| | Maddow guest: Clinton voters 'scared straight' by Palin into backing Obama
 It's been common wisdom that John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as a running-mate was intended to cut into Barack Obama's lead among female voters. However, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow finds this expectation laughable.
"Palin the game-changer," Maddow mocked in introducing a segment on Palin and women voters. "The Palin Effect. Palin knocks Obama on his keister. ... Interesting story-line -- if by 'interesting' you mean 'not at all true.'"
Maddow cited a new poll showing that after briefly falling behind, Obama has now leaped to a lead over McCain of 54% to 38% among women voters. Even among white women, Obama is up by two points, whereas before the Palin selection it was McCain who led by seven.
"The numbers say that, if anything, Sarah Palin has made the McCain ticket less popular among women, not more popular," Maddow concluded.
Maddow apologized for having failed to get any McCain supporters or prominent Republican women to appear on the program to discuss Palin and women's issues. She then introduced Melinda Henneberger. author of If They Only Listened to Us: What Women Voters Want Politicians to Hear.
"If these numbers hold," Henneberger began, "what's astonishing here is that Obama will end up doing better with women than Bill Clinton did." She indicated that a lot of women "like" Sarah Palin "but that doesn't translate into votes."
Maddow noted that even with Palin on the ticket, McCain is doing worse with women than George Bush did in 2004. "The thing that ought to be being commented upon is McCain's problem with women, not Obama's problem," she suggested.
Henneberger emphasized that there was never any real chance of Palin helping pull in disaffected Clinton supporters, because "those voters had largely come home even before the Palin pick. ... Even the stragglers have sort of been scared straight by this point."
Henneberger concluded by saying she believes that women voters are influenced more by general concerns than by what are considered women's issues. "I think a lot of that bounce among women was on the economy," she stated. "I think that really benefitted the Obama ticket."
This video is from MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast September 18, 2008.
Download video via RawReplay.com
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