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 caveman 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’ advantage with women may have been narrower than Joe Biden’s in 2020.
Flawed abortion strategy
But do not blame women for Kamala Harris’ 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’ 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.
The most stunning hole in Harris’ campaign was education. Only 16% of Americans think K-12 education is moving in the right direction. Women (and men) are upset by the broad failure of basic education standards in this country, a sentiment that was only exacerbated during COVID. As Jonathan Chait wrote recently in New York magazine, education was long a defining issue for Democrats. But Biden didn’t make K-12 education in any way a priority and Harris was nearly silent about it on the campaign trail. It was barely and only blandly mentioned on her website. “Parents’ rights” were dismissed as a right-wing concern or a code for hate or the province of conservative women. There was little acknowledgment that Democrats are parents too.
Nor do women live in a vacuum. They have sons they worry about, husbands and brothers who are struggling, fathers who feel lost. They care about the same issues that trouble men, and the campaign did little to address the problems felt by boys and men in this country. Women do not like to have their priorities shunted aside. They also do not like to be condescended to.
Wishful thinking
Biden did Harris the disservice of explicitly stating he only wanted a woman before appointing her as his running mate. For any woman, even an implied “We hired you because we needed a woman” doesn’t land nearly as well as “You’re the best person for the job.” While women never want to be denied a job on the basis of sex, nor do they want to get those jobs because of it.
Harris did little once in office to earn women’s confidence. Yes, the border responsibilities that Biden assigned her were a thankless task. But most women know that when given a lousy assignment, the trick is to work doubly hard to prove doubters wrong. Instead, Harris left the problem in her inbox.
As a presidential candidate, Harris once again floundered. Onstage and in interviews, she sounded alternately glib and mechanical. She spoke in the foamy blather of a corporate human resources manager. She pandered to low-information, single women voters by appearing on podcasts like “Call Her Daddy” and goofballing along to her “brat” label. She often came across as fake and scripted, in a way that called to mind the herky-jerky ventriloquism of Roxie Hart on the witness stand, seeming to parrot whatever her political consultants told her. The act wore thin.
During the heady days of Harris’ early campaign, there was plenty of talk about “joy,” but it always felt to me like wishful thinking — something that mostly took place in bubbles on Instagram or among true believers at rallies — or largely reflected relief to be rid of Biden. Among other liberal and Democratic women I spoke to during the campaign, enthusiasm for Harris was muted.
As much as women may want a first female president, they equally want someone who will succeed in that role. Nobody wants to see the first female president go down as a failure. Harris did little to persuade female voters she was right for the job. Democrats need to remember that a woman, just as much as any man, needs to earn women’s confidence.
Pamela Paul is a New York Times columnist.
