Trump’s women problem will elevate Harris and transform governance

As a Black woman, mom to a daughter and someone who mentors young women in politics, I’ve been monitoring the Trump campaign’s last-minute outreach to women and he’s not doing very well.

Polls show Donald Trump struggling to get the same levels of support among women that he got in past elections. So he recently held an “all-women town hall” where his goal seemed to be to scare us about incoming migrants, then promise to “protect” us.

This was, to put it mildly, pretty offensive.

If we needed protection against anybody, it would be against Trump himself: A man whose policies are bad for women, has been found liable for sexual assault and who has amped up racism in this country with especially vicious attacks on women of color.

That’s not progress, and I believe most women in this country feel the same way.

So, with just a week to go in this election, I am increasingly confident not only that women voters will power Kamala Harris to a win, but also that her success will lead to a groundswell of women running for office and to better support for those who do.

I say this even though I know that as progressive women we’ve been in this space before. Hillary Clinton came very close to the presidency in 2016 and actually won the popular vote although she fell short in the Electoral College.

But this year feels different. The very seasoned political operative James Carville recently wrote about hard data in favor of a Harris win, including her campaign’s financial advantage and MAGA-supporting candidates’ big losses in the last few years.

In the same piece, he also wrote that “it’s just a feeling.” I haven’t been around politics quite as long as Carville, but I agree because the world has changed.

When Clinton ran eight years ago the idea of a woman in the country’s highest office was an untested concept, more aspirational than real.

This time, we’ve had the experience of seeing a woman in the second-highest office in the country.

For Black women, another glass ceiling was shattered when Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined the Supreme Court.

Both of these developments have gone a long way toward normalizing the leadership and national prominence of women, especially women of color.

Not all changes have been positive and they will have powerful effects in this election, too.

We’ve had the terrifying experience of seeing reproductive freedom ripped away by Trump’s Supreme Court. Abortion is on the ballot across the country this year, including in several states with ballot measures to enshrine abortion rights in state law.

And while there is a lot of debate about how much the reproductive freedom issue will benefit Harris, I think it’s clear: It was the reason we did not get the “red wave” so many people thought we’d see in the midterms.

We’ve also seen how conservatives are behind a flood of racist book bans and censorship. If you’re a mom, you take threats to your kids’ education personally. We have limited data so far, but recent elections in my home state of Florida show that censorship and the people who support it are losers with voters.

And of course, Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) keep doubling down on insults to women, including offensive “cat lady” stereotypes and much more.

I believe all these factors will not only mobilize women to go to the polls for Harris but also that her campaign will be an extreme motivator for more women to run for office. I see it among the elected women I work with because Harris’s journey in overcoming barriers to success resonates with them.

Now we need more investment in the measures that will make running for office more accessible to future Kamala Harrises, like campaign finance reform and paying local legislators a living wage. As more women succeed, those will come.

So yes, I’m optimistic. Kamala Harris has already opened so many doors for women and girls. On Nov. 5, I believe she will open one more.

Raquel Jones is People for the American Way’s vice president of campaigns and programs.