Perhaps sensing that Trump would push them aside to get on a sinking ship's lifeboat, the women and children really hate Trump. And the women are reliable voters, which worries Republican operatives as they see Trump’s already abysmal approval among women sink even further below the waves. Republican pollster Whit Ayres: “it’s going to be a challenge” for Trump to chip away at Harris’s big lead among women. “The real challenge right now for Republicans is whether they can perform sufficiently well among men to overcome the deficit among women. Given the prominence of abortion in this year’s race and Trump’s past statements about women, the traditional gender gap could become a gender chasm.”
The DCCC started running this ad in a purple upstate New York congressional district. I’m guessing Marc Molinaro isn’t thinly Republican incumbent who will see ads like this over the next 9 weeks.
In fact, Dave Min (D-CA) isn’t waiting for the DCCC to place one in his district. His own new TV ad started running yesterday too. And the top line message for Orange County voters: his Republican opponent, Scott Baugh, opposes abortion, “no exceptions for rape or incest.”
There’s not a competitive race in the country where Democrats aren’t hammering Republicans in abortion. And with Kamala’s lead among women 54-41%, Trump and the GOP have reason to be worried. When Trump tried appealing to suburban women by moderating his stand on abortion and IVF, the evangelical wing of his coalition threatened to pull their support and he reversed course again and announced he would vote against the Florida abortion amendment that he had just claimed he would support a day earlier.
Yesterday, Alexander Bolton wrote that Señor T took a “stab at making amends with women by expressing support for providing greater access to IVF treatments paid for by the federal government or insurance companies. That drew pushback from one of his allies on Capitol Hill, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who warned that asking insurance companies to pay for free treatments would create a bad precedent... [T]he prominence of abortion rights and women’s access to health care treatments such as IVF appears to be energizing women in a way that threatens to eclipse the traditional GOP advantage with men.”
Ayres, the GOP pollster, said Harris’s growing lead among women is a reflection of the impact of Trump’s past statements that have alienated women and the “continual effect of the prominence of the abortion issue.”
Some Republican strategists are urging Trump to downplay or sidestep the discussion about abortion rights, which divides his party, and focus on issues important to women where Republicans have a built-in advantage over Democrats, namely the economy and inflation.
Remember when Trump tried gaslighting voters by claiming “everyone” had moved on and no one cared about abortion rights anymore, that “everyone” wanted Roe overturned and that the election would be fought on other issues, not women’s choice? People just rolled their eyes at his wishful thinking. Also writing for The Hill yesterday, Joseph Choi and Brett Samuels reported that “Trump is twisting himself into knots on abortion as he tries to navigate an issue that has proven galvanizing for Democrats and politically fraught for his party ahead of November. Trump has repeatedly urged Republicans to prioritize winning elections, even if it means softening their position on abortion. But his approach risks alienating social conservatives without the benefit of winning over more moderate voters… Trump last week made a slew of statements on reproductive issues that were all over the map politically.”
Choi and Samuels noted that “According to Ashley Kirzinger, associate director for public opinion and survey research at the health policy research group KFF, the overturning of Roe in 2022 was transformational in how reproductive issues, particularly abortion, motivated voters. ‘Prior to the Dobbs decision, you know, single-issue abortion voters— those that were especially motivated by the issue of abortion to turn out to vote— were largely pro-life, conservative voters,’ Kirzinger said. ‘And now we are seeing that switch, and they are largely pro-choice.’ Kirzinger noted that across the political spectrum, most voters support abortion access for people experiencing pregnancy-related emergencies and for patients’ right to travel to access abortions services. The Harris campaign has long viewed abortion as a winning issue and has signaled it will lean into the topic in the closing stretch of the campaign.”
One last ad that started running yesterday, this one in Las Vegas, where Democratic incumbent Dina Titus is slamming her Republican opponent, Mark Robertson, on one compelling issue: abortion.
Hopefully there will be a blood bath drowning the Republicans in their own anti women stances in November. Yeah I guess Vance would like to get rid of women voters, too. Screw them all.