McCain & Women Voters

[August1991]

Prominent women on the speaking roster included former eBay CEO Meg Whitman and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, both key McCain campaign advisers, as well as Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle.

Lingle, whose speech was flipped with Giuliani's so the New Yorker would precede Palin, made a specific reference to a controversy surrounding Alaska governor's disclosure that her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol Palin, is pregnant.

Lingle said that Palin has "a grandchild on the way" and said of the Palin family: "They face the same challenges that moms and dads do, every single day in our country. Difficult things happen to families, and just like yours, families pull together and get through it."

Fiorina and Whitman both devoted much of their remarks to domestic policy, and to making the case again for McCain as a leader. "Many people talk about changing Washington," Fiorina said. "John McCain has the knowledge, the guts, and now in Sarah Palin, the partner he needs to actually get it done."

Washington Post

McCain is making a concerted effort to include women in his group.

I almost think that McCain went down the list of Republican women governors. He needed a woman, and a governor. Like Peggy Noonan, I don't like this crass form of identity politics and I suspect no good can really come of it. But McCain's a competitive, ambitious guy struggling with a problem that's more of perception than substance.

I think McCain came to the realization that his insurance policy to win was the vote of independent women voters.

Harper should know that his ticket to a majority passes through women voters as well. Harper should ask himself (as McCain apparently did) why he does relatively poorly with women voters. It's not a question of ideology.

[Liam]

Republican conventions strike me more as pieces of orchestrated theatre than Democratic conventions which tend to be messier and more lively events.

I have no smoking gun in the form of an internal GOP memo, but it's plain to see that the GOP mostly picks its speakers to project the image that it is a much larger tent than it really is. Colin Powell, Ahhnold, city mayors, women business execs. You almost never see the real face of the GOP, which are guys like Tom DeLay or Jim Inhofe or James Dobson -- they scare the public away. It seems the GOP learned that if it puts up people like Phyllis Schlaffley, which they used to do, they might alienate voters.

Of course, the speakers they choose are all Republicans (save for the odd Zell Miller/Joe Lieberman), but when the camera pulls away and shows the audience (white male, white male, white male, white female, white male, one brown skinned guy, white male), it's kind of obvious there's a degree of tokenism up at the podium at GOP conventions.

[M.Dancer]

Of course, the speakers they choose are all Republicans (save for the odd Zell Miller/Joe Lieberman), but when the camera pulls away and shows the audience (white male, white male, white male, white female, white male, one brown skinned guy, white male), it's kind of obvious there's a degree of tokenism up at the podium at GOP conventions.

I watched part of the show last night..Rudy doing his thing and Palin's hers. When they panned the audience I saw quite a few women, so many in fact I was quite surprised. Most of them looked like they stepped out of a Mary Kay Convention break out session on big hair, but that's neither here nor there.

[Shakeyhands]

I watched part of the show last night..Rudy doing his thing and Palin's hers. When they panned the audience I saw quite a few women, so many in fact I was quite surprised. Most of them looked like they stepped out of a Mary Kay Convention break out session on big hair, but that's neither here nor there.

I was blown away by how white the crowd was, you could actually pick out the ones that weren't white. Good, bad, or indifferent, it was just an observation.

[Liam]

I was blown away by how white the crowd was, you could actually pick out the ones that weren't white. Good, bad, or indifferent, it was just an observation.

I think the main difference between the parties's conventions is that the GOP puts on its mask on the stage, whereas the Dems put on the mask out in the audience.

Let's just dispell the notion that the GOP is widely diverse. It is mostly a white, Christian, middle aged, suburban/ex-urban/rural party. There may be the occasional Asian woman or Pakistani man seen in the crowd, but the audience at GOP conventions is a fairly accurate representation of who they are out in the real world. The podium, however, is where the GOP plays to the cameras by highlighting anyone and everyone who isn't a southern, white, Anglo Protestant male.

The Democrats, on the other hand, have all these ridiculous quotas they fill when selecting delegates: 50% have to be women, x% have to be black, y% have to be Latinos, etc. As a result, the audience appears much more disparate minority groups than the actual voter registration rolls. The Dems' podium speaker are much more representative of the party's actual makeup.

[August1991]

Republican conventions strike me more as pieces of orchestrated theatre than Democratic conventions which tend to be messier and more lively events.

Cripes, Liam, you missed the point.

McCain named a woman to the ticket.

McCain is seventy-zillion years old, born in the 1930s or so and he's struggling with the 21st century. I don't know how old you are Liam, but McCain gets it. You apparently don't. Then again, McCain is one ambitious, competitive SOB.

McCain can smell the paint in the Oval Office.

Edited September 6, 2008 by August1991

[jdobbin]

McCain can smell the paint in the Oval Office.

He might be the sniffing the paint.

You have often said the market decides.

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/200...05/1355855.aspx

As of 5 p.m. ET today, McCain's shares were trading at 41.3 cents, which means the traders' consensus view is that McCain has a 41.3 percent chance of beating Obama. On the other hand, Obama's shares were valued at 59 cents - meaning that the Democrat is still the strong favorite, at least as far as the market is concerned.

The funny thing is that those values on the IEM have been basically unchanged (with one exception, detailed below) since Aug. 25, the day the Democratic convention opened. That runs counter to the conventional (heh, heh) wisdom that candidates enjoy a surge of popularity after their turn in the national spotlight.

[August1991]

You have often said the market decides.

"Real" markets decide - that is, markets where trades in claims on real assets matter.

I trade lazily in the CNN political market (relatively easy to register) but I have come to the conclusion that these Internet markets are gamed. Nothing real is at stake.

If the US presidency were decided in such a market, and maybe some day it will be, then I'd take a different viewpoint.

Long ago, people believed that God decided through birth who should control the power of the State. Now, we believe that State power should be conferred through the random choice of a one person-one vote election.

This will change.