Liberal Wedge

Quite a good ad from Creigh Deeds in the Virginia Governor's race, exploiting a gender gap with his opponent Bob McDonnell.



McDonnell is slipping in the polls after the revelation - provided by him in an answer to a reporter - of his college thesis calling essentially for dominionism. You can hold the GOP line on taxes and health care and some other policy issues and be fine, but advocating for women to stay in the home, or against birth control, and suddenly you're on the losing side of 90-10 issues with the public, especially with women. And the Deeds campaign is capitalizing on this perfectly. Here's another one of their ads.



They are exploiting a wedge issue by painting McDonnell as completely out of the mainstream - and they're winning with it.

Rudderless Ship

I don't know why I'm surprised by this freak-out on the right over the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, but I am. The right wing had to have a fight to feed their starving base, and they oppose Democrats for the same reason George Leigh Mallory wanted to climb Mount Everest: "Because it's there." They don't believe that a Democratic President could possibly be legitimate, and therefore he doesn't have the legitimate right to nominate judges for the nation's highest court. QED.

But despite having advance knowledge of Sotomayor's potential nomination for a month, they have not been able to suffuse their objections to Sotomayor with anything but racial and identity politics. Michael Goldfarb says Obama has the "views of a 21 year-old Hispanic girl. Mark Krikorian simmers over the pronunciation of Sotomayor's NAME. Sen. Inhofe worries about "undue influence from her race and gender." The leader of the Republican Party called her a "reverse racist".

Look, I'm not going to tell Republicans they need to watch their opposition to a Latina woman solely because of her race and gender. They haven't asked for my help. I'd rather simply say that, when a party has no leadership, this kind of insanity can reign. The contradictions at work - conservatives touting Clarence Thomas' "empathy", the identity politics conservatives praised with the nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor, the obvious disparity of conservatives demonizing empathy in the law while damning the "unfairness" of the Ricci decision to white firefighters - are just too obvious to count, as are the political sensitivities. But nobody has the controls of the Party, and nobody can douse these flames.

There's another theory on this, however. Conservatives have used racial coding for decades, and it's a well to which they have often gone over the years. But you know, we're in something of a new era when it comes to that. After all, take a look at the President.

Meanwhile, inside the Senate, there's no appetite for a filibuster, and Jeff Sessions even screwed up the only talking point that fell outside of the race/gender lines by saying that courts, in fact, do make laws. I plan to bring that little nugget out every time I hear about those "activist judges."

Dave Weigel: "Sotomayor's nomination will come crashing down when Larry Johnson releases the tape of her railing against whitey."

...and now Newt Gingrich calls her a racist. They really can't help themselves.

The Battle For Women

I just got an email from Page Gardner of Women's Voices Women Vote with some polling results:

Gallup recognizes the importance of the marriage gap, and has been polling on the preferences for the General Election and reporting the results by marital status and gender since early June. Be sure to check the WVWV website each week to see the latest results. This week, 57% of unmarried women favor Barack Obama, and 33% support John McCain. Of married women, 54% favor John McCain, and 39% support Barack Obama -- giving Barack Obama an overall 39 point marriage gap.

And yet unmarried women lag behind their married counterparts in registering and voting. Organizations like WVWV are trying to balance that (they have registered over 700,000 voters so far this year) but it's going to take a message as well as registration efforts.

That's why the Obama campaign is amping up their women's outreach.

While Palin makes a historic appeal to women to break the glass ceiling, the Obama campaign will have an equal pay ad airing this week reminding voters of policy differences with the McCain-Palin ticket that vastly impact females.

"More and more families depend on the income earned by working women, so you'd think we'd be united in our determination to help eliminate the unfair pay gap and pay women what they deserve for the work they do. But even now in 2008 Senator McCain has stood in the way of legislation to help close the pay gap... only from the man who repeatedly says the fundamentals of our economy are strong," said Moira Mack, spokeswoman for the Obama campaign.

On Monday, the Obama campaign released a list of major female backers--some there from the start of his campaign, but more important, names of women prominent in the Clinton presidential campaign and some visible females who are just now making a public endorsement. Obama spoke to the group Monday in a conference call, first reported in the Huffington Post.

