On “Anderson Cooper 360” on Wednesday night, CNN chief White House correspondent Jessica Yellin said that Mitt Romney’s infamous ‘binders full of women’ remark during Tuesday’s presidential debate made women seem like a “mail-order product.”
“Look, Anderson, it was very unfortunate for Gov. Romney, because it sort of raises this question: Can he relate to working women?” Yellin said. “You know, it made it sound almost like working women are some mail-order product you can order out of colored binders. … And the problem for Gov. Romney is two-fold. One, if he’s trying to show, and he is, that he can relate to and understand the frustrations working women go through, this does not suggest that he understands the sense of ‘outsiderness’ many women feel when they work in largely male environments.”
“And, two, it raises a question, this is a man who, at the time he became governor, had been a top executive in the business world for multiple decades, and didn’t he already know qualified women that he could call upon?” Yellin said. “Why did he need to go outside and get a binder full of women to find some? Now, as Jim [Acosta] just pointed out, he actually did know women, and he had some on his staff, so he did himself a disservice with the way he phrased this, Anderson. But the Obama team is getting mileage out of it.”
A recent USA Today/Gallup poll showed Romney is virtually tied with likely women voters in swing states.