I admit I am not thankful for the climate change deniers, assault weapons supporters and election rejecters so prevalent on the American political scene. What I am thankful for this holiday season is that stalwart bloc of voters in favor of doing something about climate change, mass murders and attacks on democracy.
Who are they? American women.
Keith Raffel
The press tends to look at the November 2024 presidential election in terms of red versus blue states, college-educated versus non-college-educated voters, and white voters versus voters of color. Fair enough, but in my view even more important is the contest between women and men voters.
Then-President Donald Trump encouraged a takeover of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in support of his claim to have won the 2020 presidential election. This fall, he’s used neo-Nazi language by calling his political opponents “vermin” and saying immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” In a second term, he has said he would appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Joe Biden and use the Justice Department to investigate and indict political enemies and critics. Former federal appellate Judge J. Michael Luttig and other prominent conservative lawyers have written that Trump and his allies are “explicitly threatening to upend fundamental tenets of the American constitutional system if returned to power.”
And what’s the overall reaction of American voters to the dangers another Trump term poses? In a recent NBC poll, the former president leads Biden by two percentage points. If not for the 19th Amendment that extended the right to vote to women, the margin would be far greater. That’s because male voters are ready to return Trump to the White House by a 55% to 35% tally. Women, on the other hand, reject Trump and what he stands for by 13 points, 52% to 39%.
Still, women do have a lot of work to do to deter a Trump-led turn away from democracy. In 2016, Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by over 2%. The eccentricities of the Electoral College delivered the White House to him nonetheless.
American women show good sense not only on who should sit in the White House but also on other critical issues. Let’s look at two of them: mass shootings and climate change.
In each of the eight deadliest mass shootings in America between 2012 and 2022 — including those in Sandy Hook, Las Vegas and Uvalde — the murderer used an assault weapon. It’s no surprise, then, that 70% of American women want to see a ban on such weapons. It is unfortunate, though, that such a ban is supported by only a minority of men.
The United Nations has called climate change “the single biggest health threat facing humanity.” How so? By its effect on “air pollution, disease, extreme weather events, forced displacement, pressures on mental health, and increased hunger and poor nutrition.” Fifty-nine percent of women in a recent survey believe climate change is indeed causing such serious effects, 10% more than among men.
So, what’s going on with these broad discrepancies between the viewpoints of men and women? Why would women take a stand against authoritarianism, mass murders and climate change more often than men? I don’t know, but in any case, I am thankful to those tens of millions of women (and the smaller number of men) for doing what they can to steer the country in the right direction.
This Thanksgiving season, then, I am hoping not for a blue wave or a red wave in next year’s elections but for a tsunami of women at the polling booths.
In Keith Raffel’s checkered past, he has served as the senior counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, started an award-winning internet software company and written five novels, which you can check out at keithraffel.com. He currently spends the academic year as a resident scholar at Harvard. To find out more about Keith and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at creators.com.
