In the 48 hours after President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, she did something every working woman in America can relate to: She put her multi-tasking superpowers to work and got a big job done in little time.
But Harris’ impressive launch will not be enough to bring to her side the suburban women who could swing this election. Most didn’t like either Donald Trump or Joe Biden and many were ready to stay home or go third-party. Harris needs to make the case why that’s a bad idea by courting them on the issues they care about: the cost of living, threats to democracy, reproductive rights and immigration.
A week ago, sitting in a hoodie from her alma mater, Howard University, Harris got off to quite a start. In 10 hours, she made over 100 calls, lining up endorsements, locking in delegates, and getting commitments from donors. She persuaded the Biden campaign staff to stay on board and work for her. She called potential running mates. And she sewed up support so quickly that she effectively iced out any challenge to her nomination.
Supporters have now galvanized behind Harris with a level of enthusiasm that could become the new force field in this unprecedented election year. But to capitalize on it, Harris is going to need every one of her get-it-done skills to keep momentum building for the next 100 days and demonstrate that she can win in swing states. Like Hillary Clinton in 2016, Harris could win the popular vote but lose the race in the Electoral College.
That’s how Trump won the presidency that year — in part due to support from white women voters. Many were college-educated and live in the suburbs.
Now, many of these same women are angry at Trump for appointing three justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, taking away their right to legal abortions in many states. They are disgusted with his misogyny, narcissism, name-calling and constant grievances — not to mention his civil conviction on sexual abuse charges and his criminal conviction in New York on 34 felony charges. And they’re fed up with the Republican Party for allowing itself to become the cult of his personality.
Many of these white, suburban women drifted away from Trump in 2020. In 2022, animated by the loss of reproductive rights, they gave Democrats a boost in the midterm elections. And in 2023, many gravitated to Nikki Haley as the sane alternative. But after she caved to the MAGA machine, there was nowhere for them to go — because they were also disappointed in Biden, with his diminished ability to counter Trump’s lies and barbs, his lackluster presence on the campaign stage, and his reluctance to step down and pass the baton to a younger leader.
“I don’t think those women would have voted for Donald Trump, but they might have just stayed home,” Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University told me.
White women are among the most divided voting blocs in America. But in recent years, according to KFF Polling, suburban women are “more akin to a microcosm of the U.S. as they shift younger, and more racially and ethnically diverse,” which has given Democrats an advantage.
Will suburban women land with Harris this year? That remains to be seen — but the early momentum is promising.
Harris brings an empathetic ear and pragmatic policies to women and families concerned about their futures. She has vowed to halt the march of Christian Nationalist authoritarians who want to take women back to a time of less freedom, but she will also need to assure women that she will protect the parental controls that the right has successfully persuaded them they are losing. And for both women and supportive dads with daughters, she promises to sign legislation to restore women’s lost right to their reproductive health.
“Do we want a future where our daughters have fewer rights than our grandmothers, where their bodies are state property, their voices silenced, their opportunities erased?” asks Tara Setmayer, former Republican operative and now co-founder of The Seneca Project, a bipartisan super-PAC dedicated to mobilizing moderate women voters in swing states.
The sentiment was echoed in a series of video calls with hundreds of thousands of supporters last week. It began with a Sunday video call with Black women leaders that raised more than $1.5 million and had more than 40,000 participants. Another call on Monday night with Black men raised $1.4 million. On Thursday, more than 164,000 white women broke Zoom’s attendance record and raised $2 million. More calls are scheduled this week.
It’s a stunning measure of enthusiasm given Harris’ shotgun start to her campaign, and it’s a signal that her presence at the top of the ticket allows many women to breathe a sigh of relief. But to sustain the excitement, she is going to have to manage her message carefully, especially in the crucial swing states.
To win their support, Harris will have to emphasize that reproductive health is not a partisan issue. She should have answers for voters who continue to be worried about rising household costs and childcare — a top issue for all women voters. She will need to go on the offensive with a plan to seal the border and reform the immigration system — a top issue for independents and anti-Trump Republican voters. And she and her surrogates are going to have to aggressively respond to the misogynistic and racist attacks coming from the Trump campaign to shield her from letting their narrative prevail.
Not all polls measure suburban women the same, but the early polls now show mixed results for Harris among non-urban women. According to the HarrisX/Forbes poll, Harris leads Trump by 12 percentage points with suburban women (52% to 40%), compared to Biden’s 3-percentage point lead before he dropped out. An NPR/PBS News/Marist poll finds that Trump leads Harris 47% to 42% with small city/suburban women voters, but many more are now undecided and rethinking their choice — 11%, compared to 2% in their last poll.
The energy around Harris is not just excitement for her and a smooth, well orchestrated launch — it’s also excitement about having a talented and successful woman in the driver’s seat. Many women have been fed up with a list of roadblocks for a very long time, including the glass ceiling, under-representation in the corridors of power and unequal burden-sharing at home, just to name a few. Harris is an overdue release valve. If she succeeds, she could become the first of many things: the first Indian American elected to the presidency, the first female president, — and the first candidate in the nation’s history to take a campaign from start to finish in 108 days.
Mary Ellen Klas is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former capital bureau chief for the Miami Herald, she has covered politics and government for more than three decades.
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