Obama Camp Warm to 'The New Agenda'

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As I reported Monday, there's a new group of Hillary Clinton supporters making news now by calling for the dismissal, and more, of Chris Matthews. For "The New Agenda," a post-PUMA group of 30 power players, Matthews is just the poster boy for their initiative to shop a slate of women's issues to whichever political party wants their support.

The group had already received overtures from the McCain campaign, but founding member Caren Turner told me that she met with a senior official in the Obama campaign yesterday, with very encouraging results.

"I met with a very high ranking person in the Obama campaign (and presented) a list of asks.

How will your administration deal with the fact that only 17% of the US Congress is made up of women, will you come up with a corrective plan, and what will it be?

Under Federal law, 5% of small business federal contracts should go to woman-owned businesses, but we barely get 3.4%, and we own 30% of the small businesses. What will you do to correct that?

Professor Nancy Hopkins did a study that showed that since the Iraq War started, more women have died at the hands of domestic violence (about 6,400) than soldiers have died in Iraq (4142). What will your administration do to remedy this national disaster?

How will your administration correct the rampant sexism on the airwaves, and society at large?

She also says she would like to see these questions in the Presidential debates.

Some skeptics, myself included, wondered if this new group would give the Obama campaign a fair shot, or align themselves with the more pro-McCain PUMA movement, and their political arm, PUMAPAC.

All indications are that the group's support will go wherever the best deal is. On meeting with the Obama campaign:

"The meeting went extremely, extremely well. The first three things were very easy, no problem, and that the other two were excellent issues, but the solutions were more complicated, and that the campaign will get back to us. (with a plan) The meeting went very well."

On PUMAPAC:

We are not involved with PUMAPAC. I don't know where they are in terms of raising money, but I think they were, let's say, overly optimistic about the money they raised to retire Hillary's debt, and that put question marks in some people's mind as to whether we should affiliate with them at all.

So is it fair to say you've stepped away from the "Just Say No Deal" umbrella?

That's exactly fair, in other words they've taken the approach of "Just say no deal," and we're saying, "We're gonna deal, deal with all of you."

We discussed McCain's own record of misogyny. She hadn't heard the McCain rape joke, or the campaign's non-denial and "McCain being McCain" explanation, but her attitude was, "You choose your battles. Once we have more women in power, those jokes will stop on their own"

In talks with all 3 of the founders of New Agenda, none of them has bothered to defend McCain's history of misogyny, but I get the impression that while Matthews is being taken for a pound of flesh, McCain has something different to ante up.

I also asked if McCain's pro-life comments at the Saddleback Forum gave the group any pause, considering his prior assurances that there would be no litmus test. She echoed the other founders' confidence that the Democrats in the judiciary committee would stop any extreme appointments.

"We're not just a bunch of walking ovaries. Once we get more women into office, many of the traditional issues that we've talked about will fall into line."

"We're not dealing with Roe v Wade, pro-choice, pro-life or anything like that, this is more about power and money. This is not about ovaries... This is focused on the power and the money. Period."

While I might not agree 100% with this group's methods, or even their exact priorities, the idea that women's issues can be the subject of a bidding war between two parties, rather than the taken-for-granted province of one, is an intriguing one. My bet is on blue.