Harris Targets Married Women

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