At the Democratic party's annual Women's Leadership Forum Friday, Hillary Clinton delivered a message that could have come straight from the script being used by Democratic candidates all over the country.
"For too many women, for too many families, they don't just face ceilings on their dreams," said the former Secretary of State. "It feels to them as though the floor has collapsed beneath their feet. That's not how it's supposed to be in America."
She said a national movement is building around issues facing families, such as wages and paid family leave.
"This movement won't wait and neither can we. And that's why we're here today. And we're also here because the midterms really matter."
The midterm elections are less than 50 days away, and if there was a theme in the remarks at the forum, it might be, "Hey, ladies, we are your party." For nearly 35 years, that's been the case: Women are more likely than men to vote Democratic. Pew Research Center found a party-affiliation gap of 13 percentage points in 2012.
But Republicans desperately want to change this dynamic. This year, Republican congressional candidates went on the air early with ads like this one:
Mike Coffman is a Republican congressman from Colorado, considered by some to be the most vulnerable incumbent in the House. And it's not a coincidence this was the ad his campaign picked to open the season. A lot of Republican candidates went up early with ads painting themselves as strong on so-called women's issues.
"We encouraged members to have their first ad be a positive ad geared towards women voters," says Andrea Bozek, communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, "to pre-inoculate themselves from these sorts of attacks that we know are coming their way."
In recent elections, Republican candidates have struggled with how to talk about things like birth control and rape — so for almost two years now, Bozek says, establishment Republicans have been holding strategy sessions.
"The fact that we're up early, we're not waiting for there to be a problem, is strikingly different from 2012," she says.
One of the more creative ads in this vein comes from Republican Stewart Mills, who is running for the House from Minnesota.
"In the Walk a Mile in Her Shoes event," his wife Heather narrates. "My husband puts on pink heels to raise money for victims of domestic violence."
Jon Downs with FP1 Strategiesproduced the ad.
"We're anticipating that they are going to run this false 'war on women' campaign," he says, "and our goal is for people to see that, and know something about who Stewart is — the real Stewart Mills — and dismiss those outside attacks."
But in at least one case, the strategy got ahead of the congressman's voting record. An ad for Florida Rep. Steve Southerland cites his record advocating for things like the Violence Against Women Act.
Except that last year, Rep. Southerland joined the majority of House Republicans in voting against the version of the act that became law, opening himself to charges of dishonesty.
"It's not about what ads that you run," says Democratic strategist Stephanie Cutter. "It's about what policies you stand for."
And as evidence of how important the women's vote is, we can expect this fight to keep getting re-litigated for the next two months, and for the next two years.
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