The Witness Chronicles, September 23, 2024
This is about more than 50% of American voters
The Eleven Percent Solution? Kamala Harris’s Growing Support With Women
It isn’t just the abortion issue
Take any number these days with a grain of salt, but recent polling has Harris leading among women by 11% over Donald Trump. A lot of that support is based on the issue of women’s reproductive rights, which has Republicans tied up in knots. But there is more to it.
The fight over those rights was something the GOP has used as an issue for years to pull in those voters who vote entirely in opposition to abortion. But the numbers have always, in recent times, shown that limited abortion rights are extremely popular with voters across the spectrum. So when Trump’s Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, savvy Republicans knew they had trouble ahead.
They had to find a way to be both for and against the issue, an impossible task, and so far they have bungled it spectacularly, turning it into a white men against women issue which went beyond reproductive rights and straight into pure misogyny. That now includes open threats against women without children, women with cats, and now women in general.
The selection of JD Vance for VP candidate was the beginning of the perfect storm of anti-female weirdness. Vance, who may be the secret leader of the He-Man Woman Hater’s Club, not only came up with the childless women meme and the cat women meme, he went further by linking lost cats to Haitian immigrants who he claimed were eating them.
What’s with this cat thing?
First, I grew up with multiple cats and I don’t think they’d make good eating. In fact there are virtually no cultures worldwide where eating cats is the norm. Now in case you’re not sick of this story, the original missing cat in Springfield, Ohio turned out to be shut into the owner’s basement by accident and is fine, according to the conservative Fox-owned Wall Street Journal.
Yeesh. The real bind Republicans have with women is that many men in the Party share Vance’s puritanical views of the gender, basically that they should be chained to a stove and kept pregnant. And that no form of abortion, including exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the mother, should be legal.
And with a Republican candidate in Donald Trump who has lost major lawsuits accusing him of rape and paying off a pornstar to hide his sexual encounter with her while his wife was pregnant, there’s more turning women off than Trump’s orange makeup.
Statewide movements to enshrine abortion rights have won in several states, including deep red Kansas, and many more states have them on their ballots this year. That includes Florida where it looks like it might pass despite the efforts of Governor Rick DeSantis and GOP Senator Scott. Florida is not alone.
Interestingly, in Florida, this and other issues, including censorship and a home insurance crisis, are moving the state from red to purple. Scott is now in a tightening race for his Senate seat, which he did not expect at this point. That change is one many we’ve seen emerging since Harris and Walz hit the scene.
All of this means those polls showing an 11% lead among women for Harris may be legitimate or even undercounted. It may be much higher when you consider a basic fact. Voting is private, by law. Husbands cannot fill out ballots for their wives, nor can they know how the women in their life are voting.
This means that even the most conservative appearing women voters who may be sick of men telling them what to do but still want to fit in, can vote their hearts on women’s issues without the world knowing.
By the way, this goes with all the issues. A closeted young voter in a MAGA family can support LGBTQ issues in the privacy of the voting booth. The right knows this and are desperately trying to change the rules to eliminate voters who may have minds of their own.
All this doubling down on hatred can scare some voters, but it can’t force any of us to change our minds. At least not yet. But they have a plan for that.
So, once again it may be the women saving the men from their own bigotry and plain old misogyny. And maybe saving democracy in the process.
This is from a reader supported newsletter. Please consider helping out by upgrading to a paid subscription or donating a small amount through Buy Me A Coffee, a site for small financial contributions. Btw, free and paid subs get the same content because upgrades are purely support by choice. Thanks, ME
Up with women. Please save us.