Sorry ladies, your nice little war is a loser
by digby
The furious pushback on The War on Women among Republicans on This Week from virtually everyone says two things: the GOP doesn't want this on the table in 2016, which makes sense since there will likely be a woman on the ticket. Unfortunately, it probably also signals what the establishment is going to hold responsible for the loss of the Senate should that happen.
Check it out:
STEPHANOPOULOS: So is the Democrats' "war on women" charge falling flat this year? Add it all up, Nate Silver and his FiveThirtyEight team gives Republicans a 62 percent of taking the Senate, up 4 points since last week.
So a little more movement in the Republican direction this week. I want to bring that last question to Stephanie Schriock, and this idea that the "war on women" just isn't taking hold this year.
SCHRIOCK: Well, that's not what we're seeing at all. And we're seeing continued large gender gaps in places like North Carolina and New Hampshire, you know, even in Wisconsin recently in the governor's race, where not only is Scott -- or excuse me; Scott Walker, you know, he's starting to run away from his record because he knows that the policies that he has supported and the policies that the Republicans have supported are so bad that they're trying to blur that they took these votes or they signed these bills.
(CROSSTALK)
STEPHANOPOULOS: -- the gender gap is much smaller than it's been in past elections.
SCHRIOCK: Only in a few. And the truth is, you know, we still see Democrats definitely winning women across the country --
MATALIN: No, they're not. They're winning single women and they were -- by they're winning women as a cohort is because of the disproportionate minority support.
You have a horrible gender gap, men don't like you. You've got a double digit men against Obama and the female vote, if you're married, if you have kids, all of that, they'll -- those women are opposed to Obama, who is on the ticket. And the gap that we typically saw -- I don't know what numbers you're looking at. The ABC poll has that three -- most three in the margin of error of women that are --
(CROSSTALK)
SCHRIOCK: -- individual races, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Georgia, New Hampshire, Michigan -- Gary Peters against Terri Lynn Land, we are seeing gender gaps. Women are going to decide these races. They're going to decide it on issues of economic stability and they're looking for --
MATALIN: Why do you only ever talk about abortion on demand and contraception if you think that women are more than a homogeneous herd --
(CROSSTALK)
SCHRIOCK: -- health care is part of an economic future. We talk about equal pay and minimum wage and you bet we talk about access to health care --
STEPHANOPOULOS: -- bring this to you. You've seen Arkansas, Louisiana, Colorado, Iowa, still all pretty close. But Republicans maintaining an edge now in all of those critical key states right now.
So is this the Republicans' race to lose at this point?
And what worries you about how they could lose it?
KRISTOL: I think Republicans could win the Senate. I think they'll win it pretty comfortably. They'll do it mostly by doing no harm at this point. President Obama's dragging the Democrats down.
I do think Democrats have made a mistake. The upscale consultants in Washington have said war on women worked in 2012. It'll work again this year.
But it -- the thing -- (INAUDIBLE) Republican consultant said to me the other night, thank God they're running war on women and it's not war on working class ads. If they ran a more economic populace message, they would do better than this kind of upscale single 27-year-old women are going to be deprived of contraception by Republicans, which is just silly and implausible.
Look at the Republicans who are under -- look at the Republicans who are underperforming, incidentally: Georgia, right? Where Republicans are at some risk, nominated a very wealthy business man.
What is the -- what are the attacks on him that are working? They're not war on women --
(CROSSTALK)
KRISTOL: -- outsourcing. It's the Romney type attacks that are working.
So I'm happy that the Democrats are going down this war on women road and not focusing on the economic populace issue.
SMILEY: That's a good point. And I think that issue would probably play better. And a lot of the reasons it might not be the top of the agenda is that Democrats, respectfully, know that they haven't even done everything they could have done on this issue.
The slogan that it could have been worse is not a winning slogan. And I think the economy is certainly better now that we expected it would have been a couple years ago. I think the president gets some credit for helping put what policies that have turned this economy around slowly.
Having said that, there's been no real fight even by Democrats for increasing the minimum wage to a living wage in this country. That measure can only go so far if you don't have the record to back that up.
There's a front-page story, George, as you know, in "The New York Times" today. They talk about the --
(CROSSTALK)
SMILEY: -- exactly, that the black vote is what the Democratic Party is relying upon now to save the Senate. News flash: if you're relying on the black vote, in a midterm election -- and I'm not suggesting that black voters don't care about this -- but if you're relying on that vote, then I think it's uninspired because we have double- and triple-digit unemployment in the African American community.
And again, if the message is something other than employment and what we're going to do for you, then what's the reason to go vote?
SCHRIOCK: Now this is not the message in North Carolina, in Georgia, in Kentucky, in Louisiana. We've got candidates -- we keep saying the war on women is only about contraception. The war on women is a construct about equal pay, minimum wage and access to health care and jobs. And what we're seeing in Georgia, by the way, where you've got David Perdue (ph), who has a terrible business record, Michelle Nunn, who's a common sense leader, who's going to work across party lines, we see a race that's incredibly close. The momentum is on Michelle's side. The African American community is excited. And EMILY's List folks have decided we're going to double down and actually --
(CROSSTALK)
MATALIN: -- Colorado where "The Denver Post," no conservative publication called the incumbent, Mark Uterus (ph), for being such a single issue abortion on demand, sex selection abortions. So yet and going to your point, when you have this identity politics, you're also losing Hispanics on the same grounds, it being -- a cohort being treated so passively and the presumption, like there's a presumption about what women prioritize, the presumption that Hispanics prioritize. (INAUDIBLE).
It's economic --
SMILEY: But if you're black or brown, let's be frank about this. If you're black or brown, other than helping to save the Democrats' hide, give me three good reasons and you turn out the vote this time.
Now I'll catch hell for saying that --
(CROSSTALK)
STEPHANOPOULOS: -- watching Bill Kristol nod his head --
(CROSSTALK)
SMILEY: No, I am not suggesting -- I'm not suggesting that people ought to stay home and sit on their hands. What I'm suggesting is that neither party has focused clearly enough on the issues of black and brown voters to inspire them and motivate them to turn out in 2014. And we may see the same thing in 2016.
Mary Matalin remains one of the most malignant creatures in American politics, her spin so ugly and so obvious that I can feel my gorge rising automatically once she starts to speak. But you have to love the idea that she can parse the electorate in such as way so as to say blandly that Democrats are "winning women as a cohort is because of the disproportionate minority support" as if that means something and nobody challenges it.
Hey, we're winning all the white women ("the right women") by a big margin. And we're winning white men like crazy. In fact, you wouldn't win a thing if you had to depend on getting the votes of Real America ...
And then she oozes sanctimony about "the Hispanic vote" as if the Republicans aren't working themselves into such a frenzy over immigration that they've forced the issue off the political map. What a loathesome pundit.
This looks to me to be the set up for the big fall guy (gal) over this election loss. (A loss which was probably inevitable seeing as it's in the 6th year of a Democratic presidency and the swing seats in play are close margin seats.) It's important to realize this because many Democrats are anxious to spin this election as a repudiation of progressive messaging so they can get on to the 2016 Clinton campaign where she will be running as a woman who is above all those other silly women's issues that everybody knows don't really matter.
Meanwhile, the lunacy on the right continues apace:
KRISTOL: One -- I think one underreported aspect of this year's race is do the Republicans have high-quality, interesting younger candidates? Tom Cotton in Arkansas, Joni Ernst in Iowa --
Oh dear God ...
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