Commentary: Big Tent Ideas

HEATHER HIGGINS: What Women Will Really Think In The Voting Booth

(Screen Capture/CSPAN)

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and groups supporting her are pushing a viral advertisement produced by Vote Common Good with a voice over by Julia Roberts that women should vote differently than their husbands.  In this ad they promote a narrative that women could publicly support former President Donald Trump and their husbands’ viewpoints but should secretly vote for Harris in the voting booth — in solidarity with other women.

Yet the opposite is far more likely to be true. Women may like the idea of electing the first female president and want to associate themselves with “joy” and those girl-boss vibes, but not enough to overcome their bigger desire to finally move beyond the financial anxiety that had plagued them these last three years.

Perhaps the most under-covered issue of this election — save for by Dana Perino and those at Fox News who have been covering stories that make this point — is how older women have been hit worst by the economic realities created by the Biden-Harris regime. These women have been robbed of their futures and security. Women don’t like to talk about it. They don’t want to complain, and some are even embarrassed to face such hardship — even though it is no fault of their own. These women are America’s unsung heroes.

Clearly, Harris’ campaign is paying attention: When the Trump-Vance pushback started to allay fears that they would ban abortion, Harris announced a new Medicare home-based care proposal to appeal to that “sandwich generation.” Women loved it.

GOP campaigns should follow Dana Perino’s lead, as her intuition appears even more insightful if you look at the data.

Independent Women’s Voice’s polling shows that over 90% of women — and 95% of those 55+ — fear that they won’t be able to afford to retire, or, if they lose their job after age 50, that they won’t be able to find a comparable job ever again. Nearly three out of four women worry about an economic downturn; nearly half say they are unprepared if the U.S. does enter a recession. This 2024 report on women’s economic status found “[r]oughly one-third of all women and half of low-income women say their retirement income or savings will not be enough to pay their monthly bills, which is an increase from 2023.”

Many of these women have spent their whole lives in the service of others — raising kids and taking care of ailing parents and family members. Now they are left with little for themselves and fear there is no place for them in this Biden-Harris economy. These women have been working harder, taking on second jobs and side hustles, and trying to stretch their budgets to do more with less. The Bureau of Labor Statistics confirmed that workers over age 75 are the fastest-growing segment of the labor force. A report from Indeed Flex found that 30% of retirees are considering working a temporary job. More than 70% cited inflation as the reason that they are going back to work. They have realized that the savings they thought would be enough for retirement won’t keep them afloat after the last three years of runaway inflation.

Older women worry not only about themselves but about their loved ones. They worry about their adult children who are under-employed and for whom normal adult milestones like buying a home and starting a family seem unaffordable. They want to help but often can’t. That hurts.

Trump recently offered a tax credit to recognize and alleviate some of the financial sacrifices made by caregivers. But what he offers is much more than that: He recognizes their struggles and sacrifices, and promises that better times are coming. He knows that these women are the unsung heroes of our society. Trump’s policies — strengthening the border, bringing down prices by unleashing American energy and rolling back unnecessary red tape, and supporting job creators and entrepreneurship — promise to create real opportunities for these women and their families to get ahead. These women know that better policies can help, because they remember what the Trump economy was like before. They want real joy and optimism back.

The Harris campaign has added guilt to these women’s already-heavy burden. They have made it taboo for these women to even acknowledge their struggles and their experience of worry and economic hardship. Harris’ campaign implies that these women have a duty to pretend that all they are feeling is “joy,” that the economy is really great and these women are just imagining their own hardships. The same message was pushed about rising crime — silly women who feel unsafe walking to their cars and fear for their loved ones coming home at night! Crime rates are down, the Harris campaign and their media cheerleaders insisted — until the misleading crime statistics were corrected to confirm what everyone outside of gated communities knew was already the truth.

These women have shouldered too much for too long. These unsung heroes deserve not to have to put on a happy face and endure another four years of hardship in the name of a sisterhood that doesn’t respect them. They want real change and the promise of actual joy. The only question is which campaigns will be smart enough to appeal to these voters.

Heather R. Higgins is CEO of Independent Women’s Voice (iwv.org).

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

(Featured Image Media Credit: Screen Capture/CSPAN)