It has come to Trump’s attention that he is losing the women’s vote.
I have done more for WOMEN than just about any President in HISTORY! As we celebrate the 100th Anniversary of women’s voting rights, we should build a BEAUTIFUL STATUE in Washington D.C. to honor the many brave women who made this possible for our GREAT COUNTRY…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 14, 2020
The most recent data I could find says that women favor Biden over Trump by 23 points. And that data was compiled before Kamala Harris was named to the veep slot. This may be the biggest gender gap in U.S. presidential election history. And the only thing Trump can think of to win over women is … build us a statue?
Trump has tweeted more than once about how “suburban housewives” should vote for him because he’ll keep “affordable housing” (e.g., Black folks) out of the suburbs. These days women who live in suburbs tend to be college educated. They tend to have professions. And they are not all white any more.
I think it’s possible that someday, scholars will study the polling data from the Trump administration and decide that Trump lost re-election when he nominated Brett Kavanaugh. We’ll see. A lot of women remember Harris from those hearings.
Wielding one of his favorite epithets for powerful women, he called Harris “nasty” three times during a press conference this past week. He claimed that Harris was “angry” and “mad” when she left the Democratic primary race after falling in the polls. He called her a “madwoman,” because she was so “angry” at Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh at his confirmation hearings. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump said. “She was the angriest of the group, and they were all angry.”
It was okay with Trump that Kavanaugh was angry, of course. Men, especially white men, are entitled to their anger. Nonwhites and women are not allowed to display anger because it makes white men uncomfortable. I’ve written about this before; see Who Gets to Be Angry and Who Gets to Be Angry II.
Trump is not helping himself with women, especially college educated women, by complaining about Harris being angry. And she wasn’t angry; see the video. She did not yell. She did not call names. She spoke quietly. Clearly, her face said she was not impressed with Beer Bong Brett, but I didn’t see anger. Jim Jordan can yell and scream and smart off all he likes; it’s allowed, because he’s a white man. Black and women officials cannot do that without being raked over coals for it. And those suburban women, “housewives” or not, know that.
But Trump is ready to give us a statue. That’s supposed to make it all better.
The Nineteenth Amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution on August 18, 1920.
More on the onging Postal Service crisis:
Postal Service warns 46 states their voters could be disenfranchised by delayed mail-in ballots
Internal USPS Documents Outline Plans to Hobble Mail Sorting
Obama: Trump is trying to ‘actively kneecap’ and ‘starve’ the postal service