Does he really love ya, baby? McCain voted against raising minimum wage 19 times!

Wow.  Doesn't that just make your mouth fall open?  Can you imagine claiming to care about our most modest and vulnerable Americans when you have a track record of voting AGAINST raising the minimum wage nineteen times?  I guess you have to be married to a multi-million dollar heiress and own 13 houses and as many cars to think you will get away with it.  Or you have deluded yourself into thinking that what you were forced to endure 40 years ago makes us owe you more than we owe the other POWs who served just as honorably.  But then again, you have either voted against or not voted on bills granting better Veterans' benefits, even though you later claimed credit for the last bill passing. 

So Senator McCain... I am confused.   You don't support Veterans, but say you do.  You don't support low-income workers, but say you do, and certainly your record on supporting the economic and civils rights of women is poor and neo-conservative.  Of course, I am just ranting, so let me offer some statistics for McCain supporters to contemplate.  We welcome you over to our side -- if you think your enlightened self-interest will be better served by a candidate who actually cares about single moms, married moms, elderly moms and women and children in general. 

Senator John McCain can be expected to do for women what he has done in the past, or as my mother used to say, "You can never trust a man's words.  Look at his actions." 

The link below is to Professor Rachel Maddow's new show on MSNBC, and here is a transcript that sums up McCain's concerns (or lack thereof) about women much better than I could.  The bold emphasis is mine:

 

MADDOW:  Thank you.  Thank you very much.

Do you think that the long-term political effect of this economic crisis that we're in right now will be to get voters focused on basic "bread and butter" economic issues like the ones I've just described?

SCHAKOWSKY:  I do think that it's crowded out more of the ridiculous issues that they've been focusing on, you know, the kind of gotcha campaigns.  And now, I think the American people understand that this is really serious and that we're focusing on the really important issues and that we need someone like Barack Obama who will get serious, who understands the nuances, who is thoughtful.  So, I'm hoping now that we're kind of done with the trivia.

MADDOW:  I kind of feel like the 19 votes against the minimum wage, the votes against kids health insurance, the votes against fully funding Head Start, I don't fell like that stuff is widely known about John McCain.  And when we talk about the affect of the economy on the electorate, we're so often talking about women voters.  I feel like those issues in particular, those votes I just described would be of a lot of interest to women voters.

Do you think that the Obama campaign needs to do a better job getting that record out there?

SCHAKOWSKY:  Well, actually, we are on a main offensive to make sure that we go out and talk to women.  Women like myself have been going around the country and meeting with women's groups.  We even have soap opera stars that are going out with us as well and talking to women who may be watching the soaps.

But we're also focusing, for example, on older women.  There were two rallies that Barack had in Florida this week talking about what the danger of privatizing Social Security would be.

John McCain has voted for privatizing Social Security.  That means investing some of it in the stock market, for heaven's sake.  You can imagine what kind of insecurity we'd have; we turn a guarantee of Social Security into a gamble if it were invested in the stock market.  And so, we think that older women ought to know about that.

Women should know about the votes against child care, against after school programs, against special education programs, the child's health insurance program.  You know, for less than we spend for a month in Iraq, we could have insured 10 million more American children with health insurance and he voted against that.  And so, yes, we're definitely going to get this message out.

MADDOW:  It feels like these are the specific details, what you have just described, those are the specific details of political analysis that we need to understand in order to make concrete the one thing that everybody understands about the campaign right now, which is that when you talk about the economy, Barack Obama benefits.

SCHAKOWSKY:  Yes.

MADDOW:  And, frankly, to be honest, any generic Democrat would benefit because Americans tend to trust Democrats on the economy more than Republicans.  It seems like the way it may translate in very brass tax term is the votes of seniors who are worried about economic insecurity, and the votes of women who are worried about pocketbook at home issues.

SCHAKOWSKY:  Well, let me say one very important one.  John McCain in this 21^st century is against equal pay for equal work, and even said that the explanation for the wage gap, 77 cents for women to $1 for men is that women need more education and training.  I mean, how patronizing can one get?  We know that women are qualified to get exactly what men get for the same job.

MADDOW:  Maybe with more education, we could understand why it is that women make 77 cents for every dollar that men make.

Last question to you on this same issue and that is the choice of Sarah Palin as vice president.  Certainly, as a woman, it is exciting to me to see a woman who could be that close to the presidency.  I'd like to see a woman in the west wing, seeing a woman in the east wing is the next best thing.

How do you think that the choice of Sarah Palin ultimately is going to boil down in terms of women voters, given the policy challenges that their ticket has on issues that women care about?

SCHAKOWSKY:  Exactly.  When we look at Sarah Palin's positions on women's issues, the thing that women care about, she is not with us on any one of those.  She exactly mirrors John McCain except in those instances where she's even more extreme.  On women's reproductive rights, she is not for allowing women to make a choice for themselves, even in a case of rape or incest.  Sarah Palin supports John McCain in his opposition to equal pay for equal work and so women cannot be looking to Sarah Palin for a rescue, that's for sure.

MADDOW:  Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois, thank you for taking some time to talk with us tonight.  Appreciate it.

SCHAKOWSKY:  Thank you.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26870564/

Please pass this on to undecided women voters.  It will give them something to think about and perhaps they will realize that Old Man McSame is not our guy.  He thinks we are 'under-educated' and 'under-qualified' and that explains the wage gap.  If you believe that load, I've got some swamp land in the Northwest I'd like to sell you.

UPDATE:  After I posted this article, McCain tried to squiggle out of the first debate with Obama on Friday night... obviously noting his slip in the polls and anticipating the ridicule he would endure under Senator Obama's fine debating skills and actual solutions to the problems we have now.  The American people deserve to hear what he and his running mate have to say.  It is an insult to all of us that they think they can put up dirty ads, spread lies and deceptions through emails and phony polls and still think they can win in November.  Judgment?  He has none.