A War on Women that has backfired

Published 7:17 pm Friday, November 14, 2014

Have we heard the last of the tired “war on women” trope? Probably not. But after Nov. 4, it won’t have the political cachet it once had in close elections.

What exit polls show is that Democrats are actually creating a war between women — with married women on one side and single women on the other.

“President Obama lost the married women vote in 2012 by seven points, but he won the single women vote by a stunning 36 percentage points,” explains Molly Hemingway in The Federalist. “Women — so long as they stay single and don’t get married — are a key component of Democratic victories.”

So Democrats lined up some impressive candidates for 2014 and made plans to stay with a winning strategy.

“Texas State Sen. Wendy Davis led a dramatic filibuster of a late-term abortion ban before deciding to run for governor of Texas,” notes Ms. Hemingway. “Sen. Mark Udall, reliable abortion rights supporter, built his entire campaign around an attempt to portray his opponent — the cheerful Cory Gardner — as an opponent of ‘women’s health’ (the euphemism for abortion used by people who support the right to end the lives of unborn children). And the poster child of the entire War on Women movement — Sandra Fluke, the grad student who fought to force religious employers to provide contraception and abortifacients for free in employee benefit packages — tried to win a race for a California legislator position.”

All of them lost — by substantial margins. Sen. Davis’ loss was particularly troubling for Democrats; political unknown Jim Hogan, who ran for agriculture commissioner, took 37 percent of the vote. Sen. Davis fared only slightly better, with 39 percent.

“In other words, all the Democratic and abortion rights money, friendly national media attention, and War on Women rhetoric and strategy got Davis two points above the base,” Ms. Hemingway writes. “Her old state senate seat, by the way, was won by a pro-life, Tea Party-aligned conservative woman.”

The election’s results were, in fact, a disaster for “war on women” narrative, because many of the winners had the audacity to be women.

“The 2014 elections were great for women,” Ms. Hemingway contends. “It’s just that many of those women don’t fit the War on Women narrative. Take, for instance, the first black Republican woman elected to Congress: Mia Love. She’s pro-life. Or what about Iowa’s first female senator Joni Ernst? Pro-life Republican. The youngest woman ever elected to Congress is Elise Stefanik. Yes, she’s pro-life.”

Ms. Hemingway and the conservative Federalist magazine probably go too far in thinking Nov. 4 was a huge victory for the pro-life movement. Most voters were worried about jobs, the economy, college costs and America’s standing in the world, according to exit polls.

But they clearly weren’t motivated by the false narrative that Democrats have been reciting in recent elections — that Republicans are out to get women.

The truth is that few of us are single-issue voters. Last week’s election had some hard lessons for Democrats.

That’s one of the most important ones.