The number of Democrats’ failed election strategies is beginning to rival their failed foreign policy strategies—when they have a foreign policy strategy, that is. Just consider some of the themes and schemes they bragged would hammer Republicans and help Democrats retain control of the U.S. Senate.

Executive action on immigration

Over the summer President Obama kept threatening—or was he promising?—he would take executive action on immigration. He hoped doing so would mobilize Hispanics to turn out in November.

But then red-state Democrats started whining that arbitrarily, and perhaps unconstitutionally, granting some type of amnesty to millions of illegals could trigger a voter backlash—and polls confirm that fear. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found voters increasingly favoring Republicans on immigration, 35-27 percent. Last December they favored Democrats 31-26 percent.

And so the president decided to defer—not abandon, mind you—his immigration ploy until after the election, which has only angered immigration advocates who may defer their support.

The War on Women

Obama thought his War on Women scam would drive women, especially single women, to the polls.

To promote this gender warfare, he complained that women only make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. Obama’s solution: “equal pay” legislation that most Republicans oppose. Then revelations emerged that women in the White House only made about 77 cents on the dollar when compared to their male colleagues. Can you say busted?

White House spokesman Jay Carney rationalized that the women were doing different jobs, so it wasn’t apples to apples. But economists have repeatedly pointed out that’s also true in the overall economy. It’s not that often that the media witness such blatant White House hypocrisy, which took most of the air out of that effort.

Then there’s the claim that Republicans want to deny women contraception. But now several Republicans propose making contraception available over the counter (i.e., without a prescription). Democrats and liberal groups like Planned Parenthood appear to be opposing this option. But it’s hard to assert the GOP is reducing access to contraception when many would let women walk into any drug store at any time and buy it.

Scaring the middle class

A regular Obama theme is that Republican policies have hurt the middle class. And yet the biggest middle-class decline has occurred on Obama’s watch.

Steve Moore, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, recently summarized the latest Sentier Research report on household income since the end of the recession in July 2009.

• Single women without children saw their incomes fall by 5 percent.

• Black heads of households saw their incomes drop by 7.7 percent and Hispanics by 5.6 percent.

So while the president tries to scare the middle class into voting Democratic, an increasing number realize that their decline came during his administration.

Tax inversions

Elections often hinge on simple concepts, but a “tax inversion” isn’t one of them—which makes it an odd choice for a Democratic campaign theme. Politico agrees: “[R]ather than becoming the political whopper that Democrats dreamed of, the issue has turned out to be pretty much a massive dud.”

Part of the problem with this con-job is that Democrats claim the small number of companies that are legally inverting are just trying to lower their taxes. But trying to lower our tax obligation is an American obsession, and that includes the hypocrites attacking inversions.

Koch Brothers

Perhaps the award for the “least likely to succeed” campaign-theme goes to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s effort to convince America that Charles and David Koch are responsible for all of the country’s problems.

The Koch brothers fund a lot of conservative and libertarian policy and political efforts, but lots of rich liberals do the same for their side. Since both Reid and Obama regularly suck up to wealthy liberals for donations, they objection to the Kochs must be the brothers’ attempts to expand liberty and free markets, which Reid opposes.

The problem with this ruse is the vast majority of Americans don’t know who the Kochs are, nor do they care. So why make them a campaign theme?

The Democrats’ efforts to find some issue to turn what looks like a growing GOP tide has, thus far, failed miserably.   But hey, if all their domestic campaign themes fail, at least Democrats can defer to the foreign policy question: Do you feel safer? Oh, wait…