Women Will Win the 2024 Election, Part 2

By Colleen O’Connor

If you didn’t watch the Olympics, you missed awesome talent, fierce competition, spontaneous joy and a history of new world records writ large. Not just excellence that dwarfed the past, but a whole new future.

A future I predicted in an April OB Rag column, titled, “It’s the Women, Stupid,” (a play on James Carville’s’ “it’s the economy stupid”) that will determine the outcome of the 2024 election.

That future was on full display in the Paris Olympics. Or as the NBC news headlines announced in bold print: “World beaters: Women athletes ruled the Olympics.”

Especially American women.

“The Paris Games were the first to have an equal number of men and women competing. If American women were their own nation, they would have won the third most medals, behind only the U.S. and China.”

“Katie Ledecky won her ninth gold medal and her 14th overall these Games, becoming the most decorated U.S. female Olympic swimmer of all time.

“Simone Biles and the women’s gymnastics team — the so-called “Golden Girls” — had a successful redemption tour, bringing home gold in the team competition.”

“Amit Elor became the U.S.’ youngest wrestler to compete and win a gold medal, and Lauren Scruggs made history as the first openly out and Black woman to medal in fencing, bringing home an individual silver and a team gold.”

The U.S. women’s basketball team won its eighth Olympic gold in a row in a nail bitter.  Not to mention the women’s soccer team, and the dozens of other winners.

How does all this affect the outcome of the 2024 election? Simple. Follow the arc of history.

Women not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution were deemed “chattel” legally. No right to vote. No right to elective office. No right to equal pay, an education, entrance to medical or law schools, equal pay for equal work, etc.

And, yet here we are. On the shoulders of the suffragettes, the abolitionists and their descendants, the U.S. now has its second female Presidential candidate, a former Speaker of the House, Supreme Court Justices, multiple Mayors, Governors, and powerful CEOs, surgeons, professors, scientists, etc.

Again, not hard to comprehend and not hard to predict.

Women register to vote in higher numbers than men. “In several years, the discrepancy has been by as high as 10 percentage points.”

According to the League of Women Voters, “The Next Election is Up To Women.” “We pulled data from the US Census and KFF to illustrate the power of women voters in 2022, the (census) numbers indicate that women showed up to vote in overwhelming numbers.”

Notably, this was the year that the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion care.

Look at the outcomes and gains since the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the 50-year rights of women’s reproductive choices enshrined in Roe v. Wade. Dozens of statehouses have banned abortion (regardless of rape or incest or even health of the woman) despite huge popular opposition.

Abortion has been on the ballot in seven states since that landmark court decision one year ago and in each instance, in red states and blue states, anti-abortion advocates have lost.”

The 2024 election will be about and for women.  Those against will surely lose.

Women have become a political force not seen since the Suffragettes, the #MeToo movement and Civil Rights.

Paramount is Speaker Emeriti, Nancy Pelosi, who literally saved the country from the brink, via an orchestrated (yes, stealth-like) removal of President Joe Biden from the 2024 Democratic nomination. Hence, V.P. Kamala Harris.

And then there is the woman who started the ball rolling, Stormy Daniels. The hush money trial that was part of an attempt to interfere in the 2020 presidential election may be the single case provided a glimpse of what is now an avalanche.

Also, Liz Cheney, whom I still predict will be the first female leader of the House GOP.

Then the contrast—Donald Trump. Recently filmed in a golf cart, calling Harris, “A fxxx-ing bitch.”

New campaign reality, “How Low Can We Go” v. “How High Can We Reach?”

What irony. “It’s the Women, Stupid” who will decide in 2024.