Apparently Chris Mathews thinks there is a huge untapped voting pocket for Republicans: married women who have no grasp on finances. That's right:girls don't worry their pretty heads about money, that is why they married boys.
The brief exchange between Matthews and Kathleen parker also reveals quite a bit about what grasp on reality many journalists have on the realities of families in America. Apparently, they all live in gigantic suburbs and have no pressing money worries.
Matthews also used the exchange as an opportunity to slam HRC, maybe just the idea of a woman being President throws him into a reactionary panic. This is not a candidate diary: I do not have one.
While discussing a tax proposal offered up by HRC that would roll back the bush tax cuts to try and pay for health care reform Matthews says
he is thinking about a woman lives in the suburbs and might not work and articulating why she might favor HRC. He imagines her saying I sort of like this woman she is pro choice. Naturally he describes her position in terms of feelings not intellectual positioning. The husband in suburban world is the savior of rationality. Matthews predicts that the husband might say
that the tax increase would hurt their ability to pay college tuition. Parker, of course tries to re-frame it and offer up the observation that this will push suburbanites to favor Republicans.
So, apparently women who choose to be at stay home mothers in this country are just too dumb to handle any discussions about money and just rely on their husbands to asses all that nasty money. My guess, is that given the fact that stay at home mothers have to handle to day to day realities of households and the management of have a very good idea of what comes in and what goes out. Never mind the fact that there are fewer and fewer stay at home mothers in this country. Approximately 70 percent of mothers with children under the age of 18 are actively engaged in the work force. They are either looking for work or already working. According to the US census Bureau there are about 5 million stay at home mothers in this country. They make up a significant number of voters but are in a minority, compared to the total number of mothers about 80 million. In 2004, 59 percent of women 16 or older worked full time.
Another number that might or might not interest Chris Matthews,there were 6.5 million women owned businesses as of 2002. My guess, the women in this country know quite a bit more about money and tax implications than he might think.
The exchange also an interesting way to push aside any actually discussions of health care policy and potential health care plans proposed by any of the candidates and a scare tactic: eek health care policies are going to keep you from sending your kid to college! Never mind that many families in this country don't have health care coverage and they also don't have the money to send their kids to college. We won't talk about that in the MSM.
The middle class in the country barely exists and yet the MSM persists in perpetuating the idea that we all live in suburbs enjoying the middle class dream, that women who stay at home are not sufficiently intellectually talented enough to have their own ideas about finances, that women merely like candidates, that they must rely on their husbands to make the important decisions instead of making them together as a team, and that might be why I am starting to think of cable news as a toxin I can do without. I realize that Matthews did not say all that I griped about, but the implications were there, in my opinion.
The entire conversation can be found here since I did not critique the all of the conversation in the exchange.