Pelosi offers debate advice to Biden

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is urging Vice President Biden to focus on women in Thursday’s night’s debate against Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the GOP's vice presidential hopeful.

“I just would say one word to the Biden people: Women,” Pelosi said in a Tuesday night interview on Current TV. “Whether you are talking about women’s healthcare, whether you are talking about Medicare, whether you are talking about ... equal pay, ending discrimination in the workplace, the rest of it.”

The Obama-Biden ticket has generally polled ahead among women.

But topics like women’s health and pay equality were not a focus on last week’s debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney, a contest Romney was widely seen as winning.

Pelosi noted that Biden, when in the Senate, was co-author of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994.

“Joe Biden has been a champion,” Pelosi said in an interview with former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D). “He was the author of the Violence Against Women Act, which Paul Ryan has bullied against in the House.”

She alleged Ryan supports legislation that “guts” the Violence Against Women Act.

Efforts to reauthorize the statute have stalled on Capitol Hill.

A Pew Research Center poll taken after last week’s presidential debate showed women equally divided between Obama and Romney, erasing what had been Obama’s big advantage among likely women voters.

A Public Policy Polling survey released Tuesday showed that Obama still leads, 51 to 45, among women, but the president had a 15-percentage-point lead in their previous poll.

In Ohio, a vital swing state, a CNN/ORC International poll conducted Oct. 5-8 and released Tuesday showed Obama with a 22-percent edge among likely female voters.

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