Winning with women
An old saying has it that success has many fathers but failure is an orphan. When we win on Tuesday — and it’s becoming clearer by the day that we are going to win — among the many beliefs emerging from that happy aftermath will be the belief that our success was due to a single force or event. No doubt there will be as many causes for success claimed as there are people claiming them. But reality is too messy a place to give way to such oversimplification. The truth of the matter is undoubtedly that we will win for a variety of reasons, every one of which is just as important as the other. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will be carried to victory on the support of many pillars.
But let’s not discount one of the more powerful of those pillars. And while we’re at it, it might be time to update that old saying and instead say that “success has many mothers.” Because the same overwhelming force that defeated the proposed amendment to the Kansas constitution to outlaw abortion is once more at work in the land. Early statistics tell us that women are once again turning out in record numbers to vote, and Republicans are shaking in their boots.
The statistics are eye-popping indeed. Women are voting early in the battleground states in landslide numbers. Women are beating men to the polls in every single swing state of Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan and Wisconsin, and in numbers as high as 56%-44%.
And I’ll tell you how bad that news is for Republicans. Because of this, Donald Trump is already declaring election fraud. Even he knows that women voting in record numbers is bad news for him. And the reason record numbers of women are voting is because of the violence Trump has done to women’s rights, particularly the right of autonomy over their own bodies. Women are righteously pissed off. They are going to do a Kansas on Trump, and Trump suspects this means his life is going to finish up in prison.
It certainly hasn’t helped Trump’s record with women when he recently announced that he is going to protect women “whether they like it or not.” But in a campaign riddled with multiple mistakes, Trump’s biggest blunder may have been taking ownership of the repeal of Roe v Wade. That’s Trump believing the bullshit fed to him by his own people inside his own carefully constructed bubble, the one from which he cluelessly declared that “everybody,” including Democrats, wanted the Supreme Court to overturn Roe. That may have been THE miscalculation of his life.
Of course I’m aware that some of those women are going to vote for Trump. And some men will vote for Trump just as some will vote for Kamala Harris. But the startling imbalance of early women voting means something out of the ordinary is happening. Huge spikes in voter turnout means passions have been inflamed. It means passion is driving this vote, and, Trump to the contrary, women are emphatically NOT passionate about him.
This good news also means we will undoubtedly pick up some much-needed down ballot votes. It would be a very nice bonus to not only put Kamala in the White House but also present her with the gift of a Democratic House and a retained Senate.
Meanwhile we must all continue to conduct ourselves as if the battle is razor close. Take nothing for granted. Enjoy the good news that women are overwhelming the battleground states, but don’t stop battling yourselves. Because so much is at stake we need every last ounce of effort. Failure is not an option. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.