Let me finish tonight with this.
Men. Males. Guys. Whatever. What’s you guys’ problem with President Obama? I think it would be interesting to know. 60 percent of women in Wisconsin said they’d vote for Obama in November, compared to just 45 percent of men.
We can imagine why women are pro-Obama. He’s put the focus on health care. He’s been supportive of women’s rights, of equal pay, and other concerns where the Republican party has become suspect on these issues, that or forthrightly hostile.
Now about the men…
If you look at Obama’s foreign policy record, he’s been surprisingly tough. He’s carried out a smooth withdrawal from Iraq, begun a similar pull-out from Afghanistan. He’s gotten Bin Laden and, just this week, he got the new number two in al Qaeda.
So again, why the Obama problem with men?
The latest NBC-Wall Street Journal poll has his disapproval number at 50 percent and rising. That’s not good and it requires an explanation. And Obama’s losing among men to Romney 49 percent to 40 percent.
The reason is something Bill Clinton’s campaign hammered home in winning the White House: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
Men are particularly sensitive to humiliation. Being out of work is a humiliation. It carries an insult as well as an injury. You can argue that this shouldn’t be any worse than it is for a woman out of work, but there’s a lot of history at work here and it is. I think the President would be better off if he were standing now at the foot of Capitol Hill demanding a big jobs bill — big in promise, big in employment, big in pride — to rebuild this country the way President Eisenhower did back in the 50s. The trick is to do it now. A huge jobs bill that everyone understands, that rebuilds roads and fixes bridges and gets the trains moving fast — like in today’s Europe and Asia — would get the country moving again. It would also put a lot of men to work. Mr. President, a huge jobs bill the Republicans would have to say “yes” or “no” to — that’s the ticket. If they say “yes,” you’ve put five million people to work. If they say “no,” you can put them, the Republicans, out of work.
Chris Matthews Recommended
