Best columns: Why McCain won’t get the women’s vote

Frank RichThe New York Times

So much for Barack Obama’s woman problem, said Frank Rich. After Obama knocked Hillary Clinton out of the Democratic primaries this month, the media was full of talk about “mobs of crazed women” defecting to Republican John McCain. This “bogus narrative” can now be retired. New polls show that Obama has opened up a 13- to 19-point lead over McCain among female voters—a “huge” gender gap when you consider that John Kerry won women by only three points. It’s not hard to explain why women disappointed by Clinton’s loss are not lining up behind McCain. He’s hardly a feminist. In the Senate, he has a long record of opposing legal abortion, and now pledges to put more conservative judges on the Supreme Court and overturn Roe v. Wade. A decade ago, he had to apologize for “a crude sexual joke” involving Janet Reno, Hillary, and her daughter, Chelsea Clinton. When it looked last year as if Clinton would be the nominee, he didn’t so much as flinch when a supporter asked him, “How do we beat the bitch?” McCain seems to think Democratic women are “easy marks.” In reality, “most women can instantly identify any man who’s hitting on them for selfish ends.”