The Mama Bear Voter

"Please don't make me any madder than I
already am. Please don't"

Despite the best efforts of those on the left who want to extinguish all biological, mental, emotional and social differences between men and women in our society, there is one innate behavior that cannot ever be shared or erased. 

The mama bear instinct.

Bears in the wild generally run away from humans instead of engaging them or trying to eat them. They don’t want to have any more interaction with us than we do with them.

However, try to get close to the cubs of a mama bear to take what you think is a “cute” picture for your collection, and you probably will not make it home in one piece.

The protective instincts of a mama bear to protect her cubs is hardwired in her DNA. It is a reflex reaction developed over millions of years of evolution out of necessity to protect the species from extinction.

American female mother voters are even more protective of their offspring than a mama bear. They are about to erupt on the American political scene to protect their children from all of the threats they see around them today.

Every elected politician should beware.

When a person enters politics, they quickly learn how to take direct aim at the emotions and feelings of voters with messages and images. There is no need to pound them to death with policy statements and campaign promises when targeting their emotions works so well.

The human amygdala is ground zero for a lot of political messaging. It is a tiny gland in the base of the skull that governs the “fight or flee” autonomic response in times of crisis. In a human, it might be the size of a cocktail peanut. In a mama bear, it might seem to be the size of a beach ball when she is aroused in protective mode.

When those animal instincts are triggered, there’s no telling how much damage can done.

A pollster recently completed a survey of close to 700 voters in North Carolina. He was shaking his head as he said he had to take 16% of the Republican women respondents out of the sample because they over-responded to the poll.

“Republican women between the age of 35 and 55 are usually under-sampled in these polls,” he said. “But not this time!”

“I had to normalize their responses to accurately mirror their percentage of the actual voting population. If I reported just the raw numbers, everyone would think I was nuts or cooking the books or something,” he went on to say. “But Republican women are geared up, charged up and ready to vote this year; there is no doubt about that.”

“Soccer moms” were considered the swing vote that allowed Bill Clinton to coast to victory in 1996.

“Mama bear voters” could be the swing vote of the 2020 election up and down the entire ballot. Mama bear voters are mad as hell about everything because everything is threatening — riots in the streets with mayors holding back law enforcement, schools being closed and the loss of millions of jobs.

Typically, when things are going bad, angry voters vote against incumbents because “it is their fault!” Jimmy Carter paid dearly at the polls in 1980 for the 12% inflation, 21% prime interest rates and humiliation during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis that happened under his watch.

The question is whom will these mama bear voters “blame” for all of the disruption to what seemed to be their “normal,” prosperous lives just four months ago. Will they blame President Trump for his response to COVID-19, or will they take out their anger on state and local officials for their roles in the COVID response, school shutdowns and calling off law enforcement during the riots?

Or both?

The protective instinct of mama bear voters has been triggered. If they show up in force and vote this fall in large numbers, they could determine who wins the White House and most other seats up for election.

(first published in North State Journal 7/22/20)

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