The 'war on women' fails, and that's a very bad sign for Democrats

Midterms are rarely about foreign policy, because it’s an issue Congress can’t do much about, but that issue wasn’t available to Democrats, anyway. President Obama’s recent cascade of catastrophe in that area—particularly Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria—added to the general sense that he is failing as a leader, which dragged down his party’s candidates.

So no, the “war on women” was not an unforced error. It was a forced error. It was a last-ditch effort to find some purchase for Democratic candidates when no other issue was going their way. And it didn’t go their way, either.

This has broad significance because it is a test of the Democrats’ whole strategy for winning future elections. They have put all of their focus on portraying the Republicans as the party of old white men while portraying themselves as the only option for women, blacks, Hispanic voters, and the young. So their long-term electoral strategy is that all of the old white guys are going to slowly die off, and all of the young people and minorities are going to become an “emerging Democratic majority.”