Women's Rights & Wrongs in the 2008 Election

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner polling for NARAL Pro-Choice America of 1,788 likely November voters (1,000 representative likely voters plus oversamples of 424 likely-voting Republican women and 364 likely-voting Independent women) shows that (among other things) many women have no idea of John McCain's hard-line on women's rights and that when they learn how anti-choice he is they are much more likely to vote for Obama.

The poll was done in the battleground states of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin. With McCain's record on abortion exposed, "Obama gains 6 points overall, with his lead in [these] battleground states expanding from a net 2 points (47-45 percent) to a net 13 points (53-40 percent)."

This will be called "push-polling," especially by people who don't like the results. But the bad push-polling we've all heard about is the kind wherein the poller asks the person answering the phone, "If you knew that John McCain fathered a black child, would you be more or less likely to vote for him?" That was used against McCain in South Carolina by George W. Bush in 2000. At least this poll presented correct information about McCain's consistent position on abortion.

This comes out on the same day that Cindy McCain decides to make a big issue out of Michelle Obama's patriotism. We have a lot of questions about Cindy McCain too, even more since she decided to put her own sterling character in the scales next to Michelle Obama.

What do you suppose Cindy McCain would say -- or do -- if some government flunky told her that her pregnant-out-of-marriage teenage daughter could not have an abortion. She'd do what rich, determined, privileged women always did. While still maintaining the unmitigated snootiness to question other people's patriotism.