Lefty Women
Caught the tail end of a story on CBS news tonight about single women voters, and paused before clicking away. Story was borderline cute (about voter registration efforts out of beauty salons, handing out nail files, etc. -- actually not a bad idea) but the numbers, if true, are a big wow:

22 million single women who were eligible to vote in the last election didn't do so.

This is a vast, untapped pool of voting, and not just voting, but LEFTY, LIBERAL, KERRY/EDWARDS voting:

According to a CBS POLL (no specifics given in typical TV style):

55 percent support Kerry/Edwards while 32 percent support Bush (which leaves also a lovely pool of 13 percent other/ undecideds/ don't care/ I'm a goth/ shut the f*** up responses).

62 percent say the country is heading in the wrong direction, while 28 percent disagree.

Oddly enough, according to the report (online link here, no transcript), married women tend to lean a little Bushish, which surprises me, considering he's throwing their husbands out of work, impoverishing and un-educating their children, and in general ruining their lives.

Oh, but he's keeping them safe from Osama. That's right, Bush is personally hunting for Osama every day he's not heroically serving at the front in Iraq.

Maybe marriage does make you stupid, as a divorced friend has always claimed. Though perhaps not as stupid as those 22 million single women who don't vote.

So friends, knitters, artists, gentle readers all -- if you know of young single women who haven't voted, or aren't voting -- make sure they get registered, understand how and where to vote (many get embarrassed they don't know stuff like this), guide their opinions accordingly, and help them get to the polls, or vote by absentee ballot, if their lives are just too chaotic to leave the house during the day (check state laws for specifics).

One of the odd things I remember from hearing Bush's speech was that people in the RNC didn't know whether to applaud when Bush said, "...one of the most dramatic shifts our society has seen, two-thirds of all moms also work outside the home." The official transcript includes an "(applause)" at the end, but I remember it as sporadic and embarrassed, as though they were contemplating booing the line, because the RNC would really rather we stayed home with the kids, didn't use contraception or have abortions, or take jobs away from men who need them (because there aren't enough to go around), and would just shut the f*** up about day care, medicare, education, equal pay, and other girly issues.

- posted by Cynthia @ 9:48 PM | | | Link |