But try to find it on page 1 now. I had to do a word search on the page to find it in fine print under "more news," with the title "Democrats Count on Edge With Women to Limit Losses," which sounds like the opposite of what Drudge saw in the article.
Let's look at the article — which is by Jackie Calmes — and see what's actually in it.
Democrats are nervously counting on an enduring edge among female voters....So that's the idea in the NYT headline.
Yet... some are second-guessing the party’s strategy of focusing more on issues like abortion and birth control than on jobs and the economy.And that's the part Drudge extracted.
We get the opinions of a couple Democratic Party pollsters. Geoff Garin says: "If Democrats weren’t running on [issues like abortion and birth control], the situation would be much worse." And Anna Greenberg says: "It’s certainly true that we’d be doing better if we were doing better with women, but I do not see a disproportionate drop with women relative to men." That seems to mean Democrats are losing men at a faster pace than they are losing women. But Greenberg's comment, unlike Garin's, doesn't purport to know whether, overall, emphasis on the female body is a net benefit to Democrats.
All the way down in the second-to-last paragraph, Greenberg is quoted again. She's complaining that Republicans were "deliberately misconstruing" the Democrats' gender politics. She says the term "war on women" is a Republican term for what the Democrats are saying about Republicans.
Yet [Greenberg] and other Democratic strategists complain their party has not effectively espoused a broader economic agenda, when women tell pollsters their top concern is jobs and the economy.And there's the Drudge take on the meaning of the article, buried at the bottom of the article, with no direct quotes and no names for the "other Democratic strategists" who, apparently, "complain."
IN THE COMMENTS: After Jake asked "Since when is 'War on Women' a Republican term?," chickelit "What does the venerable Althouse archive say? When did Althouse first pick up the term and in what context?" Back in 2012, I traced the present-day use of the term to a February 2011 NYT editorial, "The War on Women":
These are treacherous times for women’s reproductive rights and access to essential health care. House Republicans mistakenly believe they have a mandate to drastically scale back both even as abortion warfare is accelerating in the states. To stop them, President Obama’s firm leadership will be crucial. So will the rising voices of alarmed Americans.UPDATE: The "Democrats Count on Edge" story now — at 4 Eastern Time, November 1 — has no link on the front page at all, and when I got to the page of links on "U.S. Politics," I have to scroll down the space of 2 screens before I see the story.
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Wow! If only such logic and perception had been focused on Obola! What might have been.
Here is an extract from teh Wikipedia page on "war on Women", read it now before one of those neutral editors changes it.
the section titled "Development of the term":
In 1989, radical feminist Andrea Dworkin[34] wrote in a book introduction about "war on women"[35] and, in 1997, she collected that and other writings in Life and Death, for which the subtitle was Unapologetic Writings on the Continuing War Against Women.[36] Feminist Susan Faludi's 1991 book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, argued that throughout the 1980s the media created a "backlash" against the feminist advances of the 1970s.[17] Former Republican political consultant Tanya Melich's 1996 memoir, The Republican War Against Women: An Insider's Report from Behind the Lines, describes the incorporation of the pro-life movement and opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment by Republicans as a divergence from feminist causes.[18]
George W. Bush's administration met with resistance from feminists and women's rights activists throughout his Presidency.[37][38] In 2004 The Feminist Press published Laura Flanders' collection of essays The W Effect: Bush's War On Women.[39] In 2006 economist Barbara Finlay's critique of the Bush administration's treatment of women was published by Zed Books under the title George W. Bush and the War on Women: Turning Back the Clock on Progress.[40][41]
In the 2010 midterm elections, the Republican Party won the majority in the House of Representatives. On January 4, 2011, the day after Congress convened, Kaili Joy Gray of the liberal Daily Kos wrote an opinion piece titled "The Coming War on Women".[42] In the article, she outlined many of the measures that Republicans intended to push through the House of Representatives, including personhood laws, fetal pain laws, and the effort to defund Planned Parenthood.[42] In February 2011, an AlterNet article by Sarah Seltzer and Lauren Kelley entitled "9 New laws in the GOP's War on Women" [43] began to document state-level legislation restricting abortion access and rights. That same month, New York Representative Jerrold Nadler referred to the proposed No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, one of the Congress's first actions and one that would have changed policy to allow only victims of "forcible rape" or child sex abuse to qualify for Medicaid funding for abortion, as "an entirely new front in the war on women and their families".[44] Florida Representative and Chair of the Democratic National Committee Debbie Wasserman Schultz began using the term "War on Women" in March 2011.[11]
And now they are trying to claim that "War on Women" is something the GOP made up? You should do a google search for the term. Look at all the leftist publications, media outlets, and bylines that talk about the GOP's war on women, it's even got its own facebook page. Check it out now, before the Democrat Party is able to disappear their astroturfing involvement in this crap.
