Narrative fail

President Obama was leading in the battle for women’s votes, by a double-digit margin, not very long ago. But he couldn’t keep that lead after the debates. But he kept trying to pull the “war on women” bullshit.

Then suddenly, a couple of weeks ago, Obama’s edge with women began to melt away. More than any other group, women have accounted for Romney’s surge in the polls, which has now given him a slim lead in the national popular vote and in some calculations of the electoral college. Women, it appeared, were not as firmly ensconced in Obama’s camp as they had seemed. Indeed, they were abandoning the president en masse.

The evidence that Obama finds himself bleeding women’s votes can be seen in how aggressively his campaign has sought to steer the conversation back to women’s issues. Campaigning a few miles from here on Friday, Obama stood at a podium flanked by “Women’s Health Security” banners; he was introduced by Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, and spoke against a backdrop of risers filled exclusively with women, holding turquoise “FORWARD.” signs.

But women, it seems, are a lot smarter than the Obama campaign gives them credit for. The top issue facing all voters is the economy. To coin a phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Women’s issues? Only abortion shows up on the by-gender chart, and it’s in last place, with only one percent of women caring about it. The top two issues? The economy and unemployment, making up 64% of women voters most important issues.

Well, the latest AP poll out today has now show that Obama no longer has any advantage with women voters. The gender gap, she is gone.

Less than two weeks out from Election Day, Republican Mitt Romney has erased President Barack Obama’s 16-point advantage among women, a new Associated Press-GfK poll shows. And the president, in turn, has largely eliminated Romney’s edge among men.

Those churning gender dynamics leave the presidential race still a virtual dead heat, with Romney favored by 47 percent of likely voters and Obama by 45 percent, a result within the poll’s margin of sampling error, the survey shows.

Think it’ll stop the stupid “war on women” meme? Yeah, neither do I. But at least CNN pulled this abysmally stupid “study” claiming that women who are ovulating tend to vote for liberals.

You know what else is gone? My Facebook friendship with a liberal, who defriended me after I posted the top two links in this post. That’s the second liberal who has unfriended me on FB for my political views. They call themselves tolerant, and yet they show they are anything but.

However–I have another very liberal FB friend with whom I just had a knock-down, drag-out fight about Mitt Romney vs. Obama. We’re still friends. He says he’s used to it, because his family are all Reagan Republicans, and he’s the black sheep. Maybe we can still convert him. But it’s good to know that he’s not going anywhere. The other guys? Well, if they’re so easily offended, we weren’t really friends, were we? FB friendship is no substitute for the real thing. FB is really just a big BBS, when all is said and done.