The Women Behind Reelect POTUS

The ?Girls Club? 2012, via Buzzfeed

BUZZFEED’S QUICK AND DIRTY dissection of three of the top women inside Obama reelect is instructive. The tale begins with Rosengate, with Stephanie Cutter the central figure that helped manage a situation that went viral and gave Mitt Romney a breather from withering, well earned war on women attacks.

But Cutter?s central role in damage control that night wasn?t unusual. Though the campaign?s outward faces are male, she?s one of three deputy campaign managers at Obama?s headquarters in Chicago, and all three are women. The other two ?Julianna Smoot, who handles fundraising, and Jennifer O?Malley Dillon, in charge of field operations ? are in equally key spots.

?The guts, the mechanics, of the president?s campaign are driven by women,? DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Shultz tells BuzzFeed. ?It says something about the president?s commitment to women, and to making sure women really have a seat at the table.?

It’s a good piece, another one for Buzzfeed written by Michael Hastings, coming after his weird piece on Chelsea Clinton.

Hastings did get one thing wrong in the original, citing Debbie Wasserman-Schultz as the “”first woman chair of the Democratic National Committee.” A friendly tweet to Ben Smith from me and they corrected the original. Hastings is a great reporter, as he’s proven many times and I’ve written about as well. There’s just no reason for him to be assigned stories on women, given how desperately new media needs women covering women. I also have to wonder if the error on the DWS chairmanship, which could have been fact checked with one simple Google search, would have been made by someone who follows women in power studiously and cares about the subject as more than an assignment. I doubt it.

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