Noticing the Gap

The Rachel Maddow Show

The Republican Party’s leadership apparently doesn’t speak for the Republican Party, which means it’s not really leadership.

The Women’s Media Center invites you to submit your questions to be asked at the Presidential Debate! We want to hear from you on issues that matter to, and affect, women. Click here to submit your questions, and continue reading below for information about the WMC’s initiative to add women’s voices to these historic and deeply significant debates.

The public responded to Show Me The Women, and so did one of the moderators Bob Schieffer of CBS. He is moderating the October 15 debate which focuses on domestic issues, and he invited The Women’s Media Center and its supporters to give him suggestions for questions he should ask at the debate. We have contacted the other moderators and requested that they accept our questions as well. To date, none have agreed.

The deadline to submit questions will be 5 p.m. EST on Wednesday, October 1st .

Since all three Presidential debate moderators are old, white men (much like one of the candidates), there is a serious need for diverse voices to be represented. Cheers to Bob Schieffer for inviting our questions. Now we’ll see if he uses any of them!

Marianne Schnall has a great piece on the Huffington Post featuring several renowned women’s voices on Palin and the election. While I get frustrated by the fact that politicians and the media pretend to care about “what women want” during an election year, and then quickly dump us after we get them elected, I do appreciate hearing several women’s perspectives on important issues.

Despite what the media initially reported, women are not at all flocking to the McCain-Palin ticket just because Palin is a woman. In fact, quite the opposite is happening. Palin is driving women to speak up for what’s at stake. Several blogs have popped up featuring women against palin.

I know that some people genuinely like Sarah Palin, but is it enough to make them vote for her? As her ignorance on the issues becomes increasingly obvious, will women continue to flock to Obama or other third party candidates? Or will the fact that she performs so poorly make women feel sorry for her and rally behind her? I must admit, that after the Couric interview I have begun to feel bad for the position Palin finds herself in. The McCain campaign’s treatment of her is incredibly sexist (Free Sarah Palin!), shielding her from reporters and only using her as a pretty face for photo ops. But will women recognize the sexism and rush to support Sarah Palin? I don’t think so. She hasn’t earned it.

First, there’s Sarah Palin. She has yet to hold a press conference and take questions from the press. It’s been almost a month since she was anounced, her popularity is plummeting, so what are they waiting for?

Today I read this: “Palin Bans Reporters from Meetings with Leaders” (AP)

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who has not held a press conference in nearly four weeks of campaigning, on Tuesday banned reporters from her first meetings with world leaders, allowing access only to photographers and a television crew.

CNN, which was providing the television coverage for news organizations, decided to pull its TV crew, effectively denying Palin the high visibility she had sought.

I’m not sure of the strategy behind this approach. Sarah Palin has only given us a few memorized lines, which continue to be repeated though they’ve been debunked as lies. It seems like you’d want to give us some new meat to chew on, some substance, so that we could form some ideas about you other than the fact that you’re a liar. Help us to move past the bridge to nowhere and the pitbull in lipstick. We have no choice but to assume that there truly is no substance behind the few, shallow details we’ve been given about Sarah Palin.

And now McCain is avoiding the media, too.

As of this writing, it has been 39 days and 22 hours since Sen. John McCain last held a news conference (despite having promised to hold weekly Q&A sessions with the press if he’s elected). According to the Democrats, it’s been 24 days and 11 hours since his running mate, Sarah Palin, held one. (WaPo)

There’s even a website to help us count.

Something very strange is happening here. The McCain campaign is shunning the media, who has consistently been his biggest ally througout the years. Seems to me that making the press angry will only encourage them to scrutinize you more, follow-up with tough questions, and maybe even try to get back at you for treating them so poorly.

Good luck, John McCain and Sarah Palin. You’re going to need it.

I have a theory that’s picking up steam. John McCain really offended women with his choice of Sarah Palin. In the past few weeks, every time a woman interviews McCain or one of his surrogates, they ask the tough questions they’ve been largely avoiding throughout this campaign. It’s even happening on Fox News and The View!

The latest in the series of women asking the tough questions came this morning from Meredith Vieira.

Unwilling to let McCain play dumb (like usual when he doesn’t want to answer a question) she follows up about Carly Fiorina’s compensation package. He insists that she did a good job as CEO and that he doesn’t know the details of her ‘golden parachute.’ Vieira presses further, noting that he’s been complaining all week about the fat cat CEOs who get big bucks while their employees get laid off. She reminds McCain that Fiorina is “an example of exactly the kind of person you say is at the root of the problem.” (ThinkProgress)

UPDATE: More women speaking out on McCain-Palin: Campbell Brown, Wanda Sykes, Andrea Mitchell, Shushannah Walshe, Lilly Ledbetter, …

Yesterday in Florida Barack Obama briefly turned the topic to abortion. Though his record has been staunchly pro-choice, he has not spoken about abortion enough in this election. I wanted to hear him address Roe v. Wade specifically. He not only did that, he took it a step further and mentioned Supreme Court Justices.

