That is not the only issue that the voters cared about. Take the Economy.
Republicans tie everything into the economy. From the "Job killing Obamacare" to the "Job killing minimum wage hike". Where the minimum wage was on the ballots, the people picked higher wages. BUT. The Democrats ignored it as an issue nationwide. They ignored the economy, other than to praise how well Wall Street was doing, which is the playground of the 1%. The answer is crap. People want to hear plans, and they want to hear that our plan is not to do the bare minimum. If we're going to go to the expense of dropping bombs, we should have a better plan than dropping weapons to the enemies by mistake because we don't have any of our people on the ground, supposedly. People instinctively believe that we aren't winning a fight if we don't have troops on the ground, right or wrong.
Ebola, more than half the people want to see quarantines. Nobody buys the line that you go from perfectly safe one day, to extremely contagious the very next day when the disease has a 21 day lead time.
I could go on typing until my fingers fall off. I could type issue after issue that Democrats universally ignored. We had the Baghdad Bob wannabe in DWS up on the news every day or so swearing that we were going to win big, and that all indications showed that Democrats were winning.
The truth is we desperately needed a Tod Aiken to use a Real Rape quote, and the Republicans learned to prep their candidates better.
Women's rights especially concerning equal pay and reproductive choice is an issue, but it's not the only issue. By focusing on that, and only that, we energized the small percent of the population who view it as the single biggest issue facing the nation. We may even energize the thirty percent that view it as a very important issue, even if it's not the most important issue. The problem is, we were going to get those votes anyway.
If we should learn one lesson from this debacle it's this. Read the polls, and respond to them. When the people think something is important, listen to them. At least address the issues in your speeches and highlight things you've said/done/proposed on those issues. If the public thinks you are tone deaf to their concerns, you're in big trouble in politics.
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