As you know, I am a huge fan of J.D. Vance. He is intelligent and personable, and the Associated Press just proved that his political skills include understanding the voting patterns of childless cat ladies. 

You may recall the ridiculously phony "controversy" over Vance's flippant comment about "childless cat ladies" on a podcast years ago. The media played it up as a slur against women who can't have children--an obviously ridiculous interpretation of Vance's argument that Americans having children and families is good for society and our own social health. 

JD Vance answers a reporter’s question about what he would tell the millions of women offended by his childless, cat lady comments. While answering, an attendee yells, “This cat lady loves you!” pic.twitter.com/Bq7DSzIfi2

— Stephanie Myers (@_StephanieMyers) August 6, 2024

We live in a society that deprecates having children. Childless couples have been elevated to lifestyle icons, and younger people are often discouraged from having kids because of fake environmental or lifestyle reasons. There is even a name for this trend: DINKs--dual income, no kids. 

It's all partt of the antinatalism that has swept the Western world, with birth rates dropping like a rock and civilizational collapse on the horizon. Western countries now rely on importing vast numbers of people from the third world to replace the current population and keep economic growth going. 

Vance stands in opposition to this trend, and the psychology behind it. Along with childlessness comes an indefinite extension of childhood for the adults who choose not to have kids. Hedonism replaces responsibility, and selfishness overrides selfishness. 

We all know exactly what a childless cat lady is like. They can best be described as "idiosyncratic," and less nicely as narcissistic and weird. The cat takes the place of the child who never grows up. 

Do not make a crazy cat lady reference, do not make a crazy cat lady reference, do not make a crazy cat lady reference.

CRAZY CAT LADIES VOTED FOR KAMALA:

"Harris found success with women who have cats, but Trump got the dog owner vote" https://t.co/zmS1MAxn2Q

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) December 4, 2024

It's no surprise that the cat lady vote went to Harris--by 60%. Dog ladies, cat men, and multi-species pet homes all went for Trump or were basically divided in half, proving that there is something to the "childless cat lady" meme. 

BREAKING: Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris after this debate, signed a “Childless Cat Lady” pic.twitter.com/oHMRaUlGjj

— Omar Jimenez (@OmarJimenez) September 11, 2024

Of course, "childless cat lady" is an archetype. It's not that every childless lady with a cat fits into this category. Not having children and loving cats does not a lefty make, but the archetype represents something real. People with certain personality traits tend to behave similarly. The weird lady down the street with a cat named "Pookie" or "Mr Boots" is much like the weird lady across town with the cat named "Precious."

Childless or not, women who only owned a cat were more likely to support Harris than were dog owners, or voters who had a cat and a dog. About 6 in 10 women who owned a cat but not a dog supported Harris, according to AP VoteCast. She did similarly well among women who did not own either kind of pet.

Her success with women who were cat owners didn’t translate to men. Trump narrowly won the backing of men who only owned cats; slightly more than half of these voters supported him.

It’s impossible to know how much Vance’s comments played into Harris’ success with women who only had cats, but most of those voters had a “very” or “somewhat” unfavorable opinion of Vance. They were more likely to dislike than women who only own dogs or women who have cats and dogs. They were also more likely than female voters overall to have a negative view of Trump and the Republican Party.

A simple explanation for the divide is that women who were cat owners were never very inclined to vote for Trump, even before Vance’s comments resurfaced. According to AP VoteCast, only about 4 in 10 female voters who only owned a cat were Republicans.

My wife and I are childless, although not by choice, and we have cats. I love cats (and dogs), and there is nothing inherently wrong with being either childless or a cat lover. 

There is, though, something disturbing about this societal trend toward elevating careers and adventures over the satisfaction of raising a family, participating in rather than being an observer of the continuation of civilization, and substituting fun for life satisfaction. 

This was one of the wedge issues this election: contributing to civilization vs personal pleasure as the higher value. The left sells pleasure as the highest good, while the right values the continuity of our culture and civilization. 

The motto of the left can be summarized as "Après moi, le déluge."