For awhile now I’ve been saying that the big story coming out of the 2018 midterm elections is all about women. In making that point, I’ve been pretty hard on the media for missing what’s happening. But some folks are getting it. For example, take a look at the latest edition of Time Magazine:
In this week’s issue of @time, I profile Stacey Abrams, the Democrats’ rising star in Georgia: https://t.co/ibXnVNA3Tw pic.twitter.com/JJY7cVfRQy
— Molly Ball (@mollyesque) July 26, 2018
It won’t come as a surprise to anyone that a publication like Jezebel is on it.
“If you are constantly treading water in a news cycle of endless shit, here’s a raft to keep you afloat: Women, who are currently running for office in record numbers, may soon be taking over the state of Nevada.” https://t.co/52dui8XoTe via @jezebel
— Lindsay Crete (@LindsayCrete) July 26, 2018
But it’s obviously not just happening in Nevada.
True in WA too, 49% of Democratic candidates who have filed to run for state legislative offices this cycle are women. That will go a long way towards fixing the fact that women of any party only make up 1/3 of the leg now.
— Lindsay Crete (@LindsayCrete) July 26, 2018
Those stories are all about the candidates. But take a look at what is happening among women voters, as is documented in the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.
Female voters say they prefer Democrats this fall by a 21-point margin, 54 percent to 33 percent. Republicans win men by 9 points, 48 percent to 39 percent.
Negative opinions of Trump are pronounced among women. Trump’s job approval has remained relatively static — still underwater at 39 percent approval to 51 percent disapproval among all Americans. But there is a staggering 43-point gender gap with 62 percent of women disapproving of Trump’s job and half of men approving of his performance.
Fifty-seven percent of suburban women also strongly disapprove of Trump, and Democrats have a 28-point edge in which party suburban women would vote for in November. This is an ominous sign for Republicans given that these will be critical voters in many House battlefields.
All of those numbers are staggering. But Trump has a 43-point gender gap among women and, drilling down, suburban women prefer Democrats by 28 points, which is indeed an ominous sign for Republicans. According to this, it’s only getting worse.
There’s a message for the White House in our latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll when it comes to the issue of family separations at the nation’s southern border: Mom is mad.
The emotional stories of separated migrant children’s confusion and their parents’ desperate attempts at reunification may have created a particular political problem for the Trump administration among those who are mothers of young children themselves.
The poll finds that — more than on any other issue — mothers of children under 18 give Trump negative marks on his administration’s treatment of families at the border.
Just 28 percent of mothers who currently have a child under 18 at home approve of Trump’s handling of the separated families, compared with 63 percent who disapprove.
Whenever I see things like this I am reminded of the proposition that something deep stirred inside women when one of the most experienced candidates to ever run for the presidency—who also happened to be a woman—lost to a pussy-grabbing, ignorant, foul-mouthed, bigoted, sexist bully. Not only was that an insult to strong independent women, it also meant subjecting our children to more of this:
I don’t know if the response of women to all of that will be enough to win back legislative majorities. But there’s one thing I know for sure: there are women all over this country (and men who care about them) that can’t keep quiet and are determined to be heard!
