The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

Kerry Did Read the Wish List, But Where Was the Love?

Ouch. I think I just got my hair pulled. Guess it wasn't so memorable, but here is Kerry on the wage gap, which he spoke about on many occasions. Here he is on his plan to subsidize day care, which he tried to make a big deal of, though the press mostly ignored it. Both Kerry and his wife spoke about early childhood education every time I ever traveled with them—though much of the resulting attention, as here, seemed to focus on how we just couldn't afford such programs. Here he is being congratulated for reaching out to women "not only about abortion but in the questions of gender discrimination in the workplace over pay and family-related flexibility, and also the minimum wage, which affects the pay of more than 9 million women.'' And here he is on choice, which he talked about plenty. If Hillary has been more subdued on the subject of abortion rights, maybe it's because she agreed with what Kerry said after the '04 election—about how his party's determination to make pro-lifers feel like pariahs may have hurt him at the polls. According to USA Today, "In a meeting with liberal organizers after losing the presidential election in 2004, John Kerry infuriated some party stalwarts when he said the approach to abortion needed to change. He said Democrats should do more to welcome candidates and voters who say they're pro-life and to make it clear that being 'pro-choice' didn't mean being 'pro-abortion.' A survey in February by Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg concluded that the abortion issue was a significant factor in Kerry's loss of white Catholic voters, a key group that sometimes votes for Republicans, sometimes for Democrats. President Clinton carried white Catholics by 7 percentage points in 1996; Kerry lost them by 13 points.''