If only Abigail Adams could be here to stump for Kamala Harris.
Way back in March 1776, when husband John was serving in the Continental Congress and fueling the plot to declare independence, Abigail wrote him a letter: “In the new code of laws I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies…Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.”
So here we are, 248 years later, and it’s up to the ladies to take down a tyrant. They may well do it.
On this election eve, the nation’s gender chasm is obvious. More women than men turn out to vote (a truism in every presidential election since 1964), and Kamala Harris’ lead among female voters is bigger than Donald Trump’s lead among men. That alone should lift the spirits of fretful Democrats. Plus we have the early-voting stats in seven battleground states, where women have cast 55 percent of the ballots. Granted, some of those women are surely pro-MAGA, but MAGA activist Charlie Kirk is clearly worried; on social media he warns: “If men stay at home, Kamala is president. It’s that simple.”
Plus, this morning, there are stunning numbers in reliably red Iowa. The Selzer Poll – which has long been the gold standard there, respected by both parties – reports that Harris now leads statewide by three points. According to the Des Moines Register, “The poll shows that women – particularly those who are older or who are politically independent – are driving the late shift toward Harris.” I question whether Harris can actually win Iowa, which has voted twice for Trump, but the fact that she has made it competitive – thanks to late-breaking women voters – should entice us to ask what that might portend in the seven swing states.
(Right on cue, Trump is now attacking Ann Selzer, who conducts the Selzer Poll. Today he called it “a fake poll done by a Trump hater.” Last year, when Selzer released numbers highly favorable to Trump, he praised her as “talented.”)
But to really gauge Kamala Harris’ potential upside, we need to look at white women – by far the largest cohort in the female electorate. In the Trump-Biden 2020 race, Trump won white women by 11 points (according to the exit polls). But, in last weekend’s ABC News-Ipsos poll, Trump was winning them by only 4 points -courtesy of white women without college degrees. White women with college degrees buried him in a landslide: 61 percent Harris, 38 percent him. And suburban women of all races were overwhelmingly for Harris, 59-40.
Does Harris have a problem with the majority of male voters? Yup. But women are often 53 percent of the voting electorate, they’re basically the ballgame, and Trump has no clue what to do. His long track record as a pig certainly hasn’t helped. His status as an adjudicated rapist hasn’t helped. His relentless attempts, as president, to end Obamacare hasn’t helped. His braggadocio about blowing up Roe v. Wade hasn’t helped. His decision to hang out with bro podcasters hasn’t helped. His patronizing promise to be the “protector” of women “whether the women like it or not” certainly hasn’t helped.
And yesterday, at a rally, he addressed his problem with women by singling out the ones he thought were hot: “There are some women that are very beautiful in the audience. I would never say that, because if I said like that (pointing out women) her her her her her. If I said they were beautiful, that’s the end of my political career. You’re not allowed to say a woman is beaut – hello, you’re beautiful, you’re a very beautiful woman…”
The Harris camp suspects that millions of wives in patriarchal marriages are tempted to defy their MAGA husbands and exercise the right to choose a ballot; if they do so, that’s a cohort the polls are not picking up. A new ad narrated by Julia Roberts seeks to woo those women, and the MAGAts are furious. Here’s the aforementioned Charlie Kirk: “I think it’s so nauseating where this wife is wearing the American hat, she’s coming in with her sweet husband who probably works his tail off to make sure that she can go, you know, and have a nice life and provide to the family, and then she lies to him saying, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m gonna vote for Trump,’ and then she votes for Kamala Harris as her little secret in the voting booth.”
The husband “works his tail off” to give the lady of leisure “a nice life”…Good grief. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 23 percent of contemporary households have just one working spouse. Women in this election can perform a public service by reminding MAGAts that the 1950s are over. And they can save us from a tyrant, that too would be nice.
Alexis de Tocqueville said it best in his seminal Democracy in America, in the patois of the 1830s: “If one asked me to what do I think one must principally attribute the singular prosperity and growing force of this people, I would answer that it is to the superiority of its women.”