Amanda Marcotte fears that voters may not realize the truth about Governor Walker, which is that he is . . . well, you saw the title. A few notes on the article:
He also takes a dim view on contraception, and has undermined access to birth control by defunding Planned Parenthood and refusing to enforce a state law requiring insurance companies to cover contraception.
No evidence is provided that Walker “takes a dim view on contraception,” and the link provided qualifies the statement she makes about state law. According to the story, the state is declining to enforce the law only for employers with religious objections.
When asked by a reporter about his attacks on birth control, Walker dodged: “It all depends on what you define as birth control.”
Check the video. The reporter did not ask him about “his attacks on birth control.” Rather, the reporter asked Walker if he agreed that “certain contraceptives” including RU-486 could be abortifacient. This was not, incidentally, a competent question, since RU-486 is conventionally and correctly treated as a means of inducing abortion rather than as a contraceptive. Walker answered this question by saying he has not been against contraception. The reporter comes back by asking if he thinks “any form of birth control” can cause abortion. That’s when Walker says, “It all depends on what you define as birth control.” That’s right. If you define RU-486 as birth control, as the reporter just had, then some forms of birth control are abortifacient. Other forms aren’t. Walker dodged earlier questions in the interview, but not that one.
For Clinton to win, she has to get female and young voters fired up to vote, and such voters definitely get fired up by the war on women.
Somewhat amazingly, Marcotte links to a September 2014 Time article covering a poll commissioned by liberal groups to show that the war-on-women message was working. (Even in that poll, the get-out-the-vote message that mentioned abortion and birth control performed worse than the two that didn’t.) A few weeks later the author of that article, Jay Newton-Small, noticed that candidates using that message were flopping. Days later, each of the candidates Newton-Small suggested were having trouble lost their races. News hasn’t yet reached everyone at Slate, I guess.