‘Change means a president who will stand up for choice, who understands that five men on the Supreme Court don’t know better than women and their families and their doctors about what’s best for their health,’ he said. ‘That’s why I fought so hard in Illinois and Washington to stop laws that overturn Roe v Wade. That’s why I am committed to appointing judges who understand how law operates in our daily lives, judges who will uphold the values at the core of our constitution. That’s why I will never back down from defending a woman’s right to choose.’ (The Hotline)

For more about Obama and abortion check out On the Issues.

The gods are conspiring against John McCain this year. There was bad weather when he was trying to visit an oil platform in the Gulf, all those crazy zealots prayed for rain at the DNC but instead got Ike at the RNC, and then came the economy. On the day of one of the biggest economic crises in modern history, McCain made the mistake of claiming that the fundamentals of the economy are strong.

And now this. Paul Krugman of the NY Times points out an unfortunately timed piece by McCain in the current September/October 2008 issue of Contingencies magazine, in which he suggests deregulating the health care market just like the banking industry.

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

Oops.

Of course this view is nothing new in the McCain camp, just bad timing. A few weeks back, the architect of McCain’s health care plan insisted that Americans shouldn’t use the word ‘uninsured’ because we all have ER access. Did you know they also want to wipe out your employer-provided health care plan? And then tax you on the benefits you receive. Really. It’s the tax increase no one is talking about.

And just imagine the world of hurt our seniors would be in today if McCain and Bush had succeeded in privatizing Social Security. Though he has contradicted himself several times about whether or not he supports privatization. One thing is clear, he’s not clear on what Social Security is or how it works. Yet he still wants to gamble away our retirement security.

New Obama ad features Lilly Ledbetter. If you don’t know about this remarkable woman, please read:

Of all the appalling decisions the Roberts Court issued last year, one of the worst was the 5-4 ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear, which gutted the equal-pay provisions of the Civil Rights Act and overturned a decades-old employment-law precedent.

The plaintiff, Lilly Ledbetter, worked for nearly two decades at a Goodyear Tire plant in Gadsden, Alabama. She brought an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaint against Goodyear after she discovered that for years she had been paid less than male co-workers with the same job. The justices ruled that employees can only file a wage-discrimination complaint within 180 days of when the payroll decision was made.

Continue reading here. (TAP)

In April, John McCain skipped the vote on the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, claiming that had he bothered to show up he would have opposed it. He said women need more “education and training,” and that the lawsuit “opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems.”

In his most recent change of heart, this week McCain claimed he supported equal pay for women, going as far as to say that he would take people to court who discriminated against women. Sorry, John, those women don’t have the right to pursue fair pay in court thanks to you and your colleagues. Guess who they’ll be voting for.

There are probably more than 3, but James Fallows’ piece at The Atlantic really rang true for me. He discusses three traits that Bush brings to decision-making that have been disastrous for our country.

The truly toxic combination of traits GW Bush brought to decision making was:

1) Ignorance
2) Lack of curiosity
3) “Decisiveness”

That is, he was not broadly informed to begin with (point 1). He did not seek out new information (#2); but he nonetheless prided himself (#3) on making broad, bold decisions quickly, and then sticking to them to show resoluteness.

We don’t know for sure about #2 for Palin yet — she could be a sponge-like absorber of information. But we know about #1 and we can guess, from her demeanor about #3.   Most of all we know something about the person who put her in this untenable role.

Her claim that she didn’t blink when McCain asked her to be VP scares many people. It’s admirable to be smart enough to know when you’re in over your head on something.

John Dickerson at Slate has a similar observation:

Finally, like Bush, Palin does not appear to let her unfamiliarity with the material hold her back. She was at pains throughout the interview to demonstrate her decisiveness. This makes political sense: What better way to reassure people about her ability as a leader than to look decisive?

But by repeatedly asserting that she will “not blink,” Palin was eerily Bush-like. She offered a black-and-white worldview of bold decisions made quickly and changed reluctantly for fear of showing weakness. Sound familiar?

Bush would never admit he was wrong about anything. He was so quick to jump to conclusions. What’s wrong with Palin saying that she consulted with friends and family, did some research, and then came to the conclusion she was up for the job? Her false sense of confidence despite her increasingly obvious ignorance is exactly like Bush.

Not to mention the secrecy (private email account for government business), warmongering (Russia?!), fear of science (no stem cell research, but lots of creationism), disdain for the constitution (refusing to cooperate with investigations, subpoenas), etc.

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Dear McCain-Palin supporters,

Do you really want 4 more years of George Bush’s policies? Please help me to understand your reasoning. Are you happy with war, greed, and ignorance?

Sincerely,

Noticed

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UPDATE: Oh, and then there’s that whole executive branch connection to Cheney. (ThinkProgress)

Reporters are beginning to do their jobs. When candidates repeatedly make claims that have been debunked already, they’re calling them out on these lies. Tucker Bounds has repeated his lies so often that it’s almost as if he actually believes them to be true. Sarah Palin admitted that the “thanks, but no thanks” claim is a stretch. But then she turned right around and put it back in her stump speech.

What I don’t understand is why they are lying about simple facts that are so easy to fact-check, such as whether or not Palin has been to Iraq. CNN hits the nail on the head on this one. The lies are designed to appeal to the base, who are conditioned to believe the candidates and hear what they want to hear. So their latest strategy is to bank on the fact that people are “blinded by love?”