Reasons Young Women Embrace the Left Don’t Reflect Well on These Women

Dennis Prager / September 20, 2024

Last week, The New York Times featured an article headlined “How the Last Eight Years Made Young Women More Liberal.”

According to every poll, since 2016 there has been an unprecedented political/social gender gap between young American women and men.

Here is how the Times reported it:

In 2001, young men and women had similar political ideologies. … Then, around 2016, something shifted, a new analysis shows. Women ages 18 to 29 became significantly more liberal than the previous generation of young women. Today, around 40% identify as liberal, compared with just 19% who say they’re conservative. The views of young men—who are more likely to be conservative than liberal — have changed little. …

Sixty-seven percent of women 18 to 29 supported Vice President Kamala Harris in a New York Times/Siena College poll in six swing states last month, compared with 40% of young men. Fifty-three percent of young men in those states backed Donald J. Trump, compared with 29% of young women.

And why did this massive leftward shift of young women occur?

[Because] the race became in part a referendum on gender—[Hillary] Clinton running to be the first female president, Mr. Trump calling her a ‘nasty woman’ and bragging about sexual assault on the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape. … Seeing someone like yourself in office can spur political involvement, political scientists have found, especially for young women.

If these reasons for young women moving to the left beginning in 2016 are correct (abortion is not mentioned; this was six years before Roe v. Wade was overturned), America has a generation of many unimpressive young women.

Let’s analyze the three big reasons:

1. “Seeing someone like yourself”—meaning women seeing a woman running for president and then seeing her defeated.

It is hard to imagine a more primitive reason to support a candidate for president (or any other office) than the importance of their looking like oneself. Yet this is one of the most frequently offered left-wing arguments for the need to elect more women and blacks.

To begin with, it is simply dishonest. Does any woman on the left prefer a woman with conservative views to man with left-wing views? Does any black person on the left prefer a black with conservative views to a white with left-wing views?

So, then, if values and positions are far more important to women and blacks than whether a person is a man or woman, a white or a black, what does it all mean?

It means nothing. All it means is that emotions dictate left-wing women’s and left-wing blacks’ votes. It means that the left-wing argument for having people in political—or corporate board or any other— positions who “look like America” is pure emotion.

Is “looking like America” important in sports? Do white fans care whether the players on their favorite basketball or football team look like them?

Have we seen any diminution in fan support for the NFL, given that more than half of NFL players are black and only a quarter are white? Have we seen any diminution in fan support of NBA teams given that three-quarters of NBA players are black, and only 17% are white?

Is it important in movies? Are blacks more likely to watch a film with a black lead actor, or whites more likely to watch a film with a white lead actor? Or do both groups want to see stars—whether it’s a white Tom Hanks or a black Denzel Washington? In fact, according to YouGov, three of the five “most popular all-time actors/actresses” are black: Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson, and Denzel Washington. Do whites care?

Is it important in medicine? How many patients needing surgery ask for a surgeon of their own sex or race?

There is one other fact of life worth noting. Having more of your own group—blacks or women—in politically powerful positions has no positive effect whatsoever on your group. None of the black governors, senators, representatives, or mayors have done anything that has specifically benefited black Americans.

And the same holds for women in power with regard to helping women. Meanwhile, Asian Americans have become the most successful ethnic group in America with virtually no Asian Americans in positions of power.

2. Donald Trump called Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman.”

That this is one of the three major reasons for the 2016 left-wing shift of young American women is truly pathetic. It is further proof of the title of a column I wrote two years ago, “Feminism Has Weakened Women.”

One suspects that women of my mother’s—pre-feminism—generation would have been able to handle a male politician calling a female opponent a “nasty woman” far better than the current generation of young women, the products of three generations of feminism. They were also less traumatized by men’s boorish sexist comments.

There’s a wild inconsistency here as well: The whole point of feminism, according to feminists, is to have society treat men and women as equals, and equally. Yet feminists simultaneously insist that men treat women with a dose of chivalry or they’re “sexist.”

That same year, 2016, Trump called Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., “Little Marco.” Did any short men become leftists as a result? Apparently, short men are considerably stronger than feminized women. For that matter, who isn’t?

3. Trump “bragging about sexual assault on the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape.”

The third reason given for young women’s embracing leftism in 2016 was a recording made in 2005 that came out in 2016. In a private conversation with “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush, Trump said: “When you’re a star … you can do anything. Grab ’em by the p—y. You can do anything.”

Those comments were made 11 years earlier and in a private conversation with one person. Trump did not say them publicly.

Here is a moral rule of life: You cannot judge a person by comments made in private. We are to judge people by comments made in public, and by actions, whether done in private or public. Virtually every person has said awful things in private. It doesn’t matter. One purpose of private conversations is to let off steam.

It is a testament to the lack of wisdom of our age that we think we can know people—let alone judge them—by what they say in private.

And it is a testament to the lack of wisdom among a majority of America’s young women that these three foolish reasons propelled them to vote for the ideology that is destroying our country.

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