Looking at McCain

As the Democratic presidential candidates continue their war of attrition, John McCain has remained largely beneath the radar. Two recent news articles, however, have reminded me why I would not consider voting for him.


Newsweek cites a recent Planned Parenthood study that indicates "23 percent of McCain's female, pro-choice supporters mistakenly believe he shares their views on abortion. An additional half of the respondents said they did not know enough to describe his position." Planned Parenthood is trying to remind people that McCain has a long history of supporting the criminalization of abortion and would like to overturn Roe v. Wade. (You can read some direct quotes here.)


A few days ago in Slate, Dahlia Lithwick took McCain to task for his refusal to support a bill that would have overturned a recent Supreme Court ruling that narrowly limited women's right to sue for sex-based pay discrimination. (In Ledbetter v. Goodyear, the Supreme Court held that women could only bring suit 180 days or less from the first instance of discrimination--even if it took them longer than that to discover that discrimination had occurred.) Lithwick looks at the various justifications offered by Senate Republicans for not supporting the bill; McCain said that women can solve the pay gap by getting better education and training. Lithwick says, "all that is code for the obtuse claim that the fact that women earn 77 cents on the dollar for the same work as men will somehow be fixed by more training for women as opposed to less discrimination by men. Wow." McCain just doesn't get it.