This Election is All About the Women

 

As you probably know, I publish this blog on Tuesdays, so I’ve written this piece with no knowledge of today’s election outcome.

Under the circumstances, I had to think more than usual about what I wanted to write. With everyone’s anxiety levels turned up to eleven, I’m quite sure I have neither illumination nor comfort to offer at this late date, least of all to myself.

So I’ve decided to talk about the heroes of the election, win or lose: women. If the American Experiment is to be extended for at least another four more years, it will largely be because women willed it to happen. Yes, the Dobbs decision made it easy for them to turn rage into votes. And yes, the rise of Kamala Harris made it easy for them to fall in love with a candidate. But I like to think they’d have stepped up anyway.

It was only two weeks ago, though it seems much longer, when Harris dared to appear on Fox for an interview with Brett Baier. Remember?

Nobody expected her to gain a single vote from this, and I don’t think that was her intention. To her, this was a rare opportunity to get in front of Fox viewers and show them the real person, as opposed to the villainous caricature Fox has drawn over the last few months. But expectations were not high — if she could manage to get Trump to melt down over something she said, that would be a surprise gift.

Even so, I think she won votes anyway — and in serious numbers — mostly because Baier was such an asshole.

Central casting could not have produced a better frontman for toxic masculinity. He bullied. He sneered. He baited her. He was condescending and demeaning. He interrupted her repeatedly. He was the very prototype of the abusive husband or boyfriend.

And Harris was having none of it. She punched back. She gave him a whupping he’ll not soon forget. It was beautiful.

I have no doubt that there are legions of female Fox viewers who have been in a similar position far too often, but with no means of punching back.

How many of those women were, right then, sitting on the same couch as their abusers? How many saw Harris eviscerate that jackass in ways they never even dared imagine? How many were muttering “Go Kamala” under their breath? How many will end up voting for her?

As if to confirm that there are indeed votes to be had among such women, last week we were treated to a remarkable commercial aimed directly at them.

With voiceover by Julia Roberts, the spot declares that no matter what your husband says or thinks, the voting booth is a safe and private place. If Harris is your choice— and the word “choice” is used several times, quite deliberately — the jerk will never know: “What happens in the booth stays in the booth.”

This spot has caused much consternation among right-wing pundits, who are predictably appalled that women should have a brain, much less a vote. They are especially incensed that women are being “encouraged to lie to their husbands.”

Fox wingnut Jesse Watters’s feelings were hurt. He carped, on the air, that if his wife were to vote for Harris, he would consider it tantamount to adultery. I know nothing of his wife, or what she might feel about this. But it’s worth noting that Watters’s mother is a known Democrat, and apparently loves him anyway. Go figure.

One of the more vocal of these whiny pundits is none other than Newt Gingrich, that pillar of moral rectitude. This is the guy who, in the nineties, almost single-handedly created the scorched-earth GOP we so enjoy today, and who is himself no stranger to spousal duplicity.

Gingrich lied to his first wife about his affair with the woman who was soon to be his second wife. Then he lied to wife number two about his six-year affair with wife number three, Callista, who was subsequently appointed ambassador to the Vatican by Trump. Thereby cementing Newt’s legacy as a man of God.

Which brings up an interesting point about the Julia Roberts commercial. Curiously, it’s not the work of the Harris campaign itself, but rather of a religious group, Vote Common Good, whose stated goal is to combat the prevailing narrative that “people of faith must support Republicans.”

Perhaps on the theory that the teachings of Jesus are not exactly at the heart of the GOP brand, the group works to engage evangelicals and Catholics, presumably to put them in better touch with reality.

Vote Common Good maintains that the GOP lost up to ten percent of its evangelical voters in the 2020 election, and that ten percent more will be abandoning the party this time around. How they arrived at these numbers I have no idea, but they sound divine.

They also created a companion piece to the Julia Roberts spot — this one with George Clooney — this one offering MAGA men the same exit ramp as their wives.

This spot features two guys — both obvious Trump voters — who are in the process of filling out their ballots, just as the women were doing in the Roberts ad. This time, Clooney assures the guys that their votes are secret, implying that their drinking buddies don’t need to know that they voted for their wives’ health and their daughters’ futures. As opposed to a sexual predator.

In an election where Republicans knew going in that abortion rights would dominate the conversation, both the party in general and Trump in particular have, amazingly, gone out of their way to alienate women even further.

As Trump descends lower and lower into some sort of fugue state, he seems determined to push away every voting bloc he possibly can. His recent stunts have already cost him significant numbers of Latino voters, so why not push away women too?

Just in the last week, he has mused about a firing squad for Liz Cheney, called Harris “mentally impaired,” and given voice to revenge fantasies against Michelle Obama and, yes, Julia Roberts. Even as we were still digesting this, he promised he would protect women, “whether the women like it or not.” This is meant to attract voters.

But while we expect it from Trump, he’s been joined in this upside-down strategy by several high-profile MAGA stooges, who’ve been cracking “jokes” about repealing the Nineteenth Amendment, stripping women of the right to vote. Funny, huh?

It makes you wonder if they’ve written off women altogether. Certainly, the double-digit gender gaps in the early-voting totals cannot be filling them with confidence.

My personal conclusion is that they understand they’re losing, and that they’re putting some sort of stake in the ground, so that future idiots can take up where these idiots leave off. Their Project 2025 has provided the roadmap for the next time Republicans win the presidency, and we know from experience how patient they can be.

But for now, women are the GOP’s worst nightmare. Their answer, apparently, is to double down on the misogyny, to take their toxic masculinity to another level. 

Which seems to be working out really well for us.