Ruth Rosen

    Women Sealed The Deal

    Posted November 10th, 2008 by Ruth Rosen

    For the last two years, I’ve been writing and telling anyone who would listen that American women could elect the next president, if only they voted.

    Well, this time they did, and there is no doubt that women were a decisive factor in the election of Barack Obama.

    To listen to the pundits, however, you’d think that only youth (bless them!) and minorities turned out in overwhelming numbers to stand on endless lines to elect the first African American and liberal and brilliant president.

    Frank Rich, whom I admire tremendously, even missed the boat. In his Sunday New York Times column in The Week in Review, Rich never mentioned the amazing gender gap that catapulted a young and relatively unknown senator to become our 44th president.

    Just take a serious look at the numbers. As the data in the Week in Review in the New York Times reveals, women constituted 53% of the electorate, while only 47% of men voted. Among those who voted for Obama, 56% were women and 43% were men. Among unmarried women, a whopping 70% voted for Obama.

    There are many variables in this data that need to be explained. The extraordinary female vote almost certainly came largely from minority and young women. But even white, married women, who usually vote more conservatively, went for Obama.

    Does this matter? Yes, and here’s why. For years, women have been saying that we are invisible in this political culture. The consequence of this invisibility is that our poverty, our economic insecurity, our need for health care, child care, elder care, and equality in wages and training are also ignored.

    So, with all due respect to those who are praising the young and minorities, and rightfully blessing their energy and enthusiasm, take a good hard look and notice that it was women who, in the end, sealed the deal.

    Posted Under: Uncategorized
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    1 Comment

    November 10, 2008 at 2:49 pm by Amapola

    First I would like to say I’m pretty liberal. I was not a fan of John McCain. I support gay marriage for example. I’m a big fan of Dennis Kucinich, and I loved Ron Paul’s non interventionist foreign policy. I’m a big fan of Ralph Nader’s honesty and Senator Bernie Sanders.

    The fact is Barack Obama said what it took to get elected and that’s about it

    Barack lies to Ohio about NAFTA or Canadian Ambassador

    I am a women, but I feel Mom’s rising is going after the symptoms of problems, not the actual problems.

    We have real issues like NAFTA, which Obama won’t touch. Clinton dropped our tariffs against China so we have a 3% tariff against most of Chinese products, while China has a 25% tariff against most US products.

    A company is required to build a physical factory presence in China before they can sell products there. That was my previous employers justification for building a 1000 employee research and development center in China.

    We are losing jobs at a drastic rate. I truly believe that is our real problem. Our wages are dropping, our are standards are dropping, and our rights are dropping because workers from the US are being pitted against the third world. We just can’t compete.

    This does not mean the third world is better off. Watch John Pilgers The New Rulers of The
    World

    Watch John Perkins on Democracy Now. He’s the author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

    We also have the Federal Reserve printing money out of thin air (see How the Inflation Tax Hurts the Poor), and keeping the interest rate artificially low. What this does is make savings pointless so everyone invests in Wall Street.

    Obama is not going to address these issues, but we can work hard in primaries to get corrupt incumbents out of Congress. The news media misleads us by making us think the President and the November elections are what matters.

    What matters is determining who gets on the ballot for the Democrat or Republican Party. Obama may have lied to us, but we can make him keep his word by throwing out Congressmen who don’t support change and putting in ones who do.

    I would like to recommend Wolf’s book Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries . This book is like a Civics class, and is a guide to citizens taking back Congress.

    For the minority that live in a Caucus State, this page might be helpful Caucus101

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