McCain attempts to woo women voters with record of anti-women voting

It’s impossible not to hear stories in the last few days about Hillary Clinton’s "disaffected" women voters. In fact, the biggest drum beat to come out of Clinton’s concession speech is that the loss gives what the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune call a "real opening" for John McCain to "win over"  many of Clinton’s female voters.

What most news outlets fail to mention, however, is that realistically that opening is more like a tiny fissure filled with spin and propaganda from a senator who has a consistently negative voting record on women’s issues.

Just this past April McCain incited women voters when he spoke out against the pay-discrimination measure, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.  The measure would’ve given victims of pay discrimination more freedom to pursue justice in court.

McCain’s solution instead to rampant pay disparities (women still make 77 cents to the dollar that men do) is that women simply "need education and training." It’s an ironic remedy considering that men are less likely than women to get a college education and that women have outnumbered men on college campuses for more than 25 years.

But McCain’s dismal voting record on women’s issues doesn’t end with his failing to show up for the Lebetter measure and publicly renouncing it: McCain has voted to suspend the Family and Medical Leave Act unless the federal government either certified that compliance would not increase costs for business or provided financial assistance to businesses to cover any costs associated with implementing the law.

McCain also has a consistently negative record on women’s health issues: He opposed Title X, which provides low-income women with important health care rights like access to screenings for cervical and breast cancer. He opposed legislation that would require insurance cover birth control. He supports overturning Roe V. Wade. He opposes comprehensive sex education.

And of course there’s the whole issue about how he treats his own wife.

And the media is calling this an opening? It looks more like a black hole only the greatest spin doctors can pull McCain out of. That, or a gaping hole the media covering this "opening" would be wise to not continue to ignore.