At the BlogHer '08 Conference in San Francisco this past weekend, Democratic Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz of Pennsylvania and RNC Director of Online Communications Liz Mair met with conference attendees in a special session titled Who Better Serves Women Like You: Obama or McCain?
Several of the MOMocrats were in attendance, and our own Donna aka Socal Mom liveblogged the panel here. BlogHer blogger Katy Chen shot this video of the opening statements:
It was a lively session; the speakers were approachable and informed, and I appreciated the campaigns' willingness to send upper-level spokeswomen to speak with women bloggers (even if I think it would have been much more effective and impressive had the candidates found time to attend themselves).
Both Congresswoman Schwartz and Ms. Mair made a point of reaching out to any disaffected, undecided Hillary Clinton supporters who may have been in the audience, quite deliberately mentioning Clinton's historic campaign during the discussion.
Schwartz herself had been a Clinton supporter before Obama won the Democratic nomination, and recounted her work for Hillary's campaign in Pennsylvania in her opening statement. Liz Mair made a point of comparing some of John McCain's policy plans to Hillary Clinton's. (Yes, seriously.)
All this courting of Hillary voters got me— and several other BlogHer attendees I spoke with— to wondering: is there a possibility that both campaigns will attempt to secure women's votes this year by nominating a female candidate for Vice President?
As Predictify.com's special BlogHer correspondent, I was inspired by this panel to ask the crowd the following prediction question:
Will both John McCain and Barack Obama choose women to be their running mates this year?
In the same spirit, I also asked,
Will Barack Obama choose any of the following women as his running mate?
listing MOMocrats favorite Kathleen Sebelius, my own Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, and the obvious choice, Hillary Clinton as possible picks for V. P.
Go check my questions out if you'd like to make a prediction!
Jaelithe also writes at The State of Discontent.
This was one of the best sessions of the conference. It was so refreshing to hear these two women address the issues in a civil, respectful fashion without vitriol and nastiness. If this is any indicator of what a vice presidential debate would look like with women as the candidates, I'm all for it.
Posted by: Karoli | July 23, 2008 at 02:34 AM