Heretic messengers have to pussy foot very lightly to avoid being lynched.
You know who was not a piece of ass? Andrea Dworkin.
That's what you call one of them understatements.
Since when is "War on Women" a Republican term?
Jake said...
Since when is "War on Women" a Republican term?
What does the venerable Althouse archive say? When did Althouse first pick up the term and in what context?
"Never mention rope in the house of a man who has been hanged." I suspect the War on Women will be like rope.
What else can Democrats run on?
Greenberg claims that the term "War on Women" was coined by Republicans; how ironic that it's invocation by Democrat politicians over the past several years could fill a nice 10 DVD box set for Christmas.
Suddenly the Democrats realize how badly they've bungled the midterms. That it took them this long is reason enough to vote them out.
And now they are trying to claim that "War on Women" is something the GOP made up?
Why not?
They have managed to convince most people that fascism and the NAZIs were ideologies of the Right instead of being firmly on (and praised by) the Left; and have managed to convince Blacks to vote overwhelmingly for the party of racism.
Let's face it, the Democrats are only annoyed it didn't work. If they had the same press as the Republicans, and had to tell the truth occasionally, they'd never win an election.
Adding to Rebecca's comment .."suddenly the Dems realize they have bungled...".... the economy and more importantly their reign in the White House and their Senate majority.
Identity politics: When running on real issues is not an option...
A big part of the Power of Drudge is his ability to cut through the spin of the actual MSM headline and distill for his readers what's is of major import behind what can be, as we see here, the ever "evolving" lede.
Think of the most racist things ever done in American history:
Trail of Tears: Democrat
Japanese internment: Democrat
Defense of slavery: Democrat
Jim Crow: Democrat
fire hoses and dogs: Democrat
standing in school house door: Democrat
Dred Scott: Democrat
resegregation of the federal government: Democrat
Veto of an anti-lynching law: Democrat
The only racist act arguably committed by a Republican is that the Plessy decision was written by a nominal Republican.
You know something is a loser for the Democratic Party when they start blaming it on the Republicans.
Pretty soon Obamacare will turn out to be Sarah Palin's idea.
Oh ... you mean the Republicans coined that for what the Dems said about Condoleezza Rice and Sarah Palin??
Ohh... *now* I get it!
Silly me. /s
Woman, no jobs? You have free condoms, you know how you can make a buck, wink, wink.
Woman, no jobs, kill your baby.
The Democrats are stuck fighting the last War on Women.
Republicans have long since adroitly shifted to fighting the War on the War on Women.
People forget the words of POTUS' second inaugural speech:
With malice toward some, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as Good gives us to see through the Right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to binder up the nation's woundlickers, to CAIR for him who has waged the battle and not his victim's widows and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace be upon Him and with all nations.
Why don't the Dems run on their accomplishments--ObamaCare; Iraq; open borders to help the Dreamers, disregard of the rule of law to circumvent obstructionist do-nothing Republicans, use of federal agencies including the IRS and Department of Justice, to harass and intimidate Conservatives; and freedom of movement between Ebola Africa and America?
