This has been a story for awhile now and not many have a good answer to the question.  Can Obama win over the Clinton women?  Or will they truly vote for McCain?

Women have been sent to “the back of the bus” again, says Mary Jane Coughlin, 46, a Long Island copywriter who says she will write in Clinton’s name in November rather than vote for Obama. “We work twice as hard to get half as far.

Obama has said he will stress the differences between himself and presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, especially on issues such as health care, judicial appointments and abortion rights. Obama campaign spokeswoman Linda Douglass says female voters will respond to Obama’s life in a “female-centric” family, as he discusses the influences of his mother, grandmother, wife and mother-in-law. The gender gap in the primaries wasn’t anti-Obama, she says, but pro-Clinton. “I don’t think it was about him, it was about her.”

Groups such as NARAL Pro-Choice America, which endorsed the Illinois senator last month, will also help. The abortion-rights group plans to spend $10 million in the presidential and congressional elections this year, said president Nancy Keenan. It also will target independent and GOP women who favor abortion rights, particularly suburban ones in Pennsylvania and other swing states.

Clinton consistently won the votes of women during the primaries. Women 65 and older were strongest in their support: She won them by an average of 24 percentage points in contests where voters were surveyed as they left polling places.

In her farewell remarks Saturday, Clinton urged her supporters to back Obama, but acknowledged that their desire to elect a woman will have to wait. “We have to work together for what still can be. And that is why I will work my heart out to make sure that Sen. Obama is our next president,” Clinton said.

Obama could face a challenge to win over some women who, in Clinton’s loss, feel they’ve been disrespected by the Democratic Party and are stinging over what they believe was sexism in cable news coverage of her campaign.

Now that the primaries are over and the presumptive candidate has been chosen will the women that were the dir hard supporters actually come to the rescue of the Obama candidacy?  Your thoughts?