I’m not childless… nor am I a lady, with a degree from an elite university…
… but I do share my house with a cat named Roscoe.
I also have three kids, grown and on their own, so I’ve done my part in helping to maintain America’s population. So I think Republican Senator JD Vance would approve of my achievements in that regard.
It reamins to be seen whether my kids will follow in my noble footsteps (as a person once engaged in procreation.) So far, they don’t seem overly anxious to become parents.
Or, to become Republicans, for that matter.
During an interview with Tucker Carlson in 2021, Senator Vance said:
“We’re effectively run in this country — via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs — by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.
“You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”
The Senator has since apologized… to the cats. “I’ve got nothing against cats,” he told commentator Megyn Kelly on her Sirius XM talk show last month.
I would feel more reassured if he’d been a bit more explicit. For instance, by saying that he actually “likes cats”.
Speaking as, myself, a cat-person. With the caveat that I’m satisfied with one cat.
Senator Vance’s comment sparked the interest of columnist Andrew Van Dam at The Washington Post. Mr. Van Dam writes a column called “The Department of Data” where he takes suggestions from readers. His friend and fellow journalist Julie Zauzmer Weil encouraged him to research the facts about childless cat ladies dominating the Democratic Party.
Are Democrat ladies, in fact, more likely to be childless cat owners than Republican ladies? Turns out, if you know where to look, you can actually take a stab at answering a question like that.
As of 2022, according to the “universally beloved General Social Survey from the universally beloved NORC at the University of Chicago,” about 38 percent of Democrats had never had children, compared with 26 percent of Republicans.
Is this because Democrats are generally younger than Republicans, and so haven’t yet started their families? No, the data indicates that the Democrats have about the same percentage of childless cat ladies in nearly all age groups.
But this is only among childless cat ladies. A cat lady who also has children is slightly more likely to be a Republican.
The same situation appears to apply to men. Childless cat gentlemen are more likely to be Democrats.
Overall, pet ownership, per se, doesn’t seem to lean blue or red. But childlessness is likely to make you blue. Or maybe, leaning blue tends to leave you childless. Hard to tell.
The group most likely to be childless, says Mr. Van Dam, are people who don’t attend church. That group is slightly more likely to lean left. (I didn’t see anything in Mr. Van Dam’s numbers to verify it, but I am left with a strong sense that God is a Republican.)
Are the cats themselves prone to leaning left? Again, hard to tell.
This whole discussion got me wondering if Senator Vance actually does have something against cats. We know he has something against Democrats. Especially, childless Democrats. And even more especially, childless Democrats who graduated from elite, “woke” universities like Yale… and as a result, don’t really have a direct stake in our country.
I spent some time reading about Senator Vance, and learned that he has two dogs: Casper and Pippin. “Casper Vance” has his own Facebook page, which features this photo:
If I were a German shepherd getting reprimanded for chewing a forbidden food, I doubt I would post a photo of the event on Facebook. So I have to believe that the photo was actually posted by a human being… perhaps by his owner?
That said, I was impressed by the number of Facebook friends Casper has solicited, to include the Associate Professor of Neurosurgery and Director, Division of Neuro-epidemiology at Duke University; the Associate Chief Counsel at U.S. Chamber of Commerce; Head of Product, Revenue and Finance Automation at Stripe; and at least 13 alumni from Yale University.
Senator Vance and his wife both attended Yale University. Before they married, she was a childless Democrat. Thank God she now has children.
And apparently, not any cats.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.