The ‘horrifying’ truth behind Harris’ sticky note campaign

“Woman to woman,” reads the Post-it note, which is stuck on the back of a public toilet door at the Minnesota State Fair, “your vote is private. Abortion is healthcare. Harris and Walz 2024”.

The Post-its, which have popped up all over the United States, are part of a grassroots campaign by Democrats to win over women who are usually Republican or swing voters, but who feel uncomfortable sending Donald Trump back to the White House. Harris, whose path to victory looks increasingly narrow, is seeking to build what The New York Times calls “a permission structure” for Republican women to vote Democrat, just this once.

In a country where political views are calcified into near-total tribalism, and where ideology and identity are stronger motivating forces than political policy, Harris needs these women to break ranks. She needs them to lean in. To the secrecy of the ballot box.

That’s why Harris spent time this week in the suburbs of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin (the so-called “blue wall” states Joe Biden won in 2020, and which she needs to win this time).

The vice president was accompanied by former congresswoman Liz Cheney, probably her most high-profile Republican supporter, who helped her pitch to conservative-leaning women at a series of cosy events. Cheney is a staunch pro-lifer, but is nonetheless horrified by the consequences of state abortion bans, which have led to women being denied life-saving obstetric and gynaecological care.

“I have been troubled by the extent to which you have women who … have died, who can’t get medical treatment that they need because providers are worried about criminal liability,” she told a gathering in Waukesha County, a swing district outside Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Every day brings a freshly barbaric example of what America’s abortion bans really look like. This week Rolling Stone reported the story of Deborah Dorbert, a Florida woman who was informed at 23 weeks’ gestation that her baby would not live more than a few hours, at best. Due to Florida’s strict anti-abortion laws, Dorbert was forced to carry the baby for another three months, knowing he would die soon after she gave birth. Her newborn lived for 90 minutes. She held him in her arms as he suffocated to death, struggling to breathe. The “healthcare” Dorbert received, plus funeral costs for her baby, cost her and her husband $US40,000.

Speaking with Harris in a town hall-style event in a Detroit suburb, Cheney acknowledged that some Republicans feared reprisals if they came out publicly against Trump.

“I would just remind people,” she said, “if you’re at all concerned, you can vote your conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody.”

It says a lot about the health of US democracy that while voting is technically free, your choice could lead to severe social consequences if it becomes public.

It’s horrifying that women are being pitched to in this way: hide it from your loved ones, if you must, but vote for me to ensure your own security. Such intra-family surveillance usually only occurs in the context of totalitarian regimes.

This presidential election is extraordinary in many ways, but most importantly because it is the first US election in which gender is the central issue. Not because Kamala Harris will be the first female president if she wins, although that would be historic. And not because Donald Trump is a blatant misogynist who has now been accused of sexual misconduct/assault by 27 women (another one came forward this week).

It’s because across every demographic group pollsters talk to, a gender divide in voting intention asserts itself. And the gender divide is sharpest among young people aged 18-29. Across the last three New York Times/Siena national polls, Trump leads Harris 58 per cent to 37 per cent among young men. But Harris’ lead with young women is even bigger – she has 67 per cent support in this demographic, compared with 28 per cent of young women who support Trump.

As The New York Times reports, if this enormous gender divide in polling is replicated in the vote count, it will represent an incredible development that may “even change how we understand gender and cultural dynamics in America today”.

I would argue that change is already under way. The votes of non-college-educated men delivered Trump the presidency in 2016 and, since then, we have heard a lot about the disaffection of this group. These are men who are economically displaced by the decline of traditional blue-collar jobs. They are increasingly out-performed by girls and women in educational institutions, from kindergarten right up to college.

Their online consumption increasingly leads them under the influence of social media personalities who trade in anti-authoritarianism mixed with nostalgia for conservative masculine roles, often with a good dose of misogyny thrown in. They suffer from record rates of loneliness. They are far more likely than young women to die by suicide, or from “deaths of despair” caused by drug abuse.

It is increasingly difficult for such young men to imagine themselves providing for a family one day.

Meanwhile, young women raised with a fourth-wave feminist girl-power message have come of age only to be clubbed by reality. Their awakening has come in the form of the 2016 election of Trump, even after video emerged of him boasting about sexually assaulting women. Add to that the #MeToo movement and the unacceptable incursions on their reproductive rights that have resulted from the overturning of Roe v Wade.

These are young women who have attained higher educational achievement than any previous female generation. But they have come to the realisation that their hard work won’t necessarily guarantee their freedom in the most important respects, such as bodily autonomy.

As the November 5 election draws near, there is fearful speculation about the possibility of civil violence if the result is close, as it almost certainly will be. But no one knows what the long-term social consequences of this other war will be – the one between the sexes.

Jacqueline Maley is a columnist.

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