THREE MARTINI LUNCH: SEPTEMBER 29, 2014

Jim and Greg love that Iowa senatorial candidate Joni Ernst is pulling away from Bruce Braley in the polls, ridicule Obama for throwing the intel community under the bus over ISIS, and shake their heads at Politico's "breaking news" reporter Kendall Breitman consulting astrologers over Chelsea's baby.



Politico: Iowa's got a woman problem, and only Hillary can cure it

Iowa has not elected a woman in a statewide contest since 1990, one example of election trivia that floats to the surface every couple of years when political journalists look for hooks on which to hang narratives. Twenty-four years later, Iowa has a chance to end that streak, thanks to the emergence of Joni Ernst, who won the Republican nomination for US Senate and is currently leading Democratic nominee Bruce Braley in the polls. With one midterm focus on gender demographics, the 24-year drought in Iowa of statewide wins for women makes for a pretty decent frame to take a deep dive into the Ernst campaign.

Except that's not what Politico's Dave Price did. Instead, he used that frame to take a deep dive into someone who's not on the ballot at all this year. Instead, Price asks the question: "Can Hillary Overcome Iowa's Woman Problem?"

It's not as if Price ignores Ernst entirely, but the first mention of a woman who's actually running for office comes in the 37th paragraph of Price's article. In fact, although Ernst's gender can be assumed from the spelling of her name, Price never mentions Ernst's gender until the 44th paragraph, when Price notes that three women are running for federal office in Iowa in this cycle — and never even names the other two. So much for Iowa's "woman problem."

This piece is nothing more than a fluff piece for Hillary, hung on a false framework of a "woman problem" in Iowa. If Price and Politico had wanted to focus on the supposed woman problem, they would have profiled the one woman who may very well solve it in November, rather than the aspirational candidate who may or may not bother to try in a couple of years to redeem herself from a surprise third-place finish in 2008. The next time Politico wants to promote Hillary Clinton, perhaps they'll have the integrity to do so honestly.

Also read:

Prominent Democrat: The only people who 'underestimated' ISIS were in the White House

ABC's Jon Karl to White House: How did Obama miss all of those intelligence people warning Americans about ISIS?