We’ve been hearing a lot of talk about how Democrats should blow up their convention, invent a new nominating system straight out of “The West Wing” and replace President Joe Biden with someone else.
Instead of lining up behind the president who has done more for women than any of his predecessors, we’re told to make other plans if we want to defeat former President Donald Trump.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
But one debate performance and voices of doom from talking heads haven’t changed what’s at stake in this election. People need to calm down. We can save democracy if we stick together and keep our eyes on the prize.
With abortion rights on the ballot in the battleground states of Arizona, Nevada and Florida and in Montana, among others, and Trump’s responsibility for overturning Roe v. Wade, something he brags about, women are motivated, energized and deeply committed to this vote.
We will vote in our interest, not fall in line with others — most of whom are men and do not speak for us. (We’re used to that).
Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are a team that has won tremendous victories. For example, nearly two-thirds of Biden’s appointed judges are women or racial or ethnic minorities, a first for any president.
And Biden made diversity a priority in the agencies and departments whose work impacts women’s lives. For example, after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, the Food and Drug Administration endorsed allowing oral contraceptives available to be sold without a prescription, making birth control more accessible for people who can’t afford or easily visit a health care provider.
Biden has canceled billions of dollars in student loans that will vastly change the trajectory for women and families around the country, and he has made insulin affordable for large percentages of women who have difficulty paying for expensive prescriptions.
Biden established the first-ever White House Gender Policy Council with a mandate to drive a whole-of-government approach to advance gender equality and gender equity. His 2025 budget lowers child care costs; provides national, comprehensive paid family and medical leave; prevents and addresses gender-based violence; and advances maternal health and health equity.
Meanwhile, the Project 2025 plan said to be a blueprint for a second Trump term, would ban medication abortion and create a “pro-life task force” within the Department of Health and Human Services.
Women had this choice in 2016. Then, 53% of white women voted for Trump, while 94% of African American women and 69% of Latinas voted for the Democratic presidential nominee, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. That’s a shameful statistic we can’t afford to repeat.
Women can lead the way in 2024, and now is the time to double down on that commitment.
Women of color are the most reliably progressive voters in the country. When they are blocked from voting, anti-woman legislators get elected. Those legislators then enact laws that harm women in all communities or block beneficial policies such as paid leave, equal pay or an increase in the minimum wage.
But along with voter suppression, voter exhaustion is now holding us back. There’s a new conventional wisdom brewing that Biden and Harris’s record of historic achievement isn’t enough to take to voters.
But that’s not what I’m hearing, not in states like Georgia, where members of my organization and other grassroots activists are working to get out the vote and talk to their neighbors about what’s at stake in this election.
Biden and Harris are the best equipped to lead that fight because it’s their record before voters. Now is not the time to change the national conversation away from the Biden-Harris record.
I’m proud to double down on that record and stand with Biden.
Christian F. Nunes is the president of the National Organization for Women
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