John McCain has been dropping an awful lot of praise for Hillary Clinton into his speeches lately. His pollsters are no doubt salivating over the prospect of those pissed-off feminists in No-Bama T-shirts who say they will vote for McCain just to spite all the men who did their girl wrong during the Democratic primary.

There is no doubt that the misogyny in the media and on the campaign trail was real. But does it really make sense that a lot of women voters who once planned to pull the lever for a Democrat will now vote for McCain?

It seems to me that the analysis of the Hillary/McCain voter phenom is mixing up two different groups of women in order to feed the feminists-for-McCain story line.

Take this recent piece in the Chicago Tribune which posits that so-called security moms and women who are concerned about the economy (read: suburbanites who want lower taxes) are leaning toward McCain. The article starts out by talking about women who were disappointed in Hillary's loss, but quickly segues to REPUBLICAN women--the security-and-low-taxes voters. That's quite a switcheroo.

The polls, the same article mentions after floating the Hillary/McCain voter balloon, show that former Clinton voters now favor Obama 3-to-1.

I talked to a couple of Hillary supporters recently: Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, Democrat of Wisconsin, and Ellen Moran, the executive director of EMILY's List, the powerful political action committee that strives to get pro-choice, Democratic women elected. Both were unequivocal about their support for Obama. And both thought the idea of supporting McCain, who has voted the wrong way on nearly every piece of legislation on every issue important to women—from abortion rights to birth control to health care for children to breast cancer screening to equal pay--was unthinkable.

There are some women who feel differently. Take Wisconsin Democrat Debra Bartoshevich, who was a Hillary delegate to the Democratic National Convention. She made headlines when she announced she would vote for McCain in the fall. "I just feel you need to have somebody who has experience with foreign matters," Bartoshevich told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. "No self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her—that's by Susan B. Anthony," she added.

Bartoshevich, an emergency room nurse, is not a Republican--she says she's voted Democratic all her life. (And, she said on the phone the other day, she is "laying low" for now, since her delegate status is up in the air and she may not be allowed by the state party to go to the convention after all.) But when she talks about experience with foreign matters she is echoing one of the more troubling moments in the lengthy and many-chaptered Clinton campaign. Not only did Clinton run as the candidate with more experience, she and her husband also suggested that only she and John McCain were adequately prepared to lead the country.

That sent a strong message to more conservative swing voters. These folks--not the disappointed feminists--are the ones McCain is now courting.

There were some other troubling moments, including Hillary's claim to represent "hard-working, white" Americans.

Hillary appealed to white, blue collar voters who were uncomfortable with Obama's race. She appealed to gun owners with a mailing attacking Obama for his record on gun control. She appealed to voters who wanted to hear tough talk about "obliterating" Iran and agreed with her refusal to apologize for her vote on Iraq. Some of the folks she reached out to were, ironically, the same people who helped gin up the hate machine against her and her husband in the early nineties. I remember all the "Ditch the Bitch" T-shirts at the 1996 Republican Convention, and the visceral hatred of the First Lady who looked and talked like an accomplished professional in her own right instead of a meek, smiling ornament. When Hillary and Bill made friends with Roger Ailes, the Republican strategist and Fox News executive who once promoted the Monica Lewinsky story and impeachment, you could call it pragmatic, or you could call it appalling.

Clinton reached out to a lot of disparate groups during her campaign. She morphed from the "inevitable" establishment candidate into a John Edwards populist over time. Only at the very end did she become a feminist icon. In fact, it was remarkable how little her gender really came into the campaign from the outset. Those "hardworking, white" voters who might switch to McCain--many of them men, actually--were a driving force behind her wins in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and other states.

So don't confuse Hillary's feminist support with the support of "security moms," suburban stockbrokers, and other Hillary voters who could vote for McCain.

"There are women activists who waited their whole lives to see this and to have this chance and I’m kind of one of them,” says Ellen Moran, “It’s hard to accept. But there’s too much at stake in this election to let John McCain be President.”

Tammy Baldwin adds: "Women can certainly see the difference on the issues that motivated us to support Hillary Clinton in the first place: Health care for all, equal pay, who will be nominated for the Supreme Court."

And if that's not enough for the visceral-not-policy-oriented women voters, there is the account of John McCain calling his wife an ugly word beginning with the letter C. First reported by Cliff Schecter in his new book The Real McCain (Schecter cites three unnamed Arizona reporters for this account), the alleged name-calling is now circling the Web in a popular parody.

Feminists for McCain? You've got to be kidding.