The “Women’s Vote” and why Dems take it for granted at their peril…
“Justice, not Favors.-Men, their Rights and Nothing More; Women, their Rights and Nothing Less.” — Motto under the masthead of the suffrage newsletter “The Revolution”
The Myth
As the results of the 2023 elections are parsed and studied for what they portend for the future, the issue that has grabbed the voter’s attention is abortion rights and the associated right of women to access health care. Women have been an essential part of the Democratic Party base since they acquired the right to vote in 1920. Statistics show the historic importance of the women’s vote in presidential elections and their propensity for voting blue. Women voters show up to vote in greater numbers than men in presidential years and the differential is consistent even as turnout for both has increased in the most recent elections:
According to the PEW Research Center, in the past three national election cycles, women voted for Democrats in declining numbers, 58%(2018), 55% (2020), and 51% (2022), which is a concerning counterpoint to their rising voting pattern cited in the graph. Depending on the methodologyused and collection agent, the average differential in 2020 the gender gap for white women voters in the presidential race was somewhere between +7 to +11 in favor of Donald Trump.
Democrats can not take the support of women for granted and the election results from this week should give us pause. Abortion rights pose a significant rallying issue for women and the Democratic Party in general. The recent victories that began in Kansas and continued through Ohio on Tuesday indicate that women are motivated to vote when reproductive rights are on the ballot, but their allegiance may be more issue than party-oriented. The loyal core of the Democratic Party has been women, more specifically, minority women, and minorities in general. Buried within the PEW breakdown of recent elections there is a disturbing statistic that casts a pall over the belief that abortion alone will pull Democrats to victory in the Presidential election of 2024.
Post Dobbs, white women have shown a propensity to vote for Republican candidates. In 2018, white women voted +2 (50% to 48%) for Democrats. The differentials for white women in 2020 was a -8 with Donald Trump on the ballot and -11 in the 2022 midterms (44%-55%) in favor of Republicans. In an article about the myth of a monolithic “Women’s Vote,” Jessie Daniels dispels what passes for political “conventional wisdom”:
There’s this mythical belief in this all-encompassing “women’s vote”-that all women, simply by virtue of their gender, will vote for the Democratic candidate because it’s in their best interest to do so. But over and over again, half of white women voters have pulled the lever for the GOP, if they turn up to the polls at all. The most reliable Democratic voters are Black women. They show up to the polls and they pull the lever for Democrats: 94% Black women voters, for Hillary Clinton in 2016; 90%, for Joe Biden in 2020. But despite the performative pink pussy hats and the white pantsuits, white women have proven to be unreliable voters when it comes to issues widely regarded as “ women’s issues.”
…The longer we pretend there’s a mythical “women’s vote,” the longer we will be dismayed that a majority of white women consistently vote to uphold white power.
- DAME Magazine, “The Myth of the “Women’s Vote,” by Jessie Daniels
Gendered Privilege
Remember Peggy Noonan who unblushingly said on Meet the Press after Republican Supreme Court Justices had overturned Roe what most would consider laughable:
“Look, you know what the Republican Party should do now? It should use this victory, if you see it that way, to change itself and becomes a party that helps women.”
Noonan sits patiently in the right wing’s bullpen (I know, multiple entendre), always ready to soften their ugly side. Her catchphrases for Republican presidents have included the poetic “ slipped the surly bonds of earth … and touched the face of God” for Reagan after the Challenger shuttle disaster; to the enigmatic “a thousand points of light,” and “ a kinder, gentler nation.” for George H.W. Bush. She is also known for her intellectual imperiousness- one whose gaze down her nose is often shortsighted and mean- for example, when she called for the shooting of looters after Hurricane Katrina in her WSJ opinion piece entitled “ After the Storm: Hurricane Katrina: The good, the bad, the let’s-shoot-them-now:”
As for the tragic piggism (sic) that is taking place on the streets of New Orleans, it is not unbelievable but it is unforgivable, and I hope the looters are shot.
Henry Giroux, author, and cultural critic, cited the column for criticism, calling it a “barely coded rationale to shoot low-income Black people.”
Noonan is the poster girl for the problem Democrats have with whites in general and to a lesser extent with white women. There is an undeniable racial animus among some white voters, but certainly not all. Lurking beneath the surface, it is also about the privilege- not just the desire to retain it, but the experience of some of being fashioned by it. One has to wonder what it is about the Democratic Party agenda that is so disagreeable to more than half of white women voters that they could embrace an openly misogynist agenda being waged by Republicans. How, for example, would more than 53% of women voting in the presidential election in 2020 be drawn to Donald Trump with the myriad accusations by credible women that he has been a serial sexual predator?
