Sucking Up to Voters: A Guide for Presidential Candidates

Obama

Do
• say Republicans are waging a "war on women" and Romney's stuck in the fifties
• mention how you personally called to console Sandra Fluke after Rush Limbaugh called her a "slut"
• note that one of your first acts as president was to sign equal-pay legislation
• talk about how good Obamacare is for women, not least because it covers birth control
 
Don’t
• "throw the Mormon Church" at Romney vis à vis women (it'll backfire)
• call female factory workers "sweetie"
• run a White House where women feel "excluded and ignored"
• take your lead among women for granted

Romney

Do
• claim the idea of a Republican "war on women" is bogus
• say you and the GOP are "extraordinarily pro-women"
• unleash zingers like: "The real war on women is being waged by the president’s failed economic policies."

Don’t
• sound so jazzed about "getting rid of" Planned Parenthood
• mention your support for the Blunt Amendment allowing employers to drop birth control from health insurance plans
• don't say your wife Ann "reports to me regularly" about women's concerns, as if the ladies lived on another planet