Remember the ladies
by digby
Also known as the moochers, looters and parasites:
National polling averages, like Huffington Post’s own model, show a 3-point race. Other polls show a wider race, and in some, like Gallup’s tracking in swing states, the race is tighter. Individual swing states, like Virginia and Ohio, also show a clear Obama lead.
Most of this movement has come from women voters. The chart below shows Obama’s margin over Romney broken out by gender in public polls from August 20 through today (all telephone or IVR public polls I could easily find are included; none were left out). Not only do women consistently give Obama the edge, the gender gap in Obama’s performance seems to be widening.
According to the article it’s possible that this may end up being the biggest gender gap in history.
I suppose you can swagger around talking about people being victims and refusing to take personal responsibility, but to a whole lot of women that’s a myopic view of how daily life is actually lived in this country. Many of them are caring for kids and ageing parents while working at shit jobs and trying to make ends meet in this dead economy and the idea that they are parasites is ridiculously insulting. They tend to be much more involved in the day to day struggles of the vulnerable people in our society and know intimately what the stakes are. (And a whole lot of them would dearly love to take personal responsibility for their reproduction, but these people won’t let them!)
I’m sure many women have all the same qualms about the Democrats as the men do and wish they had more choices. But on virtually every level, there is simply no doubt that given free rein, the Republicans will make their lives demonstrably worse than they already are.
It’s just a practical choice. When you see a presidential ticket bragging that they want to cut off every level of support that many of these women, regardless of their economic status, understand is necessary to keep the young, the old and the disabled from total penury, it’s not surprising. Most of them don’t have time to listen to Rush and watch Fox News to learn how this offends their sense of personal freedom. They’re too busy working, cleaning, caregiving and otherwise exhausting themselves.
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