Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Wendy Davis Was The Face Of ‘War On Women’ Politics. How’d That Go?

The Federalist ^ | November 4, 2014 | Mollie Hemingway 

This was a year when the War on Women messaging — previously employed so successfully by the Democrats — failed to yield the desired results. Most of the discussions about that failure have focused on Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado. Udall’s obsessive focus on the “War on Women” playbook became so annoying that journalists and even his own supporters dubbed him “Mark Uterus.”
But it is absolutely unfair that Udall be tarred with all the failures of the War on Women messaging. No one better encapsulates the Democratic playbook than Wendy Davis, who ran for governor of Texas.
Her campaign was launched in vintage War on Women style. By filibustering a popular late-term abortion ban in Texas, she immediately gained the support of many in the mainstream media. They feted her with free in-kind advertising in the form of puffy profile pieces, cover stories, and other effusive coverage.
Sarah Kliff, who famously dismissed the Kermit Gosnell story as nothing more than “local crime” and therefore unworthy of coverage, covered Davis extensively while at the Washington Post and later when she moved to Vox. For instance, she tweeted this on the night of Davis’ filibuster:
(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...

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