Women, for the Win
How Kamala Harris and American Girls save democracy.
The Secret Pod is live and it is spicy. Sarah kind of lost her mind about the people who refuse to get off the sidelines. I absolutely lost my mind about St. Larry.
And we had a digression about J-Lo’s acting career.
The show is here.
1. The Girls
Let’s start with three videos from the last 48 hours.
First, Jennifer Lopez gave what might have been the best surrogate speech Kamala Harris has gotten this campaign. It’s 12 minutes long, but the key part runs from 8:07 to 10:15.
Second: This video from the Super PAC Seneca Project is probably the best ad of the cycle. I don’t want to oversell the thing, but holy crap. It will make you stand up and salute.
Seriously. Click and watch it. Right now.
Third, there’s this ad in which Julia Roberts reminds women that they can vote for Harris without telling their husbands.
The message is unmistakable: For the final 96 hours of the race, the Harris campaign is leaning on women.
I will be honest: When I saw that Julia Roberts ad I was a little skeeved out. “Is this real,” I thought? “Do women actually have to hide their political preferences from overbearing partners?”
This scenario seemed kind of crazy. If your partner is pressuring you to vote for a political candidate then you have bigger problems than the 2024 election.
But then, I have a history of not understanding real things that happen in the real world.
Fortunately, Conservatism Inc. turned this into a teachable moment for me.
There was Charlie Kirk, getting legit mad at the fictional woman in the commercial:
I think it’s so gross. I think it’s so nauseating where this wife is wearing the American hat, she’s coming in with her sweet husband who probably works his tail off to make sure that she can go, you know, and have a nice life and provide to the family, and then she lies to him saying, “Oh, yeah, I’m gonna vote for Trump,” and then she votes for Kamala Harris as her little secret in the voting booth. . . .
Kamala Harris and her team believe that there will be millions of women that undermine their husbands and do so in a way that it’s not detectable in the polling.
“Undermining their husbands.”
Jesse Watters also had thoughts:
If I found out Emma was going to the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair. . . .
That violates the sanctity of our marriage. What else is she keeping from me? What is she lying about?
Why would she do that and vote Harris? Why would she say she was voting . . . If I caught her and she said “I lied to you for the last four years” . . .
It’s over, Emma! That would be D-Day!
“Sanctity.”1
And then there was the candidate himself. In his orange work vest, Trump talked about his deep respect for women:
The former president told his audience that his aides told him that when [he] described himself as a “protector” for women, it was “inappropriate.” After complaining that he pays his advisers “a lot of money,” Trump concluded, “I said, ‘Well, I’m gonna do it whether the women like it or not.’”
“Like it or not.”
Consider me educated.
2. Shares
Will women save us? Let’s do some back-of-the-ballot math.