Wednesday

October 30th, 2024

Insight

Harris Targets Married Women

 Dan McCarthy

By Dan McCarthy

Published Oct. 29, 2024

Harris Targets Married Women


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Kamala Harris is pioneering a new divide-and-conquer strategy to win the White House: She's dividing families — encouraging wives to split from husbands at the ballot box.

Harris enjoys a commanding lead among women voters, yet most of her advantage comes from single women.

Married women actually preferred Donald Trump in 2020: He won them 52% to 47% over the Biden-Harris ticket.

But what if Democrats could neutralize the effects of marriage and make all women single on Election Day?

Harris polls worse ahead of Nov. 5 than Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden did during their races against Trump, but if she can break the family ties that lead married women to vote Republican, she may yet win.

Politics is divisive enough outside of the home, yet the Harris campaign and its allies believe their success depends on stirring up a sense of rival interests within the family itself.

C.R. Wiley, a pastor and conservative author living in Washington state, reports he was recently visited by a Democratic canvasser who insisted on talking to Mrs. Wiley — evidently in the hopes that she, a registered Republican, would be receptive to the Harris pitch as long as her husband wasn't around.

The idea that Republican women would vote Harris if not for the influence of the men in their lives has become a major Democratic theme in the race's closing days.

The campaign doesn't want the candidate herself identified too closely with the dirty work of making that case, however.

Instead, Harris surrogates Michelle Obama and Liz Cheney have been the ones out there arguing that wives should think of their interests as being divorced from their husbands'.

"If you are a woman who lives in a household of men that don't listen to you or value your opinion, just remember that your vote is a private matter," Obama told a rally in Michigan.

Cheney reinforced the message on "Face the Nation" Sunday: "We, you know, obviously, encourage that your vote is a secret vote."

Secrecy is no foundation for a healthy marriage.

Yet Team Harris is afraid of what happens when married couples openly discuss their voting intentions. They need all women to think like they're single.

The vice president's allies are going even farther down this road than her campaign dares to.

A hokey new ad from a pro-Harris group called Vote Common Good features a voiceover from the actress Julia Roberts that describes the voting booth as "the one place in America where women still have a right to choose."

Never mind the fact-free fearmongering of that claim — what's really remarkable is that Roberts ends her script with a line adapted from an old Las Vegas marketing campaign that slyly promoted infidelity: "Remember, what happens in the booth, stays in the booth."

Should a married person view voting like a trip to Sin City?

Ms. magazine, meanwhile, highlights an underground tactic to push Harris' message into spaces where women expect to be left alone — placing Post-it notes with the "voting is a secret" theme in the stalls of women's bathrooms.

Privacy used to mean the home — or the bathroom stall — was a place campaigning couldn't reach.

Harris has changed that: She allows women no privacy from her politicking.

She may be a woman herself, but Harris wants to be Big Brother, with a message of paranoia and fear one can't escape anywhere.

The implication of her last-ditch stratagem is that even in marriage, men and women are lonely individuals who can't trust or depend on each other; they can only depend on the party and its omnipresent leader.

Yes, the voting booth is private — women don't need Kamala Harris to tell them that.

