Posted: Thursday, 14 August 2008 11:45AM
Fiorina's Looking For A Few Good Women
Steve Corbett Reporting
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Watch out, Barack Obama.
John McCain’s “Straight Talk Express” is scheduled to roll through Northeastern Pennsylvania Monday.
And McCain’s point woman is looking to take out some of Obama’s already lukewarm support, particularly in Scranton, where Hillary Rodham Clinton will always be viewed as family.
Carly Fiorina is what some political observers call the new face of the McCain campaign.
The former Hewlett-Packard chief executive is sharp, personable and aggressive. The aggressive part is what should trouble the Obama camp.
And she’s going to be on that big traveling show bus that recently dropped McCain himself at a July town hall meeting in Wilkes-Barre. Back then, the McCain campaign was still trying to figure out their coal region strategy.
Sending Fiorina into the heart of Clinton Country is a masterful stroke.
Once considered the most powerful businesswoman in the United States, according to a June Rueters story, Fiorina is an “attack dog on a range of subjects from women’s issues to the Iraq war.”
The women’s issues part of the story is what should trouble the Obama camp because few strong women in Luzerne and Lackawanna counties are backing Obama. And those who are seem more interested in their own political futures than in what a source close to the McCain campaign calls the struggle for “the heart and soul of the Democratic Party.”
How can voting for McCain win one for the future of the Democratic Party?
A Republican victory in November will show Democratic Party bosses ranging from Howard Dean to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley that the women who struggled and sacrificed for their party in years past are finally fed up with being used and abused so that mostly men can succeed.
Many former Hillary supporters will vote McCain in November and then head to the barricades to battle the GOP in 2012, assuming Hillary runs again. If she doesn’t, they might again vote Republican while remaining Democrats – fighting harder than ever to hold accountable timid Congressional members of their own party who play both sides of the aisle for their own benefit.
In office or out, one day women will rule the national political scene.
That moment’s getting closer every day.
Fiorina poses a massive threat to Obama. His campaign has even singled her out for criticism by name. But this is one woman who will not back down from Barack - or Michelle - Obama.
The bus is scheduled to stop at the Scranton Radisson so Fiorina can address the Rotary Club – a nice homey touch to introduce her to a middle-class service club with a commendable history of community commitment.
Then it’s off to Wilkes-Barre for a private discussion that will likely make the front page of the Times Leader.
Then the bus will head north once again with a stop at WILK News Radio and an appearance by Farina on “Corbett” sometime after 3 p.m.
Fiorina will head back to Scranton for another private meeting – this one reportedly with a squadron of Hillary Clinton supporters who are interested in hearing what Fiorina has to say.
Then it’s off to a public gathering at the Ramada in Clarks Summit.
This will be a big day for the McCain campaign.
It shows McCain means business and is targeting Democrats and independent voters in a region where he will likely do well as long as he shows voters here that they matter.
That’s the secret to winning hearts and minds in hard coal country. Working-class Democratic voters need encouragement that it’s OK to vote Republican. Blue collar voters – when they’re not being busy clinging to their guns and their church and being bitter, according to Obama – need to know that they matter.
McCain knows they matter.
As a Vietnam veteran, he knows that war was loaded with men and women from such backgrounds. The Wall in Washington, D.C. also is loaded with their names. So are the voter rolls in this sacred region where work, family, and aging are respected by people who deserve to be treated better by politicians.
Most of these people are Democrats.
Many of them are open to voting Republican, as they did when Ronald Reagan reached out.
Fiorina is now reaching out on McCain’s behalf - particularly to Democratic and independent women.
Fighting her way to the top after working secretarial positions as a “Kelly Girl” in a temp agency, she knows what it’s like to break through the glass ceiling in the workplace, to take heat from bossy men for every business decision she made as a strong, independent woman.
The women of Northeastern Pennsylvania work in factories, diners, at home, at schools and elsewhere shaping the future for themselves and others every day.
Their time is long overdue.
If Fiorina’s looking for a few good women who vote, there’s no better place than here to find them.
|
Corbett
E-Mail
Print
