Trump is losing suburban women. Here's how he can win them back.

By putting charismatic GOP women at the center of the campaign, Trump can mitigate some of the "weird," tone-deaf, and dumb pratfalls that have plagued his reelection effort. He needs to act NOW.

Those of us who have worked at the AOC “tippy-top" of the DC power pyramid have known for a while that Republicans struggle with suburban women. This is not a Trump Era phenomenon. John McCain and Mitt Romney––men of radically different temperaments from each other and Donald Trump––initiated the trend. McCain’s campaign manager confirmed as much to me over dinner.

By 2012, suburbia had become more diverse. While Romney won 56% of white women overall, Obama overwhelmingly won Asian, black, and Hispanic women, whether ex-urban, suburban, or urban. Over the last eight years, Trump has amplified the problem.

According to CBS News exit polling from the 2018 midterm election, 53 percent of suburban women voted Democrat. That’s up from 51% in 2016 and 47% in 2014. In 2020, Biden carried 54% of the suburban vote, winning the gender gap there and elsewhere. In a super tight race like we have in 2024, the trend is not The Donald’s friend.

The stereotype remains that Democrats are an urban party. While slightly true, Democrats are increasingly a party of suburbia and the ultra-rich, as the “MAGA Republican” brand under Trump makes significant inroads with urban black, Hispanic, and young male voters. Compared to Joe Biden's and Hillary Clinton's outsized performances with those key voting blocs, Trump is outperforming.

As Trump moves the Republican Party to adopt historically Democratic policies, such as paid family leave, government-funded in vitro fertilization (IVF), a moderate and state-centered stance on abortion, no taxes on tips, pro-conservation policies like The Great American Outdoors Act and The Trillion Trees Initiative, as well as historic criminal justice reform (which passed on his watch, not a Democrat’s), the policy playing field uniquely owned by Democrats has shrunk to high taxes, expanded regulations, government giveaways, open borders, and state surveillance of speech. With many of Trump’s positions of great appeal to suburban women, you'd think Trump would outperform among them, too.

He has not. Trump's raucous "fight! fight!" Jimmy-Hoffa-style union leader shtick naturally appeals to working-class and union voters––the Teamsters just de facto endorsed Trump by refusing to endorse the Democratic nominee for the first time in decades––but turns off a critical proportion of suburban women. Trump's elegant, graceful, and impressive multi-lingual wife, Melania, and his composed and uniquely successful daughter, Ivanka, provided that quiet, calm, motherly counterbalance in 2016. That is gone from Trump 2024. Except for his soft, steady, and even spiritual appearance on Wednesday’s Gutfeld!––he should do more of these intimate settings––Trump is hardening his exterior online and at rallies. Garish, uncouth, and overamped female members of Trump’s entourage––from Laura Loomer to Kimberly Guilfoyle––are not helping.

Any doofus knows you don't tweet, "I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT," and hope to win over suburban women whose young daughters are obsessively glued to every Taylor wink, blink, and nod. Stepford Swifties can be very persuasive when mom goes wobbly on anything Tay commands. Despite the incredible women in his life, Trump keeps failing the mother-daughter solidarity test.

Yet the race is close because Kamala Harris is a beatable, fourth-tier presidential candidate who couldn’t win one primary vote the last time she ran and has a stark record of underachievement as Vice-President. Her vague “Hallmark” grasp of policy is embarrassing. Her nasally, guffawing, and sometimes loopy way of speaking is tremendously off-putting to suburban women who take issues like public safety, inflation, and national security with the utmost solemnity. Harris is not a serious person. She presents as a loose, fun, oddly anxious party girl—who got a big leg up from Willie Brown––not a strong commander-in-chief. She would likely lose to any other Republican candidate except Trump.

Sadly, despite his impressive policy wins while President––the Abraham Accords, Operation Warp Speed, and Remain in Mexico––Trump is not much better. In his gruff manner, Trump presents as slightly more serious than Harris by default until he delves into wacko conspiracies about cats, dogs, crowd sizes, and Kamala's ethnicity, which plays right into Harris’s sweet spots of history, identity, and victimology.

Trump has a fantastic pre-COVID economic and security track record to run on. In more measured hands, Republicans would be unbeatable given the spate of crime, illegal immigration, war, and inflation under Biden/Harris. But ADD Trump can't help himself. He keeps drifting into the wild, wacky, and absurd.

Of course, Harris's candidacy is absurd on face. Yet this genuinely odd, almost AI creature of the Socialist East Bay––whose grasp of basic economics is zero––still comes across as more reassuring to suburban women, who put a premium on etiquette and affability. A kicky disposition and some impressive dance moves don’t hurt, either.

Many suburban moms are trying to juggle an at-home business, kids (and possibly grandkids), running, biking, yoga, Pilates, gardening, after-school activities, dinner, home economics, the book club, and that trip with “the girls” to play pickleball in Phoenix. Everything is scheduled. Everything is planned, even that tiny hidden tattoo they've waited years to get. Randomness and spontaneity don’t figure into the equation. It’s a stereotype, but if they were honest, most suburban moms would admit that the Hoka shoe fits.

Many suburban moms secretly dig the bad boy and free spirit (in Crotty, they get both). Before January 6, Trump, at times, fit that mold. But the shtick has grown old, and suburban women are praying––like Husker fans everywhere––for "order to be restored." If it were not for Harris's sizable deficits––as a person, prosecutor, and coronated candidate––Trump would have no chance. If Harris had picked as her running mate the far more strategic Governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, instead of the Commie version of Chris Farley (Tim Walz), the Commonwealth would not be in play. By the same standard, Trump would have less of a problem with suburban women if he had picked any woman as a running mate, especially Nikki Haley. He got cocky after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance and didn’t foresee that Democrats would change horses midstream. Though the Hillbilly Elegy author brings a deeply inspiring life story, JD Vance was not the best choice against a female Democratic standard-bearer in a race that suburban moms will decide.

To date, Harris has enjoyed a free ride from the media: no pushback, no tough questions, no fact-checking of her and Biden's sundry lies about inflation, the border, war, and Trump. Due to the one-party capture of the 4th Estate, that media pushback will likely never come. But a Kamala blooper, laughing fit, or choice serving of word salad will.

After two months of nonstop fawning coverage, Harris should be up by double digits in polls, especially with inflation declining, unemployment not horrible, and the Federal Reserve doing her a huge election favor last week by cutting interest rates by 50 points. But she is not. Harris is maintaining a slim Electoral College lead in the recent RCP poll of polls, winning the Rust Belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and losing all other swing states except Nevada, with the race possibly coming down to the famed Nebraska CD-2 blue dot. That tells you a lot. The race should not be this close, which gives Trump a small window to close the deal with suburban women, who cost him the election in 2020 and are prepared to do so again.

The 2024 U.S. presidential election will be decided late by a tiny cohort of undecided voters, who will move en masse in one clear direction. A healthy percentage of those undecided voters are suburban women. Trump can close them if he changes tone, puts aside dumb ad hominems, sits down with women interviewers in smaller settings, and puts genuinely impressive and credentialed women like Nikki Haley, Apoorva Ramaswamy, Ivanka Trump, Melania Trump, and Usha Vance—all five are pictured throughout this piece—at the front and center of his campaign.

As the New York real estate magnate well knows, sizzle sells. American women want role models they can look up to. Compared to Kamala’s coarse and Trump-deranged cadre of female backers––Joy Behar, Liz Cheney, Hillary Clinton, Joy Reid, and Rachel Maddow––Trump has women on his bench who are inspiring, elegant, and charismatic. Use them!