Donald Trump’s stunning victory has everyone talking, especially about the surprising gains that he made with minority, youth, and women voters.
As a woman, I was told that most of us would be voting for Harris because she was a champion of women’s health. It didn’t happen. In fact, Harris barely won the majority of the female vote, and she won women in smaller numbers than her Democratic predecessors.
Why?
Recently, I noticed that a “crunchy” mom, or a mom who adopts a natural, holistic lifestyle, whom I follow on social media shared one of Robert F Kennedy Jr’s MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) posts on her Instagram story. She has hundreds of thousands of followers.
And it got me thinking – what if different health concerns influenced the female vote other than the reproductive healthcare that Harris’s campaign was banking on?
Harris and the Democratic Party felt confident in their standing with women voters due to her outspoken advocacy of women’s reproductive rights. Her campaign saturated the media with stories of women who had not received proper miscarriage healthcare and who had witnessed botched abortions and other pregnancy tragedies. Women’s health was the defining issue of the Harris campaign.
But if the feed in my enclave of Instagram reflects broader trends, as I think it does, and if the crunchy movement is indicative of health concerns shared by many American women, then it is quite possible that the growing number of naturally-minded and holistic health women, particularly mothers, sympathised with RFK.
The former Democrat turned Trump supporter speaks right to the heart of the issues that crunchy, and even not so crunchy mothers, worry about.
In recent years, several trends call into question the food, medical, and pharmaceutical industries that RFK has vowed to reform.
First, many polls have shown that vaccine scepticism has increased dramatically since the pandemic. According to a recent Gallup poll, only 40 percent of Americans consider vaccines extremely important to the wellbeing of their children, a dramatic shift from in 2019 when this was true for more than half of Americans.
Even before COVID, RFK was lobbying for mercury to be removed from childhood vaccinations. Kennedy’s vaccine scepticism resonates with Americans who regard vaccines critically, forgo certain vaccines, or avoid them altogether.
Second, RFK’s worry about ultra-processed foods is shared by many mothers. The popularity of organic produce and rejection of processed foods have grown stronger in recent years. “Seed oils,” one of the more highly processed and ubiquitous food ingredients, was a word almost unheard of just a few years ago, and now households are seeking alternatives. The most dramatic example is the recent return of raw milk.
The third factor is distrust of doctors and Big Pharma in the face of a growing mental and chronic health crisis. A study this August by Northeastern University showed that faith in medical professionals has been declining over the past four years, falling from 71.5 percent in April 2020 to only 40.1 percent in January 2024. Many studies have shown that women feel gaslit and ignored by doctors. Add to this the rising mental health crisis and chronic illness crisis and you have a crisis of confidence in the medical profession.
Fourth, a growing number of women think that holistic, alternative, and nutritional health has been sidestepped in favour of quick-fix drugs. RFK has questioned the motives of the pharmaceutical and medical industry, drawing attention to the fact that the more chronic illness and drug-dependency there is, the more money it makes. He has vowed to root out corruption in the medical profession and Big Pharma.
As a mother myself, I can attest that no one feels these concerns more acutely than we do. Mothers on both sides of the political aisle can join hands on this. We are worried to death.
The Democrats made a huge mistake in defining women’s healthcare as abortion labeled as reproductive healthcare. Most women in the US are mothers, and for most moms their children’s health is paramount. For all the left’s talk about abortion and women’s health, perhaps the female vote was more interested in the health and wellbeing of their children. It’s no wonder RFK’s promise of a healthier America resonated with them.
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This article was originally published on Mercator under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Image credit: MAHA Media Kit
