Clinton Speaks to Unmarried Women on Social Security

The first Democratic debate delivered plenty of highlights – but something Hillary Clinton said particularly caught our attention:

“I want to enhance the benefits for the poorest recipients of Social Security. We have a lot of women on Social Security, particularly widowed and single women who didn’t make a lot of money during their careers, and they are impoverished, and they need more help from the Social Security system.”

Social Security has long been a hot-button issue on presidential campaigns. Why is it particularly important to Unmarried Women? Here are a few questions worth asking (via DailyKos):

How many women spent 20 years in a marriage, raised a family, and then got divorced, before entering the work force for the first time?
How many women spent 40 or 50 years working for 3/4 the pay of men?
How many women had their careers cut short, or interrupted, by child-rearing?

Every single one of those women, including plenty of Independents and Republicans, heard it.
Every single one of those women knows she spent a lifetime watching a government program help men put away more money than women.
Every single one of those women knows the same percent came out of a smaller paycheck, for the same work, for a smaller pay-out at the end.

And a very large number of those women knows that the sacrifices they made for family will be punished when it’s time to try to support themselves in their retirement.

In the heat of the debate, Clinton’s line was easy to miss. But unmarried women heard her loud and clear – and if they register and vote, they could make the difference in 2016.