On Tuesday, Ellie Smeal of the Feminist Majority and Kim Gandy of NOW--the National Organization for Women-- hold a press conference at the National Press Club to make their endorsement of Obama public. These Democratic-allied groups had been in the Clinton camp.

On Wednesday, Michelle Obama and Lilly Ledbetter, a leader in the battle of equal pay for equal work, take part in a roundtable in Richmond, Va. and headline a Virginia Women for Obama voter registration rally.

It continued today with Michelle Obama in North Carolina. You can read about this women's week of action here. The NOW endorsement is unusual, they haven't endorsed in a Presidential race since 1984.

And most crucial, Obama is not hiding his stance on a hot-button culture war issue, but making sure the differences between him and his opponent are clear.

WASHINGTON - Republican John McCain, an abortion rights opponent with a conservative Senate record on the issue, seems content with the public's perception that he's more moderate on the subject.

Democrat Barack Obama, who supports abortion rights, is only too happy to remind voters where McCain stands, but he tries to make his case without attracting too much attention [...]

Obama's radio ad, running in Indiana, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and elsewhere, features nurse practitioner Valerie Baron telling voters: "John McCain's out of touch with women today. McCain wants to take away our right to choose."

Glossy fliers with the same messages fill the mailboxes of women in Florida, Virginia and other states.

Countering that effort, McCain rolled out his own radio ad suggesting he's not as far right on abortion as Obama makes him seem — though he never mentions that procedure.

Instead, McCain's commercial focused on stem cell research and said he will invest more money in research to prevent disease and find medical breakthroughs to "help free families from the fear and devastation of illness."

Not only is that not likely to work, given that McCain has publicly expressed his "25 year consistent pro-life record," it may end up hurting him with his far-right base. Obama has been consistent as well - he wants to help reduce unwanted pregnancies, but he will not deprive women of their medical options and make them unsafe.

One candidate picked a female running mate to appeal to women. The other picked the right issues. I think the latter is the correct move.

McCain And Women

John W. McCain is holding a women's-only town hall event today in Wisconsin. He talked about how he's committed to "equal pay for equal work" but he sung a different tune just a few months ago.

In fact, McCain seems committed to just the opposite. In April, he skipped the vote on the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would have rectified the Supreme Court decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear “that made it much harder for women and other workers to pursue pay discrimination claims.”

In fact, on that very same day, McCain said that if he had been in the Senate, he would have voted against it because the bill “opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems.” He also dismissed the importance of equal pay, saying that women simply need “education and training“:

“They need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else,” McCain said. “And it’s hard for them to leave their families when they don’t have somebody to take care of them.

The issue is not “education and training.” When denied equal pay by her supervisor, Lilly Ledbetter was doing the exact same job as her male counterparts and received numerous performance-based awards.

McCain is confused about his position on women's issues because it seems he doesn't pay that much attention to them. Earlier this week Carly Fiorina, one of his most accomplished surrogate liars, brought up how many insurance plans cover Viagra but not birth control. McCain, of course, voted against legislation that would have mandated birth control to be part of insurance coverage. When he was asked for comment, deer in headlights felt sorry for him.

Q: Earlier this week Carly Fiorina was meeting with a bunch of reporters and talked about it being unfair that insurance companies cover Viagra but not birth control. And -

McCain: I certainly do not want to discuss that issue. (uneasy laughter)

Q: But apparently you’ve voted against (McCain laughter continues)

McCain: I don’t know what I voted -

Q: Voted against coverage of birth control, forcing health insurance companies to cover birth control in the past. Is that still your position?

McCain: I’ll look at my voting record on it, but I have, uh, (5 second pause) , I don’t recall the vote right now. But I’ll be glad to look at it and get back to you as to why, I don’t -

Q: I guess her statement was that it was unfair that health insurance companies cover Viagra but not birth control. Do you have an opinion on that?

