They Conveniently Forget Her Failed Leadership and the Impact on Taxpayers
The Arizona Republic is invested in J.D. Vance’s “childless cat ladies” comment from a few years ago—so much so that they dug into public data to find 10,000 childless cat ladies in Arizona.
A week ago, it published an article entitled “Arizona has 10,000 ‘childless cat lady’ voters, the margin Trump lost the state by in 2020.” It’s as though they assume these voters are all single-issue, primarily concerned with Vance’s comment, rather than everything else going on—like their wallets.
Again, the cat ladies’ comment is a story from several years ago. The comment was insensitive to some, and I am not here to defend it, but there are more significant issues that affect voters, and those electoral numbers are greater.
For example, the Arizona Republic fails to calculate in their vote margin that the “typical American household must spend an additional $11,434 annually just to maintain the same standard of living they enjoyed in January of 2021.” That inflation is real. Food price increases are real. Mortgage rates are real. Rent prices and evictions are real. Think these real issues matter more than an insensitive comment?
So, while the Arizona Republic believes it is clever and lectures its readers that JD Vance’s comment could be the margin of victory or defeat, it forgets the utter failures of the Biden-Harris Administration and how many possible votes that translates into.
Here is a summary:
According to the Arizona Republic, there are 10,000 cat ladies in Arizona. Let us use a different term and refer to them as “single female households.”
However, because of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris failed policies:
200,000 more adults in Arizona don’t have enough food.
14,400 more people were evicted in Maricopa County alone in 2023.
6.5 million Arizonans can’t live in an average-priced home they own.
The average mortgage monthly payment in Arizona is up $1,600.
The average rent in Phoenix is up $350.
The average Arizona household is $3,827 poorer under the Biden–Harris Administration.
Here is how their wallets have been affected since the beginning of the Biden–Harris administration:
Overall prices have increased by 17%.
Gas prices are up by 40%.
Food prices have increased by 25%.
Home sales are down by 25%.
Real wages are down 2%.
The average household spending is up $15,000 a year, or about $1,300 a month.
Here are some more detailed and Arizona-specific numbers:
The average Arizona household has spent $3,827 more on groceries because of the pandemic.
Almost a 50 percent increase in the number of adults in Arizona who say that they couldn’t afford enough food over the past week.
When Biden and Harris came to office, about 400,000 Arizona adults said that they hadn’t eaten enough over the past 7 seven days. Today, this number is about 600,000.
Mortgage rates are up between 109% to 144%—more than double.
The average monthly payment for a 30-year mortgage has gone up from $1,304 to $2,894.
That’s almost $1,600 more a month. And wages have not kept up with this.
3 in 4 Arizona residents say that they cannot afford an average-priced home.
This means that about 6.5 million Arizona residents cannot live in an average Arizona house or apartment that they own.
The average rent price in Phoenix has gone up from $1,175 to $1,514.
83,000 households were evicted in Maricopa County last year. That’s 14,400 more than in 2022.
All these numbers are bigger than the 10,000 women the Arizona Republic dug up. In fact, most of these 10,000 women are also affected by these problems, and their wallets are more hurt by Biden–Harris policies than their feelings are by Vance’s comment.
There are two stories here. One is about the people, and the other one is about journalists’ obsessions and partisan preferences.
The story of Arizonans’ economic struggles is about the people. The story about the cat ladies is about a few journalists and editors who want to help Kamala Harris win, not report on facts and the everyday lives of Arizonans.
Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Chuck Warren only and not his co-host Sam Stone or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.
