18 Million Cracks in the Glass Pantsuit
Just when I was starting to feel a grudging admiration for Taylor Marsh for defying the anti-Obama torch and pitchfork mob she helped create and giving a forum to anti-PUMAs like Christina, she goes and highlights this dishonest screed by Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin at the top of her site:
Women voters aren’t warming to ‘cool’ Obama
The Obama campaign has a woman problem. How big? How small? It’s not clear, but in a close election, small can be big.
[snip]
…[T]he women Obama needs right now are the ones who do not dine downtown. They’re the ones who can’t afford organic anything, forced to choose between a gallon of gas and a gallon of milk because they can’t buy both on the same day.
Women like Sarah.
A few hours after leaving the “Women for Obama” luncheon, I ran into Sarah, not her real name. I’ve known her for a few years. A single mom, she free-lances, working as many jobs as she can to support two growing boys. She dreams of a permanent gig with benefits, but it’s still just a dream.
A 37-year-old Democrat, she is also a college grad and a news junkie who has watched this campaign like a hawk. She surprised me with her anger Tuesday, saying she’s voting for McCain.
[snip]
It seems pretty clear that if Obama is not going to pick Clinton as his running mate, he’d better not pick a woman at all. That, Sarah made clear in our conversation Tuesday, would be unfair.
Sweet, weeping Jesus in a coral pantsuit with cream-colored piping, where to begin? First of all, the whole “gender gap” is a load of steaming horseshit. As Booman pointed out:
The July 15 Quinnipiac University poll shows women overall backed Obama over McCain 55 percent to 36 percent. Then again, the margin was far smaller among independent women, who preferred Obama by just three points, 45 percent to 42 percent. And finally, there’s that Clinton problem. The Associated Press/Yahoo News “found that just 12 percent of former Clinton supporters say they are excited about Obama.”
According to the 2004 Edison-Mitofsky Exit Polls, Mr. John Kerry rolled up a whopping 51-48 edge with voters of the female persuasion. And those white women that make up the heart of Clinton’s base? They voted for Bush by a 55-44 margin. So…Kerry…3-point gender gap. Obama…19-point gender gap with 9% undecided.
Yep, Obama’s in trouble with us wymyns, alright. McSame is gonna ride into the White House on the padded shoulders of disgruntled Clinton supporters – women so committed to the feminist cause that they want to bar any woman other than Clinton from office. Well, fuck you, “Sarah,” if you exist. Which I doubt.
But rather than pointing out the blatant dishonesty of the column’s premise, Marsh riffs on the mythical “Sarah’s” plaint in another post:
The economy is issue number one for Americans. So who in the general election will speak to it for Democrats? Barack Obama can speak about the policy side of things, but who will reach the people?
[snip]
Obama can speak in long sentences that rap around dreams, visions and enough rhetorical cotton candy to make his primary season word fogs look coherent. But the man cannot connect.
“The man cannot connect”? Hell, Obama can lure 200K people – sans free beer and brats! – to hear him give a speech in a foreign language! He came out of nowhere and connected on such a level that he beat the best-known, best-funded, establishment candidate in what will go down as one of the most stunning upsets in primary history. Can’t connect my ass. Marsh continues:
What is he going to do for my neighbor who has been laid off? Or the other neighbor who is about to lose his house and his life savings?
Hillary would have an answer. She would reach inside these voters and talk to their deepest despair and desperation, telling them that she can’t work miracles, but she can offer solutions that provide a road map to find the way out.
Yeah, like suspending the gas tax. That’s a sure-fire “roadmap to find the way out.” Marsh goes on:
For the first time in decades a Democratic candidate reached down into voters’ anxieties and talked to the issues most on their minds. No Democrat has done it in recent election cycles. That is, make lunch bucket, Reagan Democrats believe that a Democratic candidate not only knows their plight and their challenges, but also gets them and has a solution and a road map to lead them out. That person was not Barack Obama.
When thinking of the team that can lead Democrats to victory in November only one stands out. It isn’t matching Obama with Evan Bayh, and it sure as hell isn’t serving up Tim Kaine.
We all know who can make this trek to the White House not only easier, but a road of mission and purpose on which every American would be proud to walk, because their best interests would be served. But the truth is that the people involved don’t seem willing to call it up.
So much hope wasted on the alter [sic] of ego. Our best chance of winning spurned in the balance. Because contrary to popular belief, we haven’t won this thing yet.
Not to be an elitist English major, but I really wish someone would set Marsh straight on the “alter” vs. “altar” thing. She does that all the fucking time.
As for the rest of it, Marsh yammers on about “lunch bucket, Reagan Democrats,” a voting bloc most of us in 2008 refer to as “Republicans.” Or “people—many now dead since we’re talking about the 1980 election, which was 28 fucking years ago – who were dupes of the GOP Southern strategy, much to our national disgrace.”
But as usual, Marsh filters it through the prism of her own narcissism. Having owned up to once being a “Reagan Democrat” herself, she continues to believe it the most important voting bloc evah, despite copious evidence to the contrary. This “Reagan Democrats” thing is just an extension of her ceaseless auto-pimpitude, like her reference to herself (who else?) in this post [emphasis mine]:
However, if the Obama team has been leading on Clinton and her supporters, of which I am a vocal and significant member, as this report hints, while simultaneously the Obama team, including Obama himself, has been giving complimentary talking points to the media when they know she’s out, they’re going to stir up fury barely buried, not to mention more bad blood, neither of which Democrats can afford if we’re to win in November.
Well, she’s half right – she’s vocal. And pretty damn cheeky to accuse anyone else of a surfeit of ego. Damn, I miss John Brown.
Posted by Betty Cracker on 07/31/08 at 01:24 PM • Permalink
Categories: Politics • Election '08 • Barack Obama • Hillary Clinton • Bedwetters •
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