Women’s issues took a back seat at Tuesday’s Democratic presidential debate, and attacks against Republicans for waging a supposed “war on women” were kept to a minimum. In fact, the phrase was never uttered — a sharp departure from the tactic employed by Democrats in 2012 and 2014.
Hillary Clinton was the only candidate even to mention Planned Parenthood or allude to abortion (Democrats rarely use the word since it doesn’t poll well; they say instead, as Clinton did, “a woman’s right to choose”). Debate moderator Anderson Cooper didn’t ask a single question about the devastating videos that appeared to show Planned Parenthood administrators haggling over reimbursement rates for fetal tissue donated to medical science or altering abortion procedures to secure better tissue. There was no question about the recent announcement by the organization that it would no longer collect reimbursements.
Clinton’s only mention of the organization came when she suggested Republicans are for Big Government when it works for them.
Related Story: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2574118/
“They don’t mind having big government to interfere with a woman’s right to choose and to try to take down Planned Parenthood,” Clinton said. “They’re fine with big government when it comes to that. I’m sick of it.”
As for the gender pay gap, which is mostly a product of the different choices men and women make in their careers and not of discrimination, was mentioned in passing only twice.
Campus sexual assault, which has gained national prominence in the past year thanks to bogus statistics and questionable or false accusations, didn’t get a single mention. This, despite Clinton’s acceptance of the myth that we’re in the midst of an “epidemic.”
There was also no mention of birth control.
The only “women’s issue” that was discussed in any detail was paid family leave. Clinton mentioned it in her opening statement, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders mentioned it when discussing socialism, and CNN host Dana Bash asked a question about the policy. Bash asked Clinton whether mandated paid leave might lead to hiring fewer people and creating fewer jobs, as GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina has suggested.
Clinton said the policy has been in place in California — where Fiorina was a CEO — and that it “has not had the ill effects that the Republicans are always saying it will have.” Clinton must have missed that more people leave California each year than move to the state — and the people most likely to leave are poor and middle-class. While much of the migration is due to housing costs, fewer jobs and higher taxes also play a role.
Can we say for certain that paid family leave is the cause? No, of course not. But we also can’t say it has had no ill effects. There’s been one study that suggests there have been benefits from the paid leave act. Determining whether or not those benefits are sustainable (or real, remember, it’s just one study) or can be extrapolated to the whole nation, is also a gamble.
Sanders also brought up how the U.S. is the only major country that doesn’t mandate paid leave. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley mentioned that his state expanded paid leave.
Absent from the debate was just how the candidates would go about implementing the mandate and how struggling businesses could afford to start offering the policy. Still, it was the most discussion afforded to any traditional “women’s issue.”
In 2012, Democrats rode the “war on women” narrative to electoral victory — President Obama remained in the White House, and Republicans lost a few seats in Congress after their historic gains in 2010. But in 2014, Democrats relied heavily on that narrative — to disastrous consequences.
Republicans gained control of the Senate, and Democrats who suffered the most embarrassing defeats — former Texas State Sen. Wendy Davis and former Colorado Sen. Mark Udall — devoted much of their campaigns (for Udall, it was almost his entire campaign) to claiming there was a war on women and they would fight against it.
The tactic didn’t work. Democrats’ advantage with women dropped. Unmarried women still went for Democrats, but their support dropped 7 points from 67 percent in 2012 to 60 percent in 2014. Yet married women continued to vote for the GOP, and in 2014 they voted for Republicans by a 10-point margin.
The problem with focusing heavily on “women’s issues” is that Democrats assume all women care about those issues and take their position. They ignore or write-off conservative women who are pro-life or who don’t believe birth control should be free for those with health insurance. And by 2014, the narrative lost its steam.
Perhaps if Hillary Clinton is the eventual nominee the trope will make a comeback. Or maybe Democrats have finally learned that Americans are sick of it. Sometimes, war is not the answer.
