10/21/2010

What would happen if Republicans explicitly appealed to Men or whites?

Obama has previously made open appeals to minorities to vote for him because they are minorities. The strategy is now to explicitly appeal to women. Why doesn't this turn off women voters?

In a last-ditch effort to prevent electoral disaster, President Barack Obama and Democratic allies are vigorously wooing women voters, whose usually reliable support appears to have softened.
From blunt TV ads to friendlier backyard chats, they're straining to persuade women that it's the Democrats who are on their side and it's in women's vital interest to turn out and vote in the Nov. 2 elections that could give Republicans control of one or both houses of Congress.
In Seattle on Thursday, Obama told local women and others that "how well women do will help determine how well our families are doing as a whole." Accompanied by women who own businesses, he spoke in a family's backyard about the economy's effects on women and outlined ways he said his policies have helped them.
Later, trying to rekindle the enthusiasm of his presidential race, he all but ordered thousands of cheering supporters at a packed University of Washington arena to get out and vote, even though he's not on the ballot. Hoarsely shouting over the applause, he said, "If everybody that voted in 2008 shows up in 2010, we will win this election. We will win this election. But you've got to come out and vote." . . .
The latest Associated Press-GfK poll underscores the Democrats' concern: Women long have leaned toward Democrats but, at a time of great economic unrest, those who are likely to vote now split fairly evenly between the two parties, 49 percent favoring Democrats, 45 percent Republicans. That's a significant drop from 2006 when Democrats had a double-digit edge. The current margin mirrors 1994, the year of a Republican wave that swept Congress. . . .


See also this:

Yet despite 22 months of such gender-specific policy moves – and a recent push to energize disenchanted women voters — Obama has steadily lost ground with women, the Democratic Party’s biggest constituency.

Their lack of enthusiasm has imperiled a crop of 2010 Congressional candidates, complicated Obama’s own path to victory in 2012 – and resulted in the president making the kind of explicit, 11th hour appeal to women voters that he made here Thursday. . . . .

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