Last night on her TV show, Rachel Maddow presented some key points that she thinks would help Obama further his outreach to undecided women voters -- all related to John McCain's dismal record on bread-and-butter economic issues. I thought she raised some great points, and I hope the Obama campaign was listening.
Here's a link to the full video of Rachel's comments.
It's around the 2:00 mark that Rachel makes a smart segue from the bailout news to voters' concerns about the economy, particularly women voters, and talks about how this could impact the presidential election. Maddow points out that John McCain was rated the worst U.S. senator for 2007 by the Children's Defense Fund, and highlights three key issues that help explain this appalling rating:
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Head Start funding: McCain voted against increased funding for Head Start four times, despite telling voters recently that he'd "be glad" to fully fund Head Start.
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Children's Health Insurance: McCain has consistently voted against increasing the number of children that can be covered by the State Children's Health Insurance Plan (S-CHIP). He most recently voted against reauthorizing S-CHIP for five years, and supported President Bush's veto of the S-CHIP bill passed by Congress.
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Minimum Wage: McCain has voted 19 times against increasing the minimum wage.
In an interview with Democratic Representative Jan Schakowsky of Illinois (who I thought did a great job) Maddow then explains why she thinks the Obama campaign needs to do a better job of hammering home McCain's dismal record on these issues:
"The votes against the minimum wage, the votes against children's health insurance, the votes against fully funding Head Start, I don't feel like that stuff is widely known about John McCain. And when we talk about the effect of the economy on the electorate, we're so often talking about women voters. I feel like those issues in particular, those votes I just described, would be of a lot of interest to women voters."
I agree with Rachel. Here in Florida I've seen Obama's ad about equal pay numerous times. And while it's a good ad, I think we need to see many more ads that let voters -- particularly women voters -- know about McCain's devastatingly bad record on bread-and-butter economic issues. Voted 19 times against the minimum wage? Perhaps Obama has already used that fact in an ad, but I haven't seen it yet here in Florida, and I've seen many other Obama ads.
As a slight aside, I have to admit that last night was the first time I watched the Rachel Maddow show from beginning to end (although I'd watched bits and pieces of her show before). It's not that I didn't want to watch it, it's just that, well, many nights two straight hours of political news and commentary on the teevee is just too much for me after a long day. I continue to love Countdown, but my partner and I are now hooked on Rachel's show. She is one smart person and one insightful political observer, and she brings an intelligence to her show that I have not seen on any other political show. I also like the fact that she has a lot of women on her show as guests -- much more so than any other show (although that bar is pretty low) -- and not just to talk about "women's issues." Watching her show makes you realize just how pathetically underrepresented womens' views and perspectives are on today's political shows across all networks.
So I hope the Obama campaign is watching the Rachel Maddow Show and taking to heart what she said. I don't think Obama and his campaign can hammer home these points about McCain's record often enough: voted 19 times against the minimum wage; voted consistently against health insurance for children; voted consistently against Head Start funding. Any woman -- or any man -- who is an undecided voter and is concerned about the economy needs to know these facts.