Eric Gay / AP Senator Wendy Davis listens as the Texas Senate debate an abortion bill before the final vote, on July 12, 2013, in Austin. 
 
 A Wendy Davis run for Texas governor may be just what the Democratic party needs as it gears up for the 2014 midterm elections. 
 
 And that’s not just because the pro-choice state senator’s June filibuster –11 hours of talk in which she couldn’t lean on her desk, have a drink of water, cede the microphone or change the subject (she was penalized just for putting on a back brace) — was so much more hardcore than Republican Ted Cruz’s recent “Green Eggs and Ham” reading gabfest in the U.S. Senate. 
 
 It’s not just because her own personal story – an absent father, a sixth-grade-educated mother, a teen pregnancy, followed by life as a single mom in a mobile home, then community college and, at last, Harvard Law School – gives the party that backs her impeccable “real people” credibility. 
 
 It’s a whole lot more simple than that. 
 
 MORE: Wendy Davis Eyes Texas Governor Run 
 
 Blonde, strikingly pretty, outspoken and female, Davis is, to put it bluntly, invaluable as bait. In her short tenure on the national scene, she has elicited an almost Pavlovian response from anti-woman blowhards. 
 
 First, Fox News commentator Erick Erickson called Davis “Abortion Barbie.” Then, a twitter poster, @jefflegal, expressed his support for a gubernatorial bid by the Republican Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott by dismissing Davis as “Retard Barbie”—a rather artless insult that might not have gotten much attention, had the attorney general not tweeted back, “Jeff, thanks for your support.” And just last month, Abbott’s top political advisor, Dave Carney, stepped into the Davis-bashing fray again by tweeting an article from a conservative Texas blog that promised in its headline to explain “why Wendy Davis is too Stupid to be Governor.” 
 
 There’s every reason to expect that, as a misogyny magnet, Davis, whom The New York Times has described as an Austin “fashion icon,” will be the gift that keeps on giving all through the upcoming campaign season. Her hair, her clothes, her pink sneakers; the fact that she’s unmarried; the fact that abortion is the issue that brought her to national prominence—all these things sexualize her to a degree that’s unusual for female politicians (as it any accident that Sarah Palin was always dripping with kids?) and they open her up to a very specific, and very ugly, form of woman-hate. 
 
 The more hits Davis takes, the better is will be for the Democrats. It was, after all, a consistent pattern of gender-based disrespect that helped land Democrats their 2012 election victories in the U.S. Senate and the presidency. A long pile-up of Republican insults to women’s dignity, particularly in the area of reproductive rights, led President Obama to win the women’s vote by a 12-point margin. Women don’t always vote as a unified block; they’re by no means unanimous in their support for abortion rights, or for any of the pro-family social policies that tend, unhelpfully, to be classed together as “women’s issues.” But they have, in recent years, tended to come together in a common understanding when the “yuck factor” in politics – the macho posturing, the questionable remarks that cut away at women’s hard-won public dignity – just gets to be too much. 
 
 Abbott, sensitized by outrage that followed his Twitter thank-you, has tried to backpedal, tweeting his supporters to “Stay positive. ” The admonition, however @Barbie-worthy, hasn’t done much to mollify his critics. The Republican party’s effort to rebrand itself to women doesn’t seem to be working out too well, either. A new United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection poll just this week found that 33 percent of the women surveyed felt that the party had drifted even further away from them since the 2012 election. Only 14 percent of women—and just 11 percent of women younger than 50—said that Republicans had moved closer in perspective to them. 
 
 Message: we Barbies are no dummies. You can’t change a legacy of policies that insult and hurt women through the power of positive thinking. ||||| Texas Democratic Party chair: Sen. Wendy Davis should run for governor 
 
 By Stephen C. Webster 
 
 Wednesday, June 26, 2013 0:46 EDT 
 
 Update: Davis filibuster succeeds amid chaos as Republicans fail to legally pass anti-abortion bill 
 
 Gilberto Hinojosa, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, said he hopes that Sen. Wendy Davis (D), who conducted a 10-hour filibuster against a bill that would close all but five abortion clinics in the state and ban all abortions after 20 weeks, will run for statewide office. Speaking to Raw Story from the Texas Capitol on Tuesday night, Hinojosa said she would likely win a bid for the governor’s office thanks to her marathon filibuster. 
 
 “I’m so proud of her effort and what she’s showed Texas,” Hinojosa said. “Women deserve, in this state, to be treated with dignity. I think that she’s taken it to the Republicans in a way that was not expected. She has put them to shame and made us all very, very, very proud.” 
 
 Asked about her potential political future, Hinojosa cracked a wide grin. “Wendy is not only extremely intelligent and articulate, she’s great on the issues and she’s got a great personal story — a single mother who made it out of a life of poverty to go to Harvard law school, then gets elected to the city council and the Texas Senate by beating an incumbent Republican,” he said. “She is someone that can really, really excite people across the state of Texas, who really shows true leadership.” 
 
