Rear wheel drive was great on my '84 Ford Ranger when I needed an excuse to skip school -- couldn't get it up my parent's driveway, sorry!
Call me an unskilled driver, but I don't feel as confident in bad conditions with rear wheel drive.
I survived the Atlanta snow storm a couple years ago turning a 35 mile commute into 50+ miles due to detours in a BMW on summer tires... The only confidence I felt was that I was going to end up stuck somewhere, but adjusting driving style to conditions goes a long way and then it's just the luck of not getting hit by someone who didn't.
Traction is traction. No matter how a car handles it'll handle the same way on every surface, the traction threshold will be different. No matter which wheels are driven turning and braking is the same. In a straight line it front/rear doesn't really matter. RWD will slip out, FWD will just spin and in either case the driver (the one's that aren't the worst of the worst) will lift off the throttle before anything bad happens. In a modern car traction control will just work it's magic and you wouldn't even know. Ditto for turning from a stop. The driven wheels are irreverent to turning while slowing. The problem is in a long sweeping turn that the driver wants to accelerate out of, like a highway ramp. FWD will just plow straight into whatever is outside the turn. RWD will do the same thing but the car will be oriented differently. No matter which wheels are driven if you break traction in a turn you're going to go wide, better hope you've got enough space to correct it. The safety advantage with understeer is that if you do something monumentally stupid (e.g. drunk guy takes highway off ramp at 90mph) the front of the car with all it's crash test safety will be between you and the consequences of your actions.
The RWD vs FWD thing is more of a "what I don't know can't hurt me." The novice won't notice a little bit of understeer whereas anyone will notice a little bit of oversteer and everyone who can't apply a reasonable amount of self control to their right foot should bend over, grab their ankles and spend their money on some snow tires.
The Miata club of Alaska was featured in one of the car magizines (I forget which) and they basically said "Everyone that thinks we're insane for driving these cars year round in Alaska should know that the design characteristics that help maximize use of available traction in the dry don't stop working in the snow."
It's because you are, maybe, depending where you live.
It also matters when winter temperatures tend to hover around the freezing point vs. well below. It's hard to gain traction when the surface is slippery rather than hard frozen but essentially dry.
I've owned RWD vehicles (e.g., Volvo) in the past, I mean, good cars but useless trying to go up/down a steep incline just after a wet, sloppy snowstorm. To those professing to "know how to drive in snow" with RWD, I've offered the challenge of driving up to my house when our streets are coated with ice-encrusted snow. Nobody has yet taken me up on it.
Even FWD can be insufficient. I've insisted on all-wheel drive at a minimum. My near-ancient 2003 Honda Pilot has a locked 4-wheel range in low gear. There have been times I needed it, and even a few cases where I also had to use chains.
Whether RWD will suffice ultimately depends a lot on environment, road and weather conditions.
I could drive either of them until the snow got deep enough to high-center the car. It's not rocket science.