What We're Reading This Morning -- June 4
Spread the word
|
|
Good morning everyone! It’s only Monday, and it’s already looking to be a busy week so we’ll head straight to the highlights….
On the Sunday shows, Romney advisers calls women’s issues more of a distraction. “Romney adviser dismisses women’s issues as ‘shiny objects’” — “Mitt Romney’s senior campaign adviser, Eric Fehrnstrom, on Sunday said that social issues important to women, like contraception coverage and abortion rights, were ’shiny objects’ that were being used to distract voters. David Plouffe, one of President Barack Obama’s top aides, last week told New York Magazine that Democrats needed to be clear about what a Romney presidency would mean for women’s rights and other social issues. ‘Potentially abortion will be criminalized,’ Plouffe said. ’Women will be denied contraceptive services. He’s far right on immigration. He supports efforts to amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage.’ On Sunday, Fehrnstrom insisted that the Obama campaign strategy was not going to work. ‘Mitt Romney is pro-life,’ the senior adviser admitted to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. ‘He’ll govern as a pro-life president, but you’re going to see the Democrats use all sorts of shiny objects to distract people’s attention from the Obama performance on the economy. This is not a social issue election.’ Obama Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter noted that Romney had promoted his social policies throughout the primary season.”
Senate will vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act this week, and Senate Republicans have already vowed to vote against it. “Senate to vote on women’s pay bill (and what else is going on this week in Congress)” — “Here we go again. The Senate will return to Washington this week and Democrats plan to hold a vote on another bill linked to women’s rights, part of a months-long effort to woo female voters — and now to try to drive a wedge between Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and GOP lawmakers. Senate Republicans have said they will vote against the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill that Democrats say would further protect women fighting for higher salaries. They were unable to pass the measure during the 2010 lame-duck session. Citing Census Bureau data, Democrats note that women earn 77 cents for every dollar their male colleagues make. The bill would require employers to prove that potential wage differences between men and women are job-related and driven by business necessity, not a worker’s sex. The measure also would protect workers from retaliation for sharing salary information with colleagues.”
A critical constituency, single women will be a major voting bloc in November. “Single moms Obama's X-factor?” — “President Barack Obama has recently devoted a lot of time to firing up the ‘X’ factor and wooing women voters. He ‘grew up as the son of a single mom,’ Obama reminded Barnard graduates during his commencement address at the women’s college, ‘who struggled to put herself through school and make ends meet.’ His team surely knows that if single mothers like the president’s show up in November, they could make up his margin for victory, even as the most recent ABC News/Washington Post polling shows Romney gaining among women. Unmarried women supported Obama by far more than 2 to 1 in 2008 and now make up fully one quarter of America’s eligible voters. In a year when women’s votes are more critical than ever, turning out this group — many of whom juggle at least one job while raising children — might matter most…. Numbers bear this out. America is now home to a record 53 million unmarried women, up 19 percent in the past decade. Single mothers’ ranks have climbed alongside this growth, rising from 8.5 million in 2000 to more than 10 million today. If these women show up at the polls, they usually vote Democratic.”
