This was supposed to be the big gender gap election. The data showed women leaning heavily Democratic, with abortion rights a primary driver. Women were expected to line up in droves, ready to reel in the vote for their designated glass-ceiling-shattering heroine.
That, at least, seemed to be the Harris campaign’s assumption.
Why think otherwise? Everywhere on social media and across college campuses, women were appalled by Donald Trump’s caveman antics and JD Vance’s callous “childless cat lady” bro talk. The word “fury” appeared in heavy rotation. Come Election Day, this female rage would surely smack Trump, a rapist, clear across the face.
Things didn’t go according to plan. Instead of a yawning gender gap, exit polls showed a real but not determinative disparity between how men and women voted. If early exit polls hold, Harris’ advantage with women may have been narrower than Joe Biden’s in 2020.
Flawed abortion strategy
But do not blame women for Kamala Harris’ loss. Blame Kamala Harris and her campaign strategists.
Apart from promising to safeguard abortion rights, the Harris campaign didn’t do nearly enough to address other issues important to women, including the “kitchen table” economy, education, gun control, health care, the environment and immigration. The long hangover of COVID was brushed aside like yesterday’s nightmare. If there’s one thing almost every woman can agree on, it’s that they do not like being taken for granted.
Harris’ biggest mistake was leaning hard on a single issue, making abortion rights a centerpiece of her campaign, which reflects a fairly reductive view of women’s lives as citizens. Women — even women who favor abortion rights — do not vote by uterus alone.
Nor is abortion a universal concern. After all, large swaths of women aren’t trying to or able to get pregnant. And some of the reddest states have passed measures to protect abortion rights, but voted overwhelmingly for Trump. The majority of women who seek abortions are already mothers who often terminate pregnancies for financial reasons. They worry about how to feed and educate the kids they already have.
The most stunning hole in Harris’ campaign was education. Only 16% of Americans think K-12 education is moving in the right direction. Women (and men) are upset by the broad failure of basic education standards in this country, a sentiment that was only exacerbated during COVID. As Jonathan Chait wrote recently in New York magazine, education was long a defining issue for Democrats. But Biden didn’t make K-12 education in any way a priority and Harris was nearly silent about it on the campaign trail. It was barely and only blandly mentioned on her website. “Parents’ rights” were dismissed as a right-wing concern or a code for hate or the province of conservative women. There was little acknowledgment that Democrats are parents too.
Nor do women live in a vacuum. They have sons they worry about, husbands and brothers who are struggling, fathers who feel lost. They care about the same issues that trouble men, and the campaign did little to address …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
