Obama reaches out to working women

Sen. John McCain accused Obama of being weak on foreign policy.

McClatchy Newspapers

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Barack Obama kicked off his last week of campaigning before the Democratic National Convention by reaching out Monday to a still-elusive voting bloc — working women who preferred Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination.

Addressing a women’s roundtable Monday in Albuquerque a day after Sen. Clinton had been in town stumping for him, Obama talked about his support for equal pay legislation and told the women that his mother had struggled as a single mom. He said that women on average earn 77 cents for every dollar that men earn, and that he didn’t want his own two daughters, 10 and 7, to face gender discrimination.

“When I hear that women are being treated unfairly in the workplace,” he said, “I get mad and I get frustrated.”

In this week when both the presumptive presidential nominees, Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain, may announce their running mates, both candidates are looking to cover lots of ground.

McCain, campaigning in Florida, accused Obama of being weak on foreign policy and unwilling to admit that President Bush’s “surge” policy in Iraq is working.

“With less than three months to go before the election, a lot of people are still trying to square Senator Obama’s varying position on the surge in Iraq,” McCain told the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Orlando.

“First, he opposed the surge and confidently predicted that it would fail. Then he tried to prevent funding for the troops who carried out the surge. Not content to merely predict failure in Iraq, my opponent tried to legislate failure. This was back when supporting America’s efforts entailed serious risk,” McCain said.

McCain also told the veterans that Obama is driven more by ambition than by ability to be president.

“What’s less apparent is the judgment to be commander in chief,” he said. “And in matters of national security, good judgment will be at a premium in the term of the next president — as we were all reminded of 10 days ago by the events in the nation of Georgia.”

Obama also took heat from his own supporters. At a town-hall meeting at an Albuquerque high school, a local party ward chairwoman, Dallas Timmons, told Obama that many Democrats initially were attracted to him because of his strong anti-war position but that he’d “backpedaled” a bit.

She noted that he was talking up war in Afghanistan lately and had supported legislation that gave telecommunications companies immunity for helping the government spy on people after saying he wouldn’t support that.

“Are you going to set an agenda of change or one of compromise” with Republicans? she demanded.

Replied Obama: “You’re feisty and I like that, but you’re wrong. Let me tell you why you’re wrong.”

He told Timmons he’d always supported U.S. engagement in Afghanistan and opposed Iraq partly because it took resources from that fight. He said the surveillance legislation he backed this year was a reasonable compromise that made the executive branch more accountable, even though he didn’t want to immunize telecommunications companies.