These accomplishments are big time; and they go along way to fulfilling the declared intention of Obama to transform America in its fundamentals.
If these accomplishments do indeed represent the wishes of Dem supporters, why aren't Dem office seekers talking them up?
RecChief,
Interesting passages on the war on women theme. However, it is not quite accurate to say the charge in the Times article is that Republicans "made up" the war on women phrase. What the article does say is in my view even more damning of Democrats.
"Democrats counter that Republicans use the phrase “Republicans’ war on women” more than Democrats to stoke a backlash among older and married women who reject partisan, feminist-sounding rhetoric and lean Republican."
This says not that Republicans are making up an unfair charge against a more sophisticated Democratic stance regarding women's issues. It admits the phrase is theirs in all its ugly idiotic glory, but that in fact it has backfired so badly their opponents are now able to use it against them. Plus it admits that a huge swatch of women do not like Democrats using this term on their behalf. The Times' Democrats here are actually admitting both to their own stupidity and to their own condescension toward women. Well, confession is good for the soul, but do they have enough of a soul to stop sinning? I doubt it.
There never was a "War on Women" so it is understandable that its Democrat inventors would eventually run from claiming credit for its creation. Especially when it comes full circle to bite them in the ass.
Jon Burack: "This says not that Republicans are making up an unfair charge against a more sophisticated Democratic stance regarding women's issues. It admits the phrase is theirs in all its ugly idiotic glory, but that in fact it has backfired so badly their opponents are now able to use it against them. Plus it admits that a huge swatch of women do not like Democrats using this term on their behalf. The Times' Democrats here are actually admitting both to their own stupidity and to their own condescension toward women. Well, confession is good for the soul, but do they have enough of a soul to stop sinning? I doubt it."
That about sums it up as well as it can be.
Throughout the campaign, the Democratic Party clearly championed women's rights, especially reproductive rights, in a full-throated, unprecedented way. The Obama campaign ran ads defending a woman's right to choose and Planned Parenthood, in battleground states and nearly every competitive race against a Tea Party candidate down the ballot, invoked the GOP's "war on women." -- Anna Greenberg, 12/19/12
"That’s what we’re seeing today from Republicans who claim there is no 'war on women'.” -- Sen. Barbara Boxer, 4/15/12
Women in this country never had it so good. And the dems insistence on turning them into victims may have made for good press amongst the feminists, but things are tough all over.
And so is revealed to be nothing but a wedge issue, like almost all the issues the dems present.
Meanwhile after 6 years, the economy is still in the doldrums.
" some are second-guessing the party’s strategy of focusing more on issues like abortion and birth control than on jobs and the economy."
Because those are crap issues in comparison to the economy. Sandra Fluke an entitled white feminists going to an IVy League college and dating a multimillionaire is somehow a victim because the school isn't providing her free birth control. War on Women!
Shut up and buy your birth control like everybody else.
The dems also like to point out the economic inequality and its unfairness. Yet that's worst in blue states are pricing poor people out of the ability to live there.
It's all projection and wedge issues with the dems. Not JUST war on women, but war on blacks, war on gays, war on the poor. etc etc etc.
Drudge extracted the most important and interesting point in the article, which the NYT unsurprisingly obscured. The term "War on Women" is becoming a punchline in a joke. It also might be one of the reasons that the Democratic decline among men is even greater than among women.
Survivors of planned parenthood need to eat, work, and play. The focus on normalizing dysfunctional behaviors is counterintuitive to normal men and women. Perhaps Western civilization will not end with a blood-curdling cry from within the womb.
With so many conservatives concerned with Democrat vote fraud in so many races, from illegal immigrants voting, to mailer ballots used fraudulently, to electronic voting being calibrated to vote the Democrat candidate no matter who the voter selects, to the older dead people voting and ballot box stuffing after Republicans announce vote tallies, what does Althouse think about the validity of the vote (before Tuesday?)
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