Dem
50
GOP
50
Earlier this week, we had an item about the "Harris Coalition," in which we noted that she's doing particularly well among Asian-American voters, as well as younger voters.
The other group that we might have mentioned is... women. Yes, we noted that Kamala Harris is popular among young women, but we could (and probably should) have mentioned she is actually doing well with all women. As in, historically well. For example, according to the latest NBC News poll, she is up among women voters 58%-37%. Other polls have a similar gap; somewhere in the range of 20 points. If that holds, it would be the biggest gender gap of the polling era (in other words, since the 1940s). Oh, and in case you are wondering, Donald Trump's lead among men is around 12 points. Big, but not as big as Harris' lead among women.
In the years since American women first got the vote (1879), and since they got the vote nationwide (1920), they have not always perceived themselves as a distinct interest group. In some eras (the 1970s, for example), yes, and in some eras (the 1950s, for example), not so much. Right now, we are clearly in a time when women voters (not all, of course, but the majority) perceive themselves as a distinct faction with distinct concerns.
That this is the case is hardly surprising. Access to abortion care and other treatments related to the bearing of children is something that affects everyone, but that particularly affects women. From the moment that Dobbs was decided, there was little question that women voters would be one of the big stories of 2024. Heck, in our day-after write-up of the decision, that was all over the piece. It was so obvious that we didn't even need to get out the crystal ball.
There are additional hot-button issues right now that are women's issues, even if that's not always obvious. To give an example, consider Voter ID laws. The most transparent motivation of such laws is to keep people who cannot easily acquire birth certificates/ID cards from voting. That largely means poor people and immigrants, and both groups skew Democratic. However, the great majority of women who get married, even in 2024, adopt their husband's last name (it's about 90%). That leaves them without a "valid" birth certificate and/or ID, creating an extra hurdle that does not exist for, well, their husbands.
Just in case the issues are not enough to awaken American women's group consciousness, the Republican ticket is also lending an assist. VP candidate J.D. Vance has said all manner of sexist things, most memorably his harangues about childless cat ladies. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is a grab-'em-by-the-pu**y sexual assaulter who has been labeled a rapist by the judge who oversaw the case. And he's also said his share of offensive and creepy things. Just this week, for example, he held one of his rallies in Pennsylvania, and specifically addressing himself to the women in the audience, he declared: "I am your protector. I want to be your protector... you will no longer be abandoned, lonely, or scared. You will no longer be in danger... you will no longer be thinking about abortion." At best, that is off-putting. At worst, well, we've seen numerous (more than we can count on both hands) comments from women who are rape victims, and who say this is how the man who assaulted them talked to them.
We say all of this as prelude to talking about a story from The Washington Post that may not be overtly political, but that we think is political nonetheless. It starts with a woman named Denaesha Gonzalez, who lives in Nashville, TN, and who was visiting her local Target with her 2-year-old son in tow. While shopping the baby aisle, she noticed a less-than-$20 purse that someone had left on the shelf. Given her own experience, Gonzalez had a pretty good idea of the story that purse was telling: A mother had wanted to buy it, but after buying necessary baby supplies, realized the money just wasn't there, and had to cut the purse out of the budget.
This caused Gonzalez to do two things. First, she took a brief (17-second) video of the purse on the shelf. Second, she posted the video to TikTok, with the caption "She deserved the purse" imposed on top of the footage, and the note: "To the Mother who chose themselves last, you deserve the world tonight and always."
The video, as you might guess, went viral, and has been viewed by over 20 million people, with well over 15,000 comments. Among the folks who saw the video is Cecily Bauchman, who is a "mom influencer" with over 2 million followers. She posted her own video, in which she mentioned the Gonzalez video while visiting a Target, buying a $100 gift card, and hiding the card inside a package of diapers with a note "Hey! You deserve that special 'you' thing. You are amazing!"
Thus commenced the #shedeservedthepurse challenge; thus far, many thousands (possibly tens of thousands) of women have followed Bauchman's lead, and have hidden gift cards (or cash) and notes within packages of things commonly purchased by new moms. At least 200 of the beneficiaries have posted their own videos, expressing gratitude for the unexpected pick-me-up. If you're into that sort of thing, watching a few videos of women giving, or receiving the gift cards, might just be a pick-YOU-up.
In short, if that is not evidence of a group consciousness among women, we don't know what is. And if Donald Trump does lose this election, it will be substantially because he and his three Supreme Court justices unleashed forces they did not fully understand, and could not counteract.
Have a good weekend, all! (Z)