In a speech given after the Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade, Rep Mary E. Miller (R) added texture to Noonan’s classist column from a decade before. Standing on the dais with Donald Trump, she gushed:
“President Trump, on behalf of all the MAGA patriots in America, I want to thank you for the historic victory for white life in the Supreme Court yesterday,” Rep. Mary E. Miller (R) said at the rally Saturday night in Mendon, Ill., referring to Trump’s former campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.” (emphasis mine)
To be sure, Rep. Miller was not speaking for all women, and certainly not for those for whom the conservative court had stripped away their reproductive rights. But she was expressing a point of privilege shared by some who in the 2022 midterms voted for Republicans in even higher numbers.
The Democratic Party’s support of women and women’s issues is not in question. In my opinion, it is organic to the party’s vision and fits policies democratic candidates have espoused over the years, reflecting the needs of their constituencies. While not perfect, the party over the years has self-corrected and in doing so added significant unaligned groups to its core. Blacks, LGBTQ+, middle-class, labor, and the poor, along with women. All have space within the party and, to a certain extent compete for its attention. Our “tent” is large and diverse.
Republicans, not so much. Their base in the modern era has strayed from the tenets of its founding and is more concerned with wealth-building, retaining wealth for the rich, business interests, and the reduction of governmental intrusion in their lives. Their base of support is less attracted by their vision of democracy than recruited from groups of disaffected white voters for whom government is an inconvenience. What is true of their demographic is it is aging both in years and relevance.
The future for Democrats and the nation lies in motivating younger voters, and especially younger women, for whom the current conservative court put in place by Republicans has threatened. According to a poll published in Ms. Magazine in October 2022, women’s issues will drive young voters, especially young women:
Forty-one percent of young women voters are feeling angry or worried about the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
Over half (55 percent) of young women voters in battleground states say abortion and women’s rights combined are the top issues that will determine their votes.
Only 33 percent of young women voters rank inflation and rising prices as their top issues motivating their vote, with even fewer ranking climate change (9 percent) or education debt (5 percent) as their top issue.
In a generic congressional ballot across battleground states, young women voters support Democratic candidates (48 percent), topping support for Republican candidates (29 percent) by double-digit margins.
The concept of a monolithic women’s vote is unfounded. Recent voting patterns suggest women will support issues and candidates for various reasons- both personal and political. Color and class, however, present a wedge. White women are not in lockstep agreement with younger women, minority women, or even themselves when it comes to the political expression of their needs. For some, the privilege of color and status aligns their interests more with white men and a Republican party that is becoming smaller and whiter. The fear of losing those advantages is palpable and drives voters to the polls to protect them:
The upshot of racial differences in candidate preference and turnout patterns is that Republican candidates benefited from both the relatively large size of the White adult population without a college degree and their somewhat higher turnout rates compared with Black, Hispanic and Asian adults.
Growth in support for Democratic candidates among White voters with a college degree, along with the high turnout levels among this group, offset some of the growth in support for the Republican Party among White voters without a college degree. But college-educated White adults remain a smaller share of all eligible voters than White adults without a college degree.
- PEW Research Center, “Voting patterns in the 2022”
As the nation becomes more diverse and the demographic balance shifts from majority white to multi-racial, the question of “privilege” within the parties and the nation becomes muted. And as “privilege” as an inherent societal benefit gives way to those associated with educational attainment, women have a right to question their party’s support not only of their issues but of their influence within the party. Women who represent roughly 50% of the population ( actually, 50.5% according to 2023 estimates) represent only 28% of the House and 25% of the Senate. The Democratic Party fares far better than its rival in that regard. In the 118th Congress, women represent 43% of House Democrats and 31%of the Senate Democrats as compared to the Republicans whose representation in leadership is at 18% and 16% respectively.
Beyond the party’s support of issues that impact women, the party must continue to show that it values women as leaders and places them in positions that reflect their importance and loyalty. Women haven’t earned that right (in either party), they own it as equals.
Just as the suffrage movement recognized the right to vote was a right denied women and not one earned or given to them, anything less would be taking their support for granted.
Originally published at https://vincerizzo.substack.com.
