I have to admit there is a certain amusement value to seeing Colorado\’s Democrat Senator Mark Udall being reamed for tying his candidacy heavily to “women\’s issues” such as abortion and contraception.
If the polls are accurate – let\’s always remember that they often are not – Udall is on the cusp of losing to Republican challenger Cory Gardner. And if that happens, it will probably seal the deal on Republicans taking over the senate. So, not at all surprisingly, the recriminations are starting.
Here are the first paragraphs of Margaret Carlson\’s article at Bloomberg.com:
Whatdo women want? Freud\’s question, yet to be fully answered, hasroiled the contest for what should have been a safe Senateseat in Colorado.
Thinkinghe knew the answer to that query is how Senator Mark Udall, theDemocratic incumbent, could end up losinghis job to U.S. Representative Cory Gardner, a conservativeRepublican who is otherwise on the wrong side of so many issues thatmatter to Coloradans.
Defeatwould be a shocker for Udall, who belongs to a storied politicalfamily and easily won his seat in 2008, even though he was thecandidate who\’d had the most money spent against him.
Backthen, he ran a normal campaign. This time, he has almost exclusivelycentered his campaign on women while getting us almost completelywrong. Unfortunately for him, Freud\’s question can only be answeredin the negative: We know what we don’t want, and that is to betreated like ninnies, the sum of our body parts, captives of gender.
Why do I find this amusing? Because despite Ms. Carlson\’s disingenuousness about “women\’s issues” being out of date and insulting, She knows full well that “The War On Women” is exactly what the Democrat Party has been selling for years and years. Mark Udall\’s mistake, therefore, is not the issue itself, but that – this year (as opposed to others where it has worked) – he pushed it to the front of the pack.
Does anyone question that, for the last decade, one the key Democrat strategies – arguably the single biggest – has been to pull out all stops in selling women on the premise that their vaginas and uteri are superseding issues in political campaigns?
The economy? Putting food on their tables? Education? The terrorist threat? Give \’em abortion on demand and free birth control and they\’ll come runnin\’.
Udall, knowing that the midterm elections during President Obama\’s second term would likely be hard on Democrats, decided to go all in on “The War On Women”, because it has worked in the past.
But, this year, it isn\’t working. So instead of coasting to a relatively easy victory in a formerly-red-but-now-purple-turning-blue state, he is behind in every recent poll.
Maybe women, as a group, are just plain tired of being, in Ms. Carlson\’s words, “treated like ninnies, the sum of our body parts, captives of gender”. If so, Democrats have no one to blame but themselves. (Did Carlson complain about this exact same treatment of women when it was electing Democrat candidates?)
Here\’s another possibility: The major issues this year are our lousy economy, the fear of terrorism, the fear of ebola, and the prospect that President Obama is going to play dictator by granting some version of blanket amnesty to Mexican illegals. So, by Udall\’s obsessing on abortions and contraception – so much so that he is derisively being called “Mark Uterus” – he is losing to Gardner by default.
We\’ll find out on Tuesday, won\’t we?