 “She doesn’t play games or worry about what’s going to get her votes,” Hinojosa continued. “She does what she believes is right. We’ve been sorely lacking that kind of leadership in the state of Texas for more than 20 years. So, yeah. I’m hoping she runs for statewide office, and I know that should she decide to, all of these women and men that are here today, young and old, will work their hearts out for her. She’d probably get elected governor, or whatever other office she wants to run for.” 
 
 Davis’s filibuster unceremoniously ended just after 10 p.m. CST when Republicans cited her on a third “point of order” for allegedly going off-topic by mentioning Planned Parenthood in her filibuster of S.B. 5. At the time of this writing, fellow Texas Democrats were pulling out all the stops to block a full vote on S.B. 5 by using arcane parliamentary tactics to delay until midnight, when the special session officially ends. 
 
 S.B. 5 would ban all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy — well before medical experts say a fetus is viable outside the womb — and force all but five of the abortion clinics in Texas to shut their doors by 2014. 
 
 If they succeed, it’s still possible that the bill could come up again in the days to follow if Gov. Rick Perry (R) decides to call another special session, which he could do tomorrow if he desires. Perry initially placed the anti-abortion measure on the legislature’s docket as an “emergency” provision, and said at the time he would like to see the right to abortion completely revoked in the state. 
 
 —— 
 
 [Photo: Screenshot via YouTube.] ||||| Politics 
 
 The summer’s Democratic hero, Texas State Sen. Wendy Davis — whose 13-hour filibuster against a Texas abortion-restricting bill catapulted her into the national spotlight — is set to be featured in the September issue of Vogue. 
 
 The gushy profile, published online Thursday, details Davis’ personal story from a single teen mom to political star. 
 
 “Looking back, I don’t know if I could do it again. But somehow you just have the energy to do what you have to do,�? she told Vogue of being a single mom and attending community college classes in the morning while she worked as a paralegal. “And the great thing was, after a year, I realized that college wasn’t only for other people.�? 
 
 Davis’ hair struggles (she admitted to having “super-supercurly hair�?), clothing (“She loves to put on something nice, dresses by Chloé and Victoria Beckham, and Miu Miu heels or Louboutins�?), home life (she lives in a “Spanish-style town house�?) and speculation about a potential run for Texas governor are also prominently featured. 
 
 In the profile, Davis revealed that she was not always interested in politics, finding such conversations boring when out with her second husband Jeff Davis, a lawyer and the youngest person to be elected to the Fort Worth city council. 
 
 “I remember we’d go into restaurants and everyone wanted to talk politics, and I thought, God, this is soooo boring,�? she said. 
 
 From bored with politics to Harvard law, law career to city council seat, and State Senate to household name, the profile delves into her potential run for governor. 
 
 “I feel confident that the next campaign will sort itself out in due time,�? Davis wrote Vogue in an email after Republican Gov. Rick Perry announced he would not seek reelection. “For now my priorities remain the same—focusing on the work at hand and fighting to make Texas a great place for all families.�? 
 
 The word “abortion�? — the practice she fought to protect after 20-weeks of pregnancy in her multi-hour filibuster — does not appear a single time in the nearly 3,000 word essay. The word “antiabortion�? appears three times. 
 
 Since the Perry announcement, Davis has remained coy about her future plans. At the National Press Club last week, Davis said Texas needed a change, but would not reveal if she will run. 
 
 “I can say with absolute certainty that I will run for one of two offices: Either my state Senate seat or the governor,�? she said at the Press Club. 
 
 This week, a lawyer and lobbyist Robert Miller published a report claiming that “credible sources�? have told him Davis will run for governor in 2014. 
 
 Davis posed in the Texas Capitol for her Vogue spread, titled “Stand and Deliver: After Her 12-Hour Filibuster, How Far Will Texas Senator Wendy Davis Run.�? 
 
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– Wendy Davis officially announced her candidacy for governor of Texas yesterday, and Judith Warner thinks she's exactly what Democrats need—and not just because of her filibuster-generated fame. "Blonde, strikingly pretty, outspoken, and female, Davis is, to put it bluntly, invaluable as bait," Warner writes at Time. "In her short tenure on the national scene, she has elicited an almost Pavlovian response from anti-woman blowhards." Erick Erickson, for example, once called her "Abortion Barbie." "As a misogyny magnet," Warner thinks Davis will be "the gift that keeps on giving." Her hair, clothes, and pink sneakers, coupled with her abortion stance and unmarried status, "sexualize her to a degree that's unusual for female politician" and "open her up to a very specific, very ugly form of woman-hate." And that's great for Democrats, who rode "a consistent pattern of gender-based disrespect" to victory last year. Barack Obama won among women by 12 points. "Message: we Barbies are no dummies." Click for the full column.