Look, I didn’t call [mc_name name=’Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’U000038′ ] ‘Mark Uterus:’ the debate moderator last night did.  And I have rarely seen so many people on Twitter be incredulous over something as those people were to hear that this happened:

[youtube]SH8BZOhpMz0[/youtube]

“Mr. Udall, your campaign has been so focused on women’s issues that you’ve been dubbed ‘Mark Uterus.’
…Have you gone too far?”

Well, given that a moderator had to ask that question? I’d say yes.

The question is, of course, just how much of a problem this will be for Mark Uterus*: I suspect that it will be quite a bit.  Not many of the pollsters in this race take the time to ask voters what their top concerns are**, but a few have (although  Suffolk/USA Today didn’t ask about women’s issues).  Basically, in September Quinnipiac had 11% of Colorado voters report that abortion was their most important issue (16% for women), while in April it was 2% (and 1% for ‘women’s issues’).  Before the Left starts cheering about that… in April’s Q-poll [mc_name name=’Rep. Cory Gardner (R-CO)’ chamber=’house’ mcid=’G000562′ ] was down one; in September’s Gardner was up eight.  Which is a distraction from the main point, which is that jobs and the economy are actually the issues that motivate voters most, across the board.  It is not good news for Senator Uterus that he’s been now tagged with a nickname that indicates that his campaign is not about jobs and the economy.

It probably doesn’t help that it’s a really easy nickname to say, too…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: This is, by the way, not a distraction from the larger issues of the campaign: it is a larger issue of the campaign.  Cory Gardner is attempting to run on the economy and jobs.  Mark Uterus can’t do that, because his record on both is awful: so he is instead attempting to run on… well.  Mark Udall deserves all the scorn that he might get.

*The fact that I am studiously making sure that search engines associate ‘Mark Uterus’ with ‘Mark Udall’ might suggest that I certainly think that it will be a problem for the Senator.

**Rasmussen’s latest (paywalled, sorry) shows that about 58% of voters think that ‘war on women’ is a political slogan, and only about 31% take it seriously. It works with liberals and Democrats, and that’s about it.