DOUGLAS KENNEDY ON THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION - LA TRIBUNE DIMANCHE - CHRONIQUE 2

15 September 2024

TRUMP AND WOMEN

 My father was a classic Angry White Male. He grew up in a tough working class corner of Brooklyn (Prospect Height – now completely Bobo). He was raised a devout Catholic. He survived the Battle of Okinawa as a US Marine during the Second World War (and never fully recovered from it). He was stuck in a deeply unhappy marriage (which the former altar boy in him could never quit). He hated the corporate world in which he worked – but as a true believer in ‘Our Way of Life’ (as American conservatives like to call the so-called American Dream), he embraced its conformist ethos. And from the late 1960s onwards – when he was in his early forties – he railed against militant African Americans and feminists and (later on) homosexuals demanding equal rights. To him these groups represented a threat to his absolute certainty that it was the male Caucasian who should hold all the cards in American society.

As such, had he not died two years before the election, I am certain he would have voted for Trump in 2016. Especially as he despised Hilary Clinton – that ‘socialist women’s libber’, as he called her (‘women’s liberation’ being late ‘sixties argot for ‘feminist’). No doubt he would have reveled in Trump’s surprise upset victory back then and would be currently talking trash about Kamela Harris – embracing all of Trump’s racist/sexist rants against his opponent for The White House.

The ‘Angry White Male’ is now a powerful demographic within the American electorate. Allied with Christian evangelicals (who want to use the overturning of Roe v Wade into a federal ban on abortions, and to limit access to contraceptive), and the plutocrats who want their billions to be free of taxes, the Angry White Male is generally a nominally educated member of ‘la classe populaire’. He is short on career prospects, struggling to make ends meet in an economy where the middle class no longer have a chance. Indeed one of the greatest irony of those white guys who embrace Trump’s MAGA (Make American Great Again) philosophy is that, in supporting this oligarchical Fuhrer, they are voting for a party which – from Reagan onwards – has dismembered the middle class… but has won the fervent support of the Angry White Male by appealing to his sense of being a beleaguered minority amidst a deeply multicultural republic… and to his patriotic embrace of America as God’s Preferred Country.

Then there is the misogynistic impulse which is so predominant in the Trump worldview. After all, Trump was found guilty of rape in a civil trial. He has dated porn stars (including the splendidly named Stormy Daniels). He has been accused of sexual misconduct by several other women. And (as reported in the blog of Robert Reich – the distinguished UC Berkeley academic and former Labor minister under Bill Clinton), he reposted ‘old photographs of Harris and Hillary Clinton followed by the comment: “Funny how blowjobs impacted both their careers differently” (referring to Harris’s once dating San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and Bill Clinton’s affair with a White House intern’ – both of which allegedly involved oral sex). 

The fact is: the Trump campaign is going to use the sexism inherent in Angry White Male-dom as a vote garnering strategy in the November election. Especially as Kamala Harris is of Black and Asian origins, and is  clear about guaranteeing the right to abortion – a point she made with crystalline clarity during her debate with Trump this week. As reported in The Associated Press:

“’The government, and Donald Trump, certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with her body,’ Harris said. She painted a vivid picture of women facing medical complications, gut-wrenching decisions and the need to travel out of state for an abortion”.

Harris is also  a progressive on issues of gender equality and the maintenance of    civil rights for the LGBT community. These are cards that Trump and his team will play in an attempt to brand her a far left socialist and a ‘femi-nazi’ (to use a term coined by the late right wing radio , Rush Limbaugh).

The truth is: women make up the biggest voting bloc in the United States. As Robert Reich also pointed out in the same blog:

“89 million told census surveyors they were registered in 2020, vs. 79 million      men. The 2024 election may set the record for women voting — and voting for the Democratic    candidate for president… the ABC News/Ipsos poll released 1 September found Harris leading Trump among women by 54 percent to 41 percent. The gender chasm is even larger among women under 30 — an overwhelming 67 percent of whom plan to vote for Harris, while just 29 percent back Trump…”.

Even though such figures might seem reassuring to Harris supporters like me they are mitigated by all those Angry White Males and born again Christian women in the swing states (like Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona – as discussed in last week’s chronique) which will decide the election. Yes abortion rights will swing women voters from both sides of the argument. Everybody knows that Trump appointment of three profoundly anti-abortion Supreme Court judges has put women’s reproductive rights in jeopardy... though now the ex-President is back-pedaling, posting that “My administration… “will be great for women and their reproductive rights.”

While this statement may be laughable, do not underestimate the Trump campaign’s using misogyny to win the election – as he did with great success in 2016. Then again Mrs. Clinton ran (in my opinion) a misguided campaign, without a central message and one which coasted along under the belief that the country could never elect someone as authoritarian, bumptious and downright cartoonish as Donald Trump. How wrong they were. As the Democratic Senator for New York, Kirsten Gillibrand, noted in a recent New York Times article:

“In 2016, people felt they had the luxury of equality in the law and reproductive freedom in the law, and I think many people didn’t see risk ahead of them. “The abrogation of our rights has been so severe and so aggressive in red states across the country that the wake-up call has been received”.

Can Kamala Harris channel the women’s vote in such a significant way that it will tip the election in her favor? Or will Trump – and his even-more radically anti-feminist running mate, J.D. Vance (who has openly articulated many a manic reactionary statement about a women’s place being as mother and housewife) – sway enough voters who still can’t accept the idea of a woman (let alone one of mixed race) as President?

 Which brings me back to my father – who memorably had this to say about why it was impossible to envisage a woman in The White House:

 “Think about it, Douglas. That woman president will have her finger on the nuclear button. And every twenty-eight days, when she has her period, she will be completely crazy… just like your Mom! We can never put the world at risk because of the president’s menstrual cycle”.

Even now, decades after my father articulated this neanderthal sentiment (which, hand on heart, he truly did tell me with absolute conviction), the truth of the matter is: this is still a point of view held by many Angry White Males. And it could bring back to power a thug who is a convicted rapist and stated that, as a reality television star, he had the right ‘to do anything with women… grab ‘em by the pussy” (to exactly quote Trump’s charming turn of phrase). 

And Angry White Males in the United States applaud such sentiments – which points up how Democratic and Republican camps are located in two different historical zones: the progressive here-and-now versus a socially regressive Paleozoic era.