The message that the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz campaign team (or, to be more precise/fair, their “satellite supporters”) wanted to send with their Julia Roberts-narrated ad—titled “Your Vote, Your Choice” (an obvious nod to abortion rights, or lack thereof)—is a somewhat antithetical one. While Harris is banking on the “progressive act” of people finally voting a woman into the office of the presidency, what’s being simultaneously referred to here is a kind of 1950s marriage dynamic in the ad that assures, “What happens in the booth stays in the booth.” In other words, if you’re a woman married to a Trump supporter and are terrified of him beating the shit out of you if you were to be honest about wanting to vote for Harris, the best thing to remember is that: he never has to know. After all, like men cheating on women for years, what isn’t known won’t hurt. As though there is an actual “pain” to knowing that one’s theoretically Republican wife decided to vote “traitorously.”
And evidently, it is seen as just that by especially right-wing Republicans like conservative pundit Jesse Watters. Who commented on Fox News (where else?) that if his wife really voted for Harris behind his back, “That’s the same thing as having an affair… That violates the sanctity of our marriage. What else is she keeping from me? What is she lying about?” Ironically, Watters’ current wife, Emma DiGiovine, did start her relationship with Watters via an affair. In any case, the overall retro nature of the ad, while still trying to come across as “liberal,” is likely due to being produced by the Christian-backed organization, Vote Common Good. This, too, is part of why they nail the look of the conservative Christian voter so well. Starting with the husband wearing a baseball hat featuring an embroidered eagle over an American flag on the front of it as he “gives permission,” “Your turn, honey.”
With a beginning like this, it already has the air of what ought to be a Saturday Night Live sketch (complete with the upbeat whistling background music). But no, it turns out that Vote for Common Good is very serious with their “plot.” One that, with the help of Roberts’ shade-drenched voiceover (including, “In the one place in America where women still have a right to choose…”), is shaped by a backstory that implies the women who are married to Republican men probably wouldn’t be that way themselves if they had a “choice.” If they felt truly free to “be themselves.” Which, of course, begs the question: why the fuck would they marry a person like this in the first place? The answer being that, as it was in the mid-twentieth century and prior, they felt as though they “had to.” Because getting married and obeying your husband is just “what’s done.” (That “love, honor and obey” vow only ever seeming to apply to a woman.)
And this is where Vote Common Good’s message starts to feel especially schizo, as though they can’t fully commit to ideas of “liberalism” (a.k.a. a woman thinking for herself without fear of punishment). Because, yes, they want to ensure fundamental rights are restored and remain in place for women. But, at the same time, they also seem to think it’s still a woman’s “duty”—her primary one, in fact—to “please” her husband. No matter at what cost. Even if that cost is living a lie, having a double identity (as most married men do, by the way).
As the blonde wife wearing the bejeweled American flag hat glances furtively at another woman in the voting booth, they share a “knowing look” that indicates they’re both about to “betray” their conservative husbands for “the greater good.” Not seeming to be aware that the greater good is probably getting a divorce and breaking out on your own if you feel this afraid to be who you are. Like you’re goddamn Lucy Ricardo concealing the purchase of one too many hats in a month.
Because, honestly, how can it be positioned as “empowering” to feel the need to not only hide your views from the person you’re married to, but to live in fear of what might happen to the relationship (or worse still, your bodily safety) if you actually revealed them? The result, thus, is an ad that serves not just as an offense, apparently, to Repubs like Watters, but to women themselves. And that’s not a great message to be tied to as a female presidential candidate.
Alas, one must do what they can to drum up some extra “on the fence” votes. In this sense, the Harris-Walz campaign is all about equal opportunity. Which is why there’s also a “male version” of the ad (narrated by Roberts’ frequent counterpart, George Clooney). Except the man in this ad isn’t hiding his “dirty secret” from his wife, but from his friends. A plot shift that’s even more telling of how women are still viewed as secondary to men…not just in general, but particularly in romantic relationships.
