Trump To (White) Women Voters: 'Oh, Can't You See? You Belong To Me. How My Poor Heart Aches ...'
Trump To (White) Women Voters: 'Oh, Can't You See? You Belong To Me. How My Poor Heart Aches ...'
He keeps getting weirder.
Vice President Kamala Harris has shattered Donald Trump like a fascist piñata made of glass, and his insecurities keep spilling out everywhere. He can’t accept that he might lose the election to a Black woman, and even worse, that women voters might deliver the killing blow. (Calm down, MAGA, that’s a metaphor, not a literal call for violence. I don’t imagine that women will actually chase him down and devour him like Sebastian in Suddenly Last Summer.)
According to a CBS/YouGov poll, men prefer Trump 52 to 48 percent, while women back Harris 55 to 44 percent. The gender gap is even wider in an NBC News national poll where Trump leads with men 52 to 40 percent, but Harris carries women 58 to 37 percent. Women are consistently about 52 percent of the electorate, so math, along with childless cat ladies, is not on Trump’s side.
Trump lost women voters decisively in 2016, but he still narrowly won the presidency, thanks to the Electoral College’s Republican affirmative action program. However, the gender gap is most prominent among white voters, and according to a Pew study, 47 percent of white women voted for Trump compared to 45 percent for Clinton, who’d probably point out that a third-party vote in 2016 was still ultimately a vote for Trump. This year, Trump’s at risk of losing white women, as well, and he almost considers them people. (I said almost.)
So, it was white women who were the intended audience for Trump’s remarks at his rally last weekend in North Carolina. He claimed the Biden administration had made women “more stressed and depressed,” but don’t worry, once Trump’s back in office, he “will fix all of that, women, I will fix all of that. And at long last, this national nightmare that we’re going through will be over. Women will be happy.” (No, Trump didn’t hand out Happy Helmets at the rally. That comes later.)
Trump’s words were typically unhinged but also clearly written in advance and rehearsed. Someone must’ve fed his earlier all-caps Truth Social rant into the teleprompter: “WOMEN WILL BE HAPPY, HEALTHY, CONFIDENT AND FREE! YOU WILL NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION!”
“Obey me and be free!” is quite the campaign slogan, but this is apparently Trump’s big Win White Women gambit. Perhaps that’s appealing to some MAGA lady voters, but they probably think “Every Breath You Take” is a love song.
The art of the neg
Kamala Harris lifts up her supporters, women and men alike. She talks about how her policies would empower Americans to pursue their dreams. Conversely, Donald Trump’s recent overtures to women is a master class in negging. He defines women as miserable, broken, and helpless. They lack the strength to resolve their issues so must turn to a weak man’s idea of a strong man, Trump, who’ll fix all their problems while they gaze at him in silent awe. It’s disturbingly paternalistic even for a candidate who wasn’t an adjudicated rapist and convicted felon, which Trump is.
At his Monday night rally in Pennsylvania, Trump said, “Let’s talk business. I always thought women liked me. I never thought I had a problem.”
Trump desperately wants to believe women adore him, and there’s always been a decent side industry for women who can at least pretend to tolerate him. He boasted on the Access Hollywood tape that he was a “star” who could get away with treating women however he wished. He had all the power, not them. MAGA is an incel movement for emotionally damaged men who crave power and esteem they don’t deserve. Trump resents the idea that he’s one of them, just another blank face in the crowd raging against the system.
“I am your protector, I want to be your protector. As president I have to be your protector,” he declared. “You will no longer be abandoned, lonely or scared. You will no longer be in danger, you’re not gonna be in danger any longer. You will no longer have anxiety from all of the problems our country has today. You will be protected and I will be your protector. Women will be happy, healthy, confident and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion.” (He keeps repeating that line.)
Trump sounds as if he’s commanding women to like him while waving a pocket watch in front of their faces. It reminds me of that Cheers episode where Carla’s scuzzy ex Nick Tortelli tries to hypnotize Diane. (Watch below.)
Stop talking about abortion!
Centuries ago, when I was in college, I used to frequent the political forums on an online bulletin board called ISCABBS. Whenever someone brought up abortion, the discussion would inevitably degenerate into a shouting match, so the moderators banned abortion as a topic entirely. This rule was often ignored, and the moderator would issue an all-caps declaration: STOP TALKING ABOUT ABORTION! You’d think that someone at the Trump campaign put that simple message at the top of the daily memo.
Trump can’t win this issue. As Josh Lyman put it, “People think campaigns are about two competing answers to the same question. They’re not. They’re a fight over the question itself.” (The clip below presented as part of my ongoing 25th anniversary West Wing celebration:)
Trump should keep the conversation focused on his areas of strengths, which are still incredibly the economy and immigration. Instead, he keeps reminding voters that he put the far-right hacks on the Supreme Court who helped overturn Roe v. Wade. He talks about how glorious it is that the decision is now with the states, but that’s been a disaster with real human casualties. Georgia and North Carolina — key swing states Trump needs to win — have extreme abortion bans, and abortion is a ballot measure in another battleground, Arizona, and his home state of Florida.
Even 41 percent of Republicans believe abortion should remain legal in all or most cases. Trump has spread lies about women executing their babies just minutes after birth, which is both a misogynistic smear and demonstrably untrue. There are zero examples of infanticide occurring in our nation’s hospitals, but real, non-imaginary women have shared their horrible stories about how the Dobbs decision endangered their lives. Unfortunately, some women have not survived to tell their story. Trump didn’t make them “happy, healthy, confident and free.”
Of course, Trump is not a sane candidate running a competent campaign. He only really understands victory through brute force. Thus, the self-proclaimed “protector” of women, whether they like it or not, has threatened to imprison anyone who criticizes the Supreme Court for overturning Roe. This includes women of all ages and races.
Donald Trump isn’t women’s “protector.” He’s their Public Enemy Number One.
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To clarify for math nerds who recognize that you can't have over 100 percent, the CBS/YouGov poll showed Harris leading 55 percent to 44 percent among women.
Let’s hope women, minorities and especially the youth show up en masse and sweep TFG AND his republican enablers away in a flood of gigantic proportions.
A total repudiation of the GOP and everything it represents.
It has to happen to drive home the message that women are not chattel. Otherwise this fight will not ever be over. Not by a long shot. We must control the White House AND Congress.