Kamala Harris Took Women for Granted

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 cave man 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’s advantage with women may have been narrower than Biden’s in 2020.

But do not blame women for Kamala Harris’s 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’s 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.