STEVE ROBERTS: Women hold key to midterm elections

“Remember the ladies!”

Abigail Adams wrote that famous admonition to her husband John in 1776, while he was helping to draft the Declaration of Independence. It took another 144 years for women to gain the right to vote. And today, 102 years after suffrage became law, women hold the key to American elections.

For Democrats to have a realistic chance at retaining their Congressional majorities this fall — and probably the White House in 2024 — they will need the votes of Abigail Adams’ sisters: angry, energized women.

The pivotal event was June’s Supreme Court decision in the Dobbs case, which overturned almost 50 years of settled law and canceled a woman’s right to control her reproductive system. That ruling transformed abortion from an abstract question into a direct personal threat, especially for younger women of childbearing age.

“Once the actual Dobbs decision came down, everything changed,” Tom Bonier, an election analyst at the progressive firm TargetSmart, wrote in The New York Times. “For many Americans, confronting the loss of abortion rights was different from anticipating it. In my 28 years analyzing elections, I had never seen anything like what’s happened in the past two months in American politics: Women are registering to vote in numbers I never witnessed before.”

In light of the Dobbs decision — 5 of the 6 justices who joined the opinion were men, and all were appointed by male Republican presidents — it’s worth quoting Abigail Adams’ prescient prediction: “Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”

The election/voting/political gender gap has been around since 1980, when women first voted in greater numbers than men, and started trending toward the Democrats. Today, NBC reports, “The gender gap in American politics is growing and growing and growing.” An analysis of all their polls in 2010 showed men favoring Republican Congressional candidates by 9 points while women backed Democrats by 7 points, a combined difference of 16 points. That gap expanded to 25 points in 2018, and this year it’s widened again to 33 points.

The “rebellion” Abigail warned against, when “care and attention is not paid to the ladies,” is surging everywhere, but it’s most pronounced where right-to-life forces are most active. Take Kansas, where Trumpist Republicans tried to repeal a constitutional clause guaranteeing abortion rights. They lost overwhelmingly, in part because 7 out of 10 newly registered voters were women.

A similar dynamic is occurring in Pennsylvania, where the Republican candidate for governor, Doug Mastriano, favors a total ban on abortion, and the Senate race could determine party control of that chamber. Women are registering at three times the rate of men. More than half of new voters are under 25, and 62% are registered Democrats.

The Philadelphia Inquirer quotes Kiera Coyle, an 18-year-old who had delayed registering until the Dobbs decision came down. “Not just me, but all my friends, we immediately registered to vote,” Coyle said. “If we have the voice to vote, we wanted it. … We were really enraged. We were like, ‘How are we going backward?’“

“This is motivating women,” added Jamie Perrapato, a Democratic organizer. “This is finally the straw where people don’t want to believe horrible things are happening, but you can’t deny it anymore.”

Age is only one variable driving women’s choices. Two more are education and neighborhood. “In the last two elections, white women with college degrees were critical to Democrats’ winning coalition, voting for them by double-digit margins,” reports CBS. “And then this year, amid economic pessimism, Democrats slipped with this group. Today we see Democrats rebounding: Their lead with white college-degree-holding women has increased by 7 points since July and is currently 13 points.”

“The court ruling was especially salient for white, suburban women, a group known for switching between the two parties in recent elections and who say they would back a Democratic candidate over a Republican, 52% to 40%,” adds the Wall Street Journal.

Another key: The “economic pessimism” that was turning these women away from the Democrats has abated somewhat. “Fewer Americans view the economy negatively than a month ago, though things are still seen as bad,” according to CBS.

Republicans seem intent on forgetting the ladies, not remembering them. That’s a big mistake.