McCain: (after 8 second pause) I don’t know enough about it to give you an informed answer because I don’t recall the vote, I’ve cast thousands of votes in the Senate. I will respond to - it’s a, it’s a (nervous)

Here's video, if you can see it:



McCain has no interest in these issues whatsoever. His personal treatment of women mirrors his policy treatment of them. This was on Page 1 of the LA Times today, above the fold, and it just shows what a retrograde, selfish human being McCain has been for the bulk of his life:

In his 2002 memoir, "Worth the Fighting For," McCain wrote that he had separated from Carol before he began dating Hensley.

"I spent as much time with Cindy in Washington and Arizona as our jobs would allow," McCain wrote. "I was separated from Carol, but our divorce would not become final until February of 1980."

An examination of court documents tells a different story. McCain did not sue his wife for divorce until Feb. 19, 1980, and he wrote in his court petition that he and his wife had "cohabited" until Jan. 7 of that year -- or for the first nine months of his relationship with Hensley.

Although McCain suggested in his autobiography that months passed between his divorce and remarriage, the divorce was granted April 2, 1980, and he wed Hensley in a private ceremony five weeks later. McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife.

His wife was disfigured in a car accident while McCain was a POW and when he returned, he traded her in for a newer, younger, prettier model. Bottom line. There's divorce based on irreconcilable differences and there's this completely different circumstance.

If you want another cynical creep in the White House who will do nothing for women's issues, McCain is definitely your man.

UPDATE: For contrast, you can find the Obama campaign's report about the impact of his economic plan on working women here. It's a PDF.

Women For Obama

We're going to have to wade through a whole ocean of Village conventional wisdom this primary season, so it's hard to know where to begin. But the opening set of nonsense seems to be that because Barack Obama defeated a woman in the Democratic primary, he'll have some impossible task reaching Democratic women voters in the general election. This is actually demeaning to women voters, this suggestion that they are so emotionally attached and not rational thinkers with respect to electoral politics that they would vote against their own committed beliefs and interests. It's a big country and "women" voters represents about 60-70 million Americans, so there are going to be exceptions, but by and large Democratic women aren't fools and won't be running toward John McCain and his policies which hurt women who care about issues like public health, equal pay and a women's right to choose her own medical care.

Marilyn Authenreith, a mother of two in North Carolina, felt strongly about supporting Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary.

But once the former first lady quit the race, Authenreith switched allegiance to Barack Obama, mainly because she thinks that he -- unlike Republican John McCain -- will push for universal healthcare.

"I can't understand the thinking of how someone would jump from Hillary to McCain," she said. "It doesn't make any sense."

Now that the Democratic marathon is over, Clinton supporters like Authenreith are siding heavily with Obama over McCain, polls show. And Obama has taken a wide lead among female voters, belying months of political chatter and polls of primary voters suggesting that disappointment over Clinton's defeat might block the Illinois senator from enjoying his party's historic edge among women.

This was just made up by seven people at the major cable news nets, who just decided to uncritically parrot GOP talking points that women were fed up with Obama because he beat their gal. None of it had any basis in reality.

And for what it's worth, Obama himself is attentive to the issue.

Sen. Barack Obama hit back at Sen. John McCain's recent attempts to court women voters who flocked to Sen. Hillary Clinton's failed presidential bid in droves.

. "On almost every single issue that's important to women, he's been on the wrong side," the presumptive Democratic nominee told ABC News in an interview in Flint, Mich. Monday.

"You know, he is in favor of judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade. He has opposed equal pay. He has opposed the CHIP [Children's Health Insurance] program, that would make children insured," Obama said.

In particular, choice could be a powerful and winning issue in the general election. Many moderates have no idea how radical McCain's position is on Roe. You will see crossover support for Obama as long as there's enough education around the issue.

Despite the fact that the national focus seems to be on the economy, among pro-choice Independent women, pro-choice Republican women, and liberal to moderate Republican women, the issue of abortion produces a larger advantage for Democrats than the economy, the war in Iraq, or health care. Moreover, among these three groups critiques on McCain’s anti-choice position are the strongest attacks against him, trumping attacks on the economy, the war, and special interests.

There are plenty more examples of this conventional wisdom taking hold without basis in reality. More infuriating than the fact that pundits focus almost entirely on horse-race politics is that they frequently get the horse race completely wrong.