Rachel Maddow Sees 'Palin Effect' for What it Is: Bullsh*t

Posted by Tana Ganeva, AlterNet at 3:00 AM on September 20, 2008.

On her show last night Rachel Maddow took an uncommon approach to the issue of women voters in the 2008 election. Instead of hysterically ranting about crazed 'Hillraisers', or condescendingly pontificating about the confused, female multitudes so awestruck by Palin's vagina they would vote against their own interests, Maddow looked at some actual polls.

Based on the numbers, Maddow concluded that the "Palin effect" -- the idea that Palin's addition to the Republican ticket was a stroke of genius that would pull women, en masse, away from Democrats -- is " ... an interesting storyline ... If by interesting, you mean not at all true."

Maddow found that picking Palin did not make McCain more popular with female voters. In fact, "Obama leads McCain by 16 points among women." Among white women, Palin's addition to the ticket has resulted in a drop in support for McCain, with Obama leading by 2 points.

Concluded Maddow, in faux disbelief: "Might it be that women care less about a candidate's gender, and more about a candidate's position on the issues?"

No one from the McCain campaign was available to comment on why a candidate picked to appeal to women is chasing them away from the Republican ticket. (perhaps they were busy explaining to McCain that the Spanish-American war ended a really, really, really long time ago?)

Instead, Maddow interviewed Melinda Henneberger, author of If They Only Listened to Us: What Women Voters Want Politicians to Hear.

Henneberger pointed out that Obama may do even better with women voters than Bill Clinton. "So the idea Obama has a problem with women .... is just not borne out by any of the facts."

Henneberger added that "A lot of women like Sarah Palin and are excited ... to have conservative women get their own version of Hillary Clinton ... but that doesn't translate into votes".

Even more striking, the McCain/Palin ticket is doing worse with female voters than ... George W. Bush has in previous elections.

Henneberger goes on to say, "I don't think she's winning over those swing voters and definitely not those Hillary voters."

Maddow makes the point that the economic crisis may further shore up women's support for Obama. Across the board women (especially single women) suffer more in times of economic crisis, which is part of the reason they tend to skew progressive.

Maddow concludes that the idea that just this once, women will overwhelmingly vote Republican just because of Palin, is "Not translating across the board .. blowing up the common wisdom here.'

Raw story has the clip:

Download video via RawReplay.com

Tagged as: obama, mccain, maddow, women voters, palin