But women can use the privacy of the voting booth to tell Harris and her party, in the most public way possible, to stay the hell out of their marriages and home lives.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Previously:
10/22/24: Vibes Turn Bad for Kamala Harris
10/15/24: Why Veterans Are Voting for Trump
10/08/24: How Donald Trump Can Win the Popular Vote
10/01/24: Iran Targets America's Elections -- and Trump
09/24/24: Trump's Would-Be Assassin's Explanation
09/17/24: When Character Assassination Becomes the Real Thing
09/10/24: Kamala Harris Runs Like a Republican -- and Misleads
09/04/24: Where Trump Is Moderate -- While Kam Is Maximalist
08/27/24: Donald Trump Is Reagan's Heir
08/20/24: Will Voters Settle for Joe Biden's Wing(wo)man?
08/13/24: Trump Has to Run Like It's 2016 Again
08/07/24: Is Trump Running Against Harris -- or Donald Trump?
07/30/24: Kamala Harris' 'Mean Girls' Election
07/23/24: Kamala Harris Is the Opponent Donald Trump Wants
07/16/24: Ready for Biden's Counterattack?
07/09/24: Biden Faces Richard Nixon's Choice
07/02/24: Should Biden Drop Out -- or Resign?
06/18/24: Separate Sexual Identity and State
06/18/24: Nigel Farage Makes the Trump Moment Permanent
06/04/24: State that's long eluded GOP turns toward Trump
05/21/24: Trump's Sun Belt Hopes and Rust Belt Needs
05/14/24: What Trump Sees in Doug Burgum
05/07/24: The Vietnam Era Never Ended for Biden's Party
05/06/24: Nationalists of the World, Unite?
04/25/24: Foreign Policy Splits
04/16/24: How pro-lifers stand to lose everything gained in overturning Roe
04/02/24: PBS Misremembers William F. Buckley Jr.
04/02/24: Who Wants to Be House Speaker?
03/26/24: Trump Hunts for a VP Close to Home
03/19/24: Princess Kate and Democracy's Discontents
03/12/24: Can Biden Buy the Voters?
03/05/24: Veepstakes Give Trump an Edge
02/20/24: Do Americans Trust Either Party?
02/13/24: Vladimir Putin -- A Passive Aggressor
01/23/24: Will 'Lawfare' Take Trump Off the Ballot?
01/16/24: Will Africa Save America?
01/09/24:'The Sopranos' at 25: A new world tragedy
01/02/24: Trump, Biden and a Fight for the Heart
12/12/23: What Happened to Ron DeSantis?
12/12/23: Biden Looks Doomed -- But Is He?
12/05/23: A Test for Trump and His Rivals
11/21/23: When Inequality Is Fatal for Men
11/14/23: Nevermind, The Battle's Over
11/07/23: War in the Dem Party -- and at the Opera
10/24/23: Israel's Lesson for 2024: A Lib Crackup
10/17/23: Libs' Dilemma: Immigration or Israel?
10/10/23: Why Bidenflation Defines Bidenomics
10/03/23: Will Gavin Newsom Copy Trump?
09/26/23: Biden's a Loser -- but Dems Can't Ditch Him
09/19/23: Do Sex Scandals Matter?
09/12/23: Cornel West Spells Doom for Biden
09/05/23: What Trump Does for Democracy
08/2/23: Ramaswamy: A Trump Versus Trump?
08/22/23: Take 'Rich Men North of Richmond' Seriously
08/16/23: How America Kills Its Own
08/08/23: The Biden Pardon That Can Spare America
08/01/23: Harding, a consevative for the ages
07/25/23: Demography Destiny, for Us and China
07/18/23: The Frontrunner Who Looks Like a Loser Is Biden
07/11/23: Britain's Bad Example for American Conservatives
07/05/23: Could We Still Win a Revolutionary War?
06/27/23: Civilizations Clash -- in Ukraine and at Home
06/20/23: China Comes for the Caribbean
06/13/23: Fertility, Family and Bio-Socialism
06/06/23: From American Dream to Orwell's Nightmare
05/23/23: Ukraine war is an existential struggle --- for the West
05/23/23: Learn the Right Midterm Lessons -- or Lose in 2024
05/16/23: Feinstein Today Is Biden Tomorrow
05/09/23: Trump, DeSantis and Political Courtship
05/02/23: RFK Jr.'s Threat to Biden
04/25/23: Biden's Lost Generation
04/25/23: Who's In Charge of Clarence Thomas?
04/11/23: Beyond AI, Our Cyborg Future
04/04/23: 2024: 3 Leaders, 1 Way to Win
03/28/23: Climate Science Makes a Bad Religion
03/21/23: All the Conspiracy That's Fit to Print

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