Polls, pundits, and the problem with women

Dear God. It's best 18 months since my last blog post! Pathetic, I know, but in my own defense, in that time I have been fully employed ghost writing and ghost blogging (yes, ghost blogging) for various clients. That phase of my freelance life is drawing to a close, however, as I turn back to my own writing.


This may be a lame reentry into blogging, but I am posting my column from last week's Jersey County Journal (unless you are one of the lucky 10,000 households that gets that paper back in rural Jersey County, there is no where to read it online):


Polls, pundits, and the problem with women
(originally published 4.25.12, The Jersey County Journal)

Political campaigns get boring very quickly. The candidates deliver the same stump speech over and over; reporters parse their words with care, looking for stumbles; and the media pounces on anything it can to keep it interesting.

Of course, sometimes something interesting does happen, and this is usually the result of a gaffe on the part of a politician, pollster, or pundit. Such was the case two weeks ago when Democratic strategist and CNN political contributor Hilary Rosen said that Ann Romney had “never worked a day in her life.”

What followed was a weeks-long thunderstorm of stories, speeches, columns, editorials, Twitter feuds, and blog posts denouncing Rosen for her insensitivity toward women who choose to stay home and raise their children.

Rosen’s comment was idiotic, but what I find even more idiotic is the media’s refusal to place it in the context in which it was delivered, to paint it as a fight between stay-at-home moms vs. work-outside-the-home moms, and, worse, to ignore the real political issues facing women in this election, issues that I think Rosen was trying to (and did) raise but got sidelined by her comment.

Let’s start at the beginning: Rosen was a guest on "Anderson Cooper 360" and they were discussing the conflict between the Romney campaign’s new focus on the economy and his disconnect with women voters. Why is this important? An ABC News/Washington Post poll puts Obama ahead of Romney by a whopping 20 points among registered female voters, who make up 53 percent of the electorate. Women are key. Here is what Rosen said:

“Ultimately I think Mitt Romney is right, that women care more about the economic well being of their family, but he doesn't connect on that issue either. What you have is Mitt Romney running around the country saying, ‘Well, my wife tells me that what women really care about are economic issues, and when I listen to my wife, that’s what I’m hearing.’ Guess what? His wife has never actually worked a day in her life, she has never really dealt with the kind of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school, and how do we worry about their future, so I think yes, it's about these positions, and yes there will be a war of words about this position, but there is something much more fundamental about Mitt Romney…in that he doesn't really see us as equal.”

Rosen apologized the next day and applauded Ann Romney’s decision to stay at home and said she meant that Mitt needed a better understanding of the economic issues facing women. This did nothing to assuage the furor over her comments and did absolutely nothing to turn the debate back to where it should be: on the economic issues that face women and how the Romney campaign can better understand those issues and court crucial women voters.

Ann Romney, on Fox News, coolly and calmly said that her career choice was to be a mother and that we need to respect all the choices women make. A judicious and polite response, but again, the debate became working mother vs. stay-at-home mother, traditional-values-hating Democrats vs. respect-traditional-women’s-choices-Republicans, and not on the economic and political issues that face women in this election: the fact that men are being re-hired at a faster rate than women, whether contraception should be mandatorily covered by health insurers, affordable access to health insurance and child care, the wage gap, where women still earn 80 percent of what men do, etc.

Those are the political issues that candidates must address and that the media should be asking about. Rosen’s point, however poorly delivered, was that if you are Mitt Romney and you want to understand the struggles that the average American woman faces, you might do well to look outside the example of your own home. Yes, it was callous to say that Ann Romney had never worked a day in her life, but the point is that it’s a lot easier to make the choice to be a stay-at-home mom and raise your kids when you never have to worry about money, health insurance, tuition, and childcare, let alone cleaning your own house or shopping for groceries.

All women worry about the same things: will my children do well in school? Will they find good jobs? Are they good people? But the vast majority of women—whether they stay home or not—also have to worry about income, health insurance, good schools, and the like. Rosen was not questioning Ann Romney’s life choice; she was questioning whether Mitt Romney is in touch with the issues that face the vast majority of American women, and if he can close that crucial gap by November.

According to US News and World Report, in every presidential election since 1964, more women than men have voted; 10 million more in 2008, alone. Since women make up 53 percent of the voting electorate, courting women voters isn't just politics, it's the key to victory.