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The Ralph Rant
There is a story behind the numbers Mitt Romney produced last week to claim that President Obama has been bad for women's jobs. When he says 92.3 percent of the jobs lost since Obama took office were held by women, and more recently, that only one in eight of the jobs produced during this historically weak recovery have been filled by women, Romney obviously wants women to believe Obama is not good for their employment prospects.
I'm not quite sure how Romney plans to expand that narrative when asked, as he surely will be one day soon, but I'm still intrigued by the numbers, even if I'm not convinced of the specific charges. I'm certainly convinced Obama's economic policies have been and continue to be bad for the economy and for job growth, the most important, and last, trailing indicator of a recovery. I'm not nearly as certain those policies have been worse for women than men, despite Romney's intriguing stats, which Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner doesn't deny, but dismisses as a “ridiculous way to look at the problem.”
Romney is betting that women won't consider it “ridiculous” to examine a problem through the prism of its seemingly disproportionate impact on women since Obama took office. From a purely political standpoint, that's an obvious conclusion, but throwing out statistics detached from any obvious cause could backfire. It should trigger a search among curious minds for the less obvious answer to the question, “what do those figures actually suggest?” Do they lead us to a useful economic or political lesson, or not, and if they do, who will the answer help – Romney or Obama?
Always confident that the truth is on my side, I'm not hesitant to seek the truth, but I don't know that those numbers will lead to the conclusion that Obama's bad economic policies disproportionally threaten women's job security and prospects, versus men.
Monthly unemployment numbers showed the private sector was the first to lose jobs, and in much larger numbers than the government sector. A very large portion of the $862 billion stimulus bill went to preserving government jobs at all levels. Even before the stimulus ran out, and the economy was still hemorrhaging jobs, state and local governments began to shed jobs too. Government job losses continued after the private sector began to grow new jobs.
Since we know government job losses came mostly on Obama's watch, despite him dropping hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on cities and states to try to save them, the only easy conclusion to reach is that government jobs – especially those considered the most expendable – are predominantly filled by women. The politically incorrect conclusion seems to be that most of the least necessary government jobs are filled by women. Therefore, trimming the government workforce will necessarily impact women more than men.
This adds to the evidence proving a social truth that Democrats can exploit much better than Republicans to get women's votes. Women have long been more dependent on, and thus more protective of government benefits than are men. What Romney has discovered (or rediscovered) is that women are also more dependent on the government for employment. That would help further explain, but not correct Romney's political problem - women favoring Obama over him.
Romney may come to rue that day that he reminded women how much more dependent they are on the government for employment. Cutting government spending, including government jobs, will be good for the economy, and women will receive a big share of a stronger economy that doesn't face the prospect of a debt bomb explosion. But defusing the debt bomb by way of fewer or smaller government benefits and fewer government jobs – an unavoidable part of solving the fiscal problem - will not be an easy sell to women.
While team Romney is retooling the candidate's message to women about jobs, Romney needs to pivot to a message women can easily understand - a monetary message. The weak dollar, weakened even further to accommodate all the government spending and borrowing, is driving up their gas and grocery prices and its robbing income from millions of retired women. President Romney could fix that problem for moms and grandmothers with one move – replace Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke with one who would usher in a new strong dollar era.
Romney needs to make sure he does a thorough job vetting any new statistics he trots out to make Obama look bad. Politicians shouldn't try to sound smarter than they are by throwing around scary sounding statistics like a rogue wonk. Statistics can be powerful things, and when properly vetted for all their potential meanings, they can move people toward less government and more freedom. Used recklessly, like choosing an un-vetted running mate, they can backfire. Romney had better work on some snappy answers to some tough Sunday morning style questions about the story his numbers tell.
If it is the story I think it is, he's going to wish he had ignored them.
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