The Political Voices of Women

Should BlogHer Interview The Presidential Candidates? TAKE THE BLOGHER SURVEY

BlogHer’s Election 2008 coverage was created in response to the terrific enthusiasm this community demonstrated while developing our non-partisan 2008 Voter Manifesto, twelve policy questions American women have about health care, Iraq, the economy and the environment.

Frankly, however, our political team is confused by the response of presidential candidates to BlogHer, and to some other organizations and blogs by women. For the past six months, BlogHer has invited seven leading presidential candidates — Democratic and Republican, we’re non-partisan — to participate with BlogHer’s influential, passionate community of now 7.6 million techno-savvy women, who write and read thousands of influential blogs. While our editors, Morra Aarons-Mele and Mary Katharine Ham have made in-roads with the campaigns and we do have another year until Election Day, at this point we’ve been told no, both in words and in actions, as have some other women’s blogs and political groups.

And there’s more — what really confuses us is that:

Instead of the presidential candidates, BlogHer has been offered an opportunity to interview two candidate spouses, Ann Romney and Michelle Obama (more in our action timeline below) Just this week, two presidential campaigns (Senators Clinton and Obama) started marketing new Web sites devoted exclusively to women, even specifically to moms. These are the very women who populate BlogHer’s conferences, visit our sites and write the blogs in our ad network. In fact, if they’re trying to reach moms, the majority of BlogHer’s 1,100 BlogHer Ad Network members are mothers, and most blog about that parenting experience! (More detail, including their recruiting letters to women and moms in our action timeline below.)

So our question is, do we want to be marketed to by presidential campaigns or spoken with? And by whom? We think that if they want to get our votes, candidates themselves should answer our questions in the Voter Manifesto. But only if that’s the course this community supports. So — could you please lead us in the right direction by answering these questions and asking your readers to help us too by posting this poll on your blog? We’ll take all our votes and our voices on this poll right to the presidential campaigns.

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Let your voice be heard and Take the BlogHer Survey

Also Read:  Writes Like She Talks

This is from a post at MOMocrats.

Sunday I had the privilege of talking with Elizabeth Edwards about homeschooling and education in the U.S. I was curious if their experience homeschooling their young children, Jack and Emma Claire, had shaped their views on education and had any impact on John’s education proposals. Here’s what Elizabeth had to say:

Is homeschooling your youngest children, Jack and Emma Claire, something you had contemplated before the campaign began?

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Pundit Mom is at Huffington Post today.  WAY TO GO Pundit Mom! 

Every Woman Counts is a campaign sponsored by the Lifetime Network that is supposedly geared toward increasing the participation of women in the political process, encouraging more women to vote and to increase the national spotlight on issues that are important to women.

I’m certainly all for any organized effort to get women’s voices heard above the din of political shouting, but I’m not sure the recent Lifetime Every Woman Counts poll is really getting us down that road.

Recent questions included:

1. Which candidate would you rather receive a gift from?

2. Which candidate would you be most comfortable leaving your children with?

3. Which candidate would you most like to have dinner with over the holiday season?

What the … ???

If Lifetime was really committed to making sure that every woman’s vote counts, why are they spending money to have a poll taken on these silly questions?

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This is an interesting opinion piece from The Hill Chronicles.

The political pundits are becoming redundant and personally I find their political correctness sick, just sick. Fred Thompson is such an [A]ctor that it oozes out of his pores every time the light shines on him. John McCain just gets under ones nerves with his brand of politics and loose use of the term “war” every other word.

Sorry – I feel for the man having been a POW and God bless McCain for his service to our nation – but that dear readers makes him no more of an expert than anyone of us. And believe me some of us are more of an expert on the war than McCain.

We are all hearing about Ron Paul’s making money for the campaign that he calls “running for president,” yeah right. Well Ronnie boy can keep his brand of politics in a bag where it belonged from the start. I cannot believe anyone would take that man anymore seriously than Freddie boy. What politcal hell we can look forward to.

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This is from a post by the Pundit Mom. 

I suppose it’s no big surprise that as we count down the days to the Iowa Caucus, all forms of campaigning are heating up — including underhanded suggestions and insinuations.
According to The Politico, somebody’s pollster is asking potential Iowa caucus-goers whether John Edwards’ failure to drop out of the Presidential race to take care of his “ailing wife” could damage his campaign.

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This is from a post at Pundit Mom.

Today, the Edwards campaign is announcing his plan to address these, and other problems that are common for American families, and he’s bound to get kudos from many and critiques from others.

Called the “Promise to American Women,” Elizabeth is hitting the campaign trail in Iowa to talk about her husband’s very detailed plan that calls for:

1. Universal paid family leave,

2. Expanding the job protection aspect of the FMLA,

3. Universal preschool for four-year-old children,

4. Guaranteed paid sick days,

5. Affordable, high-quality child care, and

6. Cracking down on employer misqualification of workers by making sure that employees who should be getting benefits are not being wrongly classified as independent contractors.

It’s bold in its comprehensiveness and I’m sure the attacks will be starting … right … about … now on how we’re going to pay for it.

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I found this at Georgia Women Vote. It’s a link to an interactive web page, that allows you to compare the positions of presidential candidates on the issue of poverty. You should definitely check this one out.

If you live in Georgia, where 91 of our 159 counties are in “a state of persistent poverty”, then you care about where the presidential candidates (of both parties) stand on this key issue. The Annie Casey Foundation has an interactive web page up that allows you to compare and contrast the candidates positions on this key issue.

READ MORE

*I would also suggest you check out ExpertVoter.org – another great way to find out where the candidates stand on the issues (through videos).

This is a very interesting post, from my friend the Pundit Mom. She is actually writing about something I have been thinking about for some time. Both my mother and I, really like what John Edwards stands for, and would like to vote for him…but the MSM is telling us that he has no chance to winning.  So…what’s a girl to do?

I don’t want this to sound all ‘ladies of leisure who lunch,’ but I attended a semi-regular neighborhood coffee get-together the other week with a variety of mothers who are: (1) stay-at-home moms; (2) work-from-home moms; and (3) flex-time moms.

Lawyers, architects, environmental activists, and teachers who have plenty of opinions on just about every topic under the sun.

Including politics.

. . .

Two of the women were talking with me about their concerns about whether Hillary Clinton, ultimately, can be elected, but seemed a tad sheepish in saying that. Then that led to wondering about Obama’s viability.

At that point, I mentioned I was supporting John Edwards.

These women, whose faces were a bit tense before as they seemed to be walking on eggshells, fearful of being critical of the candidacy of the first viable woman presidential candidate, both visibly relaxed and chimed in that they, too, were very interested in John Edwards as a candidate and one they would definitely like to support — if only he had a chance, they said.

Which made me wonder — how many more of these under-the-radar Edwards supporters are out there?

READ PUNDIT MOM’S FULL POST HERE

This is a post from MOMocrats, about a conference call they had with Elizabeth Edwards. 

Last month, several of the MOMocrats had the opportunity to meet with Elizabeth Edwards and to participate via conference call in a discussion regarding many important issues facing this nation.  We discussed health care, education, Iraq, and many other issues.  But one comment Ms. Edwards made in particular has stuck with me.  She said:

John talks often about his biography.  About how it is that he came from nothing.   John’s policies are about the ladder that people used to climb up to the American dream.  A lot of those rungs are broken.

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