Ladies, We Need To Have A Talk

Greg Sargent says Dem pollster Stan Greenberg has pinned down where President Obama took the damage from last week's debate:  among single women who bought Mitt Romney's premise, and didn't buy the President's performance at all.

Greenberg told me in an interview that his new research persuaded him that Mitt Romney beat Obama in the debate for a simple reason. Unmarried women — a critical piece of Obama’s coalition — did not hear Obama telling him how they would make their lives better. By contrast, they did hear Romney telling them he’d improve their lives.

Greenberg says the research also indicates a clear route to winning reelection, however. “This is a major turning point and an opportunity for the president,” he says.

Greenberg did dial sessions among Colorado swing voters during the debate, and also conducted post-debate questionnaires. He found that unmarried women didn’t respond to Obama’s vow to improve the economy — which they found lacking in a clear overarching message.

“They heard nothing there that was relevant to them,” Greenberg says. “They were not hearing about issues or problems or things that Obama would do that affect their lives.”

Romney, however, succeeded in communicating with unmarried women, Greenberg says, by prefacing talk of his five point plan with an extended discussion of the economic strain of middle-income Americans — which Greenberg calls an effective “set up that gave his details meaning.”

I've got to say that gosh, this explains Mitt's immediate flip-flop on abortion, now doesn't it? 

The Obama administration is already on the case.

President Obama's reelection campaign isn't buying Mitt Romney's contention that new restrictions on abortion aren't part of his legislative agenda.

“It’s troubling that Mitt Romney is so willing to play politics with such important issues. But we know the truth about where he stands on a woman’s right to choose – he’s said he’d be delighted to sign a bill banning all abortions, and called Roe v. Wade ‘one of the darkest moments in Supreme Court history’ while pledging to appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn it," said Lis Smith, a campaign spokesperson for Obama. "Women simply can’t trust him."

This is the message President Obama needs to hammer home in next week's town hall debate, and I'm looking forward to him doing just that.