Will Hillary Clinton's female voters choose Obama or Mccain?

John McCain had to apologize for regaling a Republican audience with a crude sexual joke about Hillary and Chelsea Clinton and Janet Reno. Last year he had to explain why he didn't so much as flinch when a supporter asked him on camera, "How do we beat the bitch?" But these days Mr. McCain just loves the women. In his televised address on Barack Obama's victory night of June 3, he dismissed Mr. Obama in a single patronizing line but devoted four fulsome sentences to praising Mrs. Clinton for "inspiring millions of women." The McCain Web site is showcasing a new blogger who crooned of the "genuine affection" for Mrs. Clinton "here at McCain HQ" after she lost. One of the few visible women in the McCain campaign hierarchy, Carly Fiorina, has declared herself "enormously proud" of Mrs. Clinton and is barnstorming to win over Democratic women to her guy's cause.

How heartwarming. You'd never guess that Mr. McCain is a fierce foe of abortion rights or that he voted to terminate the federal family-planning program that provides breast-cancer screenings. You'd never know that his new campaign blogger, recruited from The Weekly Standard, had shown his genuine affection for Mrs. Clinton earlier this year by portraying her as a liar and whiner and by piling on with a locker-room jeer after she'd been called a monster. "Tell us something we don't know," he wrote.

Only an earthquake — the Iowa results, for instance — could shatter such previously immutable story lines as the Clinton campaign's invincibility and the innate hostility of white voters to a black candidate. Our new bogus narrative rose from the ashes of Mrs. Clinton's concession to Mr. Obama, amid the raucous debate over what role misogyny played in her defeat. A few female Clinton supporters — or so they identified themselves — appeared on YouTube and Fox News to say they were so infuriated by sexism that they would vote for Mr. McCain.

Now, there's no question that men played a big role in Mrs. Clinton's narrow loss, starting with Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Mark Penn. And the evidence of misogyny in the press and elsewhere is irrefutable, even if it was not the determinative factor in the race. But the notion that all female Clinton supporters became "angry white women" once their candidate lost — to the hysterical extreme where even lifelong Democrats would desert their own party en masse — is itself a sexist stereotype. That's why some of the same talking heads and Republican operatives who gleefully insulted Mrs. Clinton are now peddling this fable on such flimsy anecdotal evidence.

The fictional scenario of mobs of crazed women defecting to Mr. McCain is just one subplot of the master narrative that has consumed our politics for months. The larger plot has it that the Democratic Party is hopelessly divided, and that only a ticket containing Mrs. Clinton in either slot could retain the loyalty of white male bowlers and other constituencies who tended to prefer her to Mr. Obama in the primaries...there was no mention that the Democrat beat Mr. McCain (and outperformed Mr. Kerry) in every other group that had been in doubt: independents, Catholics, blue-collar workers and Hispanics. Indeed, the evidence that pro-Clinton Hispanics are flocking to Mr. McCain is as nonexistent as the evidence of a female stampede. Mr. Obama swamps Mr. McCain by 62 percent to 28 percent — a disastrous G.O.P. setback, given that President Bush took 44 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004, according to exit polls. No wonder the McCain campaign no longer lists its candidate's home state of Arizona as safe this fall.

The conservative hostility toward McCain heralded by the early attacks of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and James Dobson is proliferating. Bay Buchanan, the party activist who endorsed Mitt Romney, wrote this month that Mr. McCain is "incapable of energizing his party, brings no new people to the polls" and "has a personality that is best kept under wraps." When Mr. McCain ditched the preachers John Hagee and Rod Parsley after learning that their endorsements antagonized Catholics, Muslims and Jews, he ended up getting a whole new flock of evangelical Christians furious at him too.

The revolt is not limited to the usual cranky right-wing suspects. The antiwar acolytes of Ron Paul are planning a large rally for convention week in Minneapolis. The conservative legal scholar Douglas Kmiec has endorsed Mr. Obama, as have both the economic adviser to Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America," Lawrence Hunter, and the neocon historian Francis Fukuyama. Rupert Murdoch is publicly flirting with the Democrat as well. Even Dick Cheney emerged from his bunker this month to gratuitously dismiss Mr. McCain's gas-tax holiday proposal as "a false notion" before the National Press Club.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/opinion/15rich.html

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[JohnDeBunkTest]

Any intelligent woman has studied the issues, and will vote Obama.

Palin is a joke.

[RJWooller]

Hillary Clinton supporters will support Obama and Biden. To them it matters more what they do as President and VP than if they are a man or woman. Palin is so right wing, out of touch and it is all false, it is a show.

[bolitapelona]

Well Mass. voted for a Male not a female. LMAO. Does that mean that progressives are dumb in Mass?

[Twili6]

Hurray for president Mccain! :3

Fight da powa? Lol

[DorvellTStewart]

Whoever is spewing that stuff about President Obama being Muslim, I have three things to say to you;

1. Give it a rest. It doesn't scare us!

2. It's fear-mongering wackjobs like yourself that played a major role in costing McCain the election to begin with.

and 3. Should someone's religious beliefs be the soul determinant in how well they can lead a country? I don't think so!

[pinkgyrl09]

He's not a Muslim, genius. Palin doesn't even know that Africa is a continent, not a country. She doesn't even understand the majority of the world's international policies. For you to talk about Palin being an intelligent woman, you must not understand the definition.  Look it up....make sure you spell it right, now!

[teka2u]

YEA RIGHT!!. I can see a bank from my living room window and that gives me the experience to run the Dept. of Treasury. Palin doesn't know anything, doesn't even know what a VP does (has power to control the senate). HAHAHAHA....give me a fuckin break! Oh..and fights corrupt, what about *corrupt* Sen. Ted Stevens (R) Alaska??!! Right under her watchful eyes. oh gee...you betcha.

[mjac777]

Good Point Joyce .... Obama is a communist that will destroy our country. The reason we, as a country are so wealthy is b/c we don't tax the hell out of them. Obama will tax us to death.

[mjac777]

Sarah Palin has a higher US security clearance than either McCain OR Obama. Because she borders on Russia she is always in the loop on Foreign Affairs. She is honest. Fights corrupt pols - Obama endorses them. She makes 100's executive decisions daily - Obama votes "present".

[ForTheRecord101]

The Republican party was the focal point of corporate efforts to gain control of the US government for their greedy purposes.

Many key career Democrats have sided with corporate power because the media owned by only 5 corporations stood between them and their jobs.

But, if we are to reestablish free markets and democracy, we must firt remove the party the fascists used to take over this nation.

You must vote the whole Democrat party or the needed big changes won't happen.

[ForTheRecord101]

Excessive corporate power is the cause of the economic melt down.

Reagan started the trend of deregulation that eventually turned the government over to corporate power.

This depression will last until we force corporations like Walmart and General Electric and the other media corporations to conform to anti-trust law and force them to break up, force them to REVERSE the merger and acquisition mania that has eliminated true free market enterprise in the US.

[JohnDeBunkTest]

Muslims don't respect womens rights?

So you think Palin does? Seriously?

No teaching of sex ed (except abstinence and see how that worked out for her daughter)

No access to abortions.

Women pay for their own police tests when raped.

Acts like a total bimbo as an example to women.

Good for women because she has a vagina? I think not.