Could it be that we are witnessing the well-deserved demise of a thoroughly dishonest political meme?
Among the many casualties of this year's sweeping midterm blowout for the GOP was a phrase that not so long ago was cited incessantly by Democrats and their left-wing cheerleaders in media. Post-midterms, the once-revered phrase "war on women," as allegedly waged by Republicans, is suddenly not to be heard.
This was evident on ABC's "This Week" earlier today when Democrat strategist Donna Brazile was asked for her take on the election. Host George Stephanopoulos preceded the question by showing a map of the nation broken down by overwhelmingly red congressional districts --
STEPHANOPOULOS: The top political correspondent for the Washington Post, Dan Balz, called it a hollowed-out Democratic Party this morning. I want to put up a map that shows how much territory in the House now Republicans are controlling, you see all that red right there, Donna Brazile. And as Mark Halperin just alluded to, Democrats have lost more than a dozen senators since President Obama took office, more than five dozen members of Congress, don't have any of the big states except for New York and Pennsylvania's governors (Stephanopoulos omitting California, where Democrat Jerry Brown is governor), barely controlling 30 state legislators (wrong again -- Democrats now control only 20 state legislatures). This is a hollowed-out party.
BRAZILE: It is a very tough reality, George, and I wish this was bourbon (looking toward her coffee cup) but of course you don't serve it in the morning. It was a crushing defeat but, you know, I don't cry after election day. I think the important thing is that the Democratic Party has to look at what happened. We didn't have a message. We didn't turn out our voters. We had old recycled ideas that, yes, voters support raising the minimum wage but that's not an economic plan for the future.
The president, who I believe could have been an asset for the party, many of our candidates ran against the president or ran away from his policies. And many of his policies proved popular even in red states like, again, raising the minimum wage. We found social issues that didn't resonate because voters wanted more than just social issues.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And Greta (Van Susteren), you just heard Donna deliver a much more bracing analysis than anything we've heard from the president or the White House.
Yes, "bracing" -- but coded too. A single campaign cycle after the phrase "war on women" was robotically repeated ad nauseum by Democrats, one of their most prominent strategists has decided to shelve it for the time being (at least until Hillary Clinton makes it official that she's running for president, whereupon the meme will get dusted off for a vigorous reprieve). To continue invoking it now, when women and girls are kidnapped by Boko Haram thugs, sold on ISIS sex markets, and risk their lives going to school in Pakistan, isn't just absurd -- it's obscene.
