How Racist Are The Yentas and Fressers? Enough To Cut Their Own Throats In Spite?

My friend's mother is in a KKK ladies' auxilliary floating mah jongg game in West Palm Beach. All the ladies are well-off "Democratic" yentas and fressers who moved down to Florida to escape either cold weather or bad family finances. Every one of them believes in women's right to choice-- fervently. When Constitutional scholar Dahlia Lithwick wrote at Slate a few days ago that McCain is betting the farm that women aren't paying attention, she was talking about the South Florida yentas. She may have joined the floating West Palm Beach mah jongg game for a couple of days for her research.

A poll released yesterday by Emily's List has Obama beating McCain by a 12-point margin among all registered female voters and by 30 points among registered female voters ages 18 to 27. A February Planned Parenthood poll of 1,205 women voters in 16 battleground states found that 49 percent of women who backed McCain did so despite being pro-choice, and 46 percent backing him also wanted Roe v. Wade to remain the law of the land. It's clear that once these voters find out McCain's real record on reproductive rights, they flee. The problem, as Sarah Blustain points out in this great piece, is that voters don't seem to be finding out.

McCain needs these pro-choice women, but every time he tries to reach out to them, he gets smacked upside the head by his base. When he floated the notion of naming a pro-choice vice president last week-- either former Pennsylvania Gov. and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge or Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman-- Rush Limbaugh snarled that "if the McCain camp does that, they will have effectively destroyed the Republican Party and put the conservative movement in the bleachers." Limbaugh also pledged that tapping Lieberman or Ridge would "ensure [McCain's] defeat." So McCain needs to keep his base happy-- and the rest of us in the dark.

McCain is hoping he can persuade low-info yentas-- who, of course, are positive without a second thought that they know everything-- that because the mass media and their hero Joe Lieberman have brainwashed them into thinking he's a "maverick," his abortion views are somehow centrist rather than radical right. "Don't believe what I say. Believe what you used to believe before I opened my mouth" sounds pretty good in West Palm. Despite knowing everything, from who is the biggest doctor to who is the biggest lawyer, they are a hefty part of the 56% of voters who don't actually know where McCain stands on Choice, even though at last weekend's Saddleback carnival McCain-- following through on his explicit promise to pander-- McCain said, "I will be a pro-life president, and this presidency will have pro-life policies."

So much of the abortion debate involves treating women like children. It was bad enough when Justice Anthony Kennedy told women last year that we are too unstable to be trusted with decisions about what to do with our own bodies. It is an outrage that physicians in South Dakota are being instructed to lie to us for our own good. But we have a candidate for president who is actually telling women the truth: He wants to do away with our right to choose in all but the most dramatic of circumstances. He won't change his party platform to protect rape victims. This issue will be a defining factor in his selections for the Supreme Court.

The battle for Choice is old for these old matrons though. None of them are likely to be touched that way by a man again. They're bitter and some them would rather get some attention by carping that Hillary Clinton didn't get properly vetted-- as though her public life wasn't all the vetting she needed-- than stick to dimly remembered principles that once burned their bras for.

And then there's the racism. Sure, all the mah jongg-playing yentas and fressers admire the safely departed Martin Luther King and they all "believe" in equal rights-- but every single one of them is a hideous unreconstructed racist down to her dark, dark soul. My friend actually told me some of his mother's best friends... and that she "helps them." Yesterday Jacob Weisberg's column emphasized that the only way McCain can win is if racism triumphs over rational thought.

What with the Bush legacy of reckless war and economic mismanagement, 2008 is a year that favors the generic Democratic candidate over the generic Republican one. Yet Barack Obama, with every natural and structural advantage in the presidential race, is running only neck-and-neck against John McCain, a sub-par Republican nominee with a list of liabilities longer than a Joe Biden monologue. Obama has built a crack political operation, raised record sums, and inspired millions with his eloquence and vision. McCain has struggled with a fractious campaign team, lacks clarity and discipline, and remains a stranger to charisma. Yet at the moment, the two of them appear to be tied. What gives?

If it makes you feel better, you can rationalize Obama's missing 10-point lead on the basis of Clintonite sulkiness, his slowness in responding to attacks, or the concern that Obama may be too handsome, brilliant, and cool to be elected. But let's be honest: If you break the numbers down, the reason Obama isn't ahead right now is that he trails badly among one group, older white voters. He does so for a simple reason: the color of his skin.

Hillary may well be the excuse for the yentas and fressers but racism is the reason some will stay away from the polls and the most clueless of them may actually go vote for McCain. And the McCain campaign is certainly playing up the racists' desperate search for an excuse to not vote for Hillary without having to look themselves in the mirror and see how very very very ugly they are... regardless of the nips and tucks and all that dieting.

A new television ad by Sen. John McCain aims to tap into anger at Sen. Barack Obama among the legions of Hillary Clinton supporters by suggesting that the Democratic nominee dissed his one-time rival.

Erasing any doubt that McCain has his sights set on Clinton voters, the new ad uses Clinton's own words to suggest that Obama passed her over because of the tough campaign she waged. The ad is titled "Passed Over."

"She won millions of votes. But isn't on his ticket," an announcer says. "Why? For speaking the truth."

The idea is to portray Obama as a petulant and angry rival who refused to consider Clinton as a running mate because of his anger over her comments. And to tap into Clinton supporters who just might vote for McCain.

Clinton spokesperson Kathleen Strand wasn't buying it. "Hillary Clinton's support of Barack Obama is pretty clear," she said in an e-mail. "She has said repeatedly that Barack Obama and she share a commitment to changing the direction of the country, getting us out of Iraq, and expanding access to health care. John McCain doesn't. It's interesting how those remarks didn't make it into his ad."

Of course, it isn't only little old Jewish ladies in South Florida was are bitter and clueless. There are corrupt, reactionary governors who are as well. From the time I was in high school I have a vague recollection of a teacher telling us that finally, that year, as many women voted as men. By 2004, 54% of voters were women. Nearly 60% of the voters in Democratic primaries this year were women. Obama is winning women voters overwhelminingly. Women want exactly what he's running on. Even in Florida, where Biden is supposedly going to sooth things over with the disgruntled Hillary Brigade. And then there are the yentas and fressers. Call bubbie and talk some sense into her. Show her the nice YouTube and bring her back to The Light: