Kitchen table
The press never seems to ask the questions that are on the minds of everyday Americans. They have their narratives and they ask questions that will feed those narratives one way or the other. This is detrimental to us all because we have valid and important questions that have nothing to do with silly narratives and everything to do with our real lives. True 'kitchen table' issues that affect us on a day-to-day basis and which will continue to affect us and our children.

The first question I would ask the candidates: Why are women used as pawns as a way to distract and divide? The Democrats have invented a whole "war on women" meme, harmful to us all. It distracts from the real issues and is a clumsy attempt to scare women into voting as a monolithic bloc, as if one's gender is inextricably linked to one's politics.

There are real issues that actually affect women and their families daily; "it's the economy, stupid", as James Carville would say. Why, under President Obama, have the job losses for women grown exponentially? What would the candidates do to change this?

The next area of concern is gas prices. This affects everyone and is adversarial not only to people's daily lives, but to the economy as a whole. When the economy is already sluggish, people having less disposable income to put into the economy is extremely harmful. My second question for the candidates: What would you do to help lower gas prices, including as pertains to the Keystone pipeline?

Finally, as for my third question, I'd ask: How do you plan to address our growing entitlement mentality? While cutting spending is always a rallying call, spending is just a symptom of the real problem. We must address our dependency on entitlements and we must change the dependency mentality and we must stop the government abuse. Will the candidate's address this most important problem or will entitlements continue to be used as a way to buy votes?

Time will tell. And so will the election.

This post is part of a weekly conversation with our Moms Matter 2012 political bloggers. To see the original question and what the other writers have to say, read What Would Like Most to Ask the Presidential Candidates?

 

Image via Casey Serin / Flickr