker by a guy who said he had a “one-night stand” with Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell.

There’s a lot of outrage about it. There is definitely a mean, misogynistic streak in the story. “But there were signs that she wasn’t very experienced sexually,” the author wrote, along with details about her pubic hair. It seemed the story was out to hurt her personally and not just tell the facts of the evening in question. The story is written anonymously. The writer should have the courage to stand behind his story.

It’s relevant, though. As Gawker argues:

Christine O’Donnell is seeking federal office based in part on her self-generated, and carefully tended, image as a sexually chaste woman. She lies about who she is; she tells that lie in service of an attempt to impose her private sexual values on her fellow citizens; and she’s running for Senate. We thought information documenting that lie—that O’Donnell does not live a chaste life as she defines the word, and in fact hops into bed, naked and drunk, with men that she’s just met—was of interest to our readers.

If the story is true, O’Donnell is sexual hypocrite (not the first in politics) and Gawker badly executed the revelation (anonymous writer, mean-spirited and misogynistic).

Both fail.