Donald Trump and Women Voters: Kamala Harris is not Hillary Clinton
American Eclectic posts articles twice a month, on the 1st and 15th. This is the third year of publication; previously published articles can be found on my site.
September 15, 2024
I wrote an article in 2023 after Donald Trump was found guilty of sexual assault in the case of E. Jean Carroll. That case might matter now that a woman, Kamala Harris, is running as the Democratic Presidential candidate, contrasted with the situation several months back when Joe Biden was running for re-election (Will E. Jean Carroll Do Political Ads for Biden if Trump is on the Ballot. If not, Her Case Might Still be Used). Furthermore, recently, Trump and others who post on the site Truth Social, sometimes with Trump reposting, have gone after Harris in ways that are, as a Washington Post article put it, “the sexualized nature of the attack on Harris broached a new frontier, one that comes as all indications point to Harris running a more competitive race against Trump than Biden was.“ Elsewhere, the New York Times in an article stated:
Although there are no clear signs that Mr. Trump has increased the quantity of abuse he levels at his opponents, his decision to repost a string of sexually and racially charged broadsides in recent weeks suggests that he has turned up the dial when it comes to pure vulgarity and crudeness.
While this sexual overtone to how some of Trump’s supporters are seeing Harris is unusual and disturbing, Trump may see Harris the way he looked at Hillary Clinton in 2016. In August 2016, FiveThirtyEight, a site that addresses political polls, had Clinton ahead of Trump, 43.6 percent to 36.8 percent, enough to look like she would win the Presidential election. Yet, at the same time, her favorable/unfavorable ratings were consistently under 50 percent from November 2015 up until the election a year later. Trump was not doing much better with his favorable/unfavorable ratings, consistently ranking under 50 percent. In the case of Trump, unlike Clinton, he began to close the gap somewhat between his favorable and unfavorable ratings close to the election, but the same cannot be said for Clinton.
In the case of Harris, her favorable/unfavorable ratings may show a more complex picture. Beginning July 23rd, two days after Joe Biden decided not to seek re-election, her unfavorable ratings were slightly ahead of her favorable ratings. Beginning one month before the start of the Democratic National Convention that began on August 19th, her favorable ratings began to increase. In other words, we cannot point to the Democratic National Convention as providing a bounce in her favorable ratings. Harris’s favorable ratings increased slightly above unfavorable ratings the day after she debated Trump and has stayed there. In the case of Clinton, Americans had years to get to know her and develop their opinions of how they saw her, so by the time she ran for President, she had been a household name for many years. Harris is different. Although elected as a United States Senator for California in 2016 and then Vice President in the Biden Administration since 2021, Harris is still more of an unknown to many Americans. Vice Presidents mostly hover in the shadows, occasionally stepping out. Trump and Republicans may want to paint a picture of Harris as a key decision-maker in the Biden administration. Vice Presidents seldom have a lot of influence (Dick Cheney in the George W. Bush administration might have been an exception). Clinton has been a visible presence ever since she was part of the healthcare reform push that was part of her husband’s presidency, which began in 1993.
I was thinking of a situation that involved Hillary Clinton, however, and wonder whether it is the sort of situation that might be similar to some of the crude sexual innuendo that is circulating around Trump and his supporters directed at Harris. In 2000, Clinton was running for senator from New York against Rick Lazlo, her Republican opponent. In a debate between the two, Lazlo walked across the stage and tried to get Clinton to sign a pledge for campaign finance reform. Many women voters saw this move as a confrontation that made them uncomfortable. Before this debate, the race looked somewhat too close to call. However, Clinton went on to win the Senate seat 55.3 percent to 43 percent, a significant difference. This debate confrontation can be pointed to when women voters began deciding how to vote. The sexual innuendo aimed at Harris may carry much the same effect as the stage confrontation between Clinton and Lazlo. At a meeting days after Biden dropped out of the race, Republican leaders warned members of their party to avoid addressing race and sex. Representative Mike Johnson (R, LA), Speaker of the House of Representatives, stated, “This election will be about policies and not personalities. This is not personal with regard to Kamala Harris," he added, "and her ethnicity or her gender have nothing to do with this whatsoever." It did not take long for this advice to fall on deaf ears.
Eight years after the New York Senate race election, Lazlo reflected on what he had done when he confronted Clinton on stage and stated:
I thought that was the opportunity to make the point. On substance, it was right — and on style and perception, it was a mistake, which I regret.
The debate between Trump and Harris raises the issue of whether Harris's preparations for that debate involved studying the Trump-Clinton debates. Clinton, in her book What Happened, recalled the October 2016 debate between her and Trump and wrote:
It was one of those moments where you wish you could hit pause and ask everyone watching, 'Well, what would you do?' Do you stay calm, keep smiling and carry on as if he weren't repeatedly invading your space or do you turn, look him in the eye and say loudly and clearly, 'Back up you creep, get away from me.’
I assume Harris prepared to respond to Trump with the thought that she needed to consider how women watching the debate would react. The Clinton quote made her realize well after the election that she needed to think about how women might have thought of that moment on stage if she had reacted differently. In the Trump-Harris debate, put aside anything about how policy issues were addressed and focus on the visuals—this is television where visuals matter. Trump seemed to make a concerted effort to avoid looking at Harris. His odd way of acknowledging she was on the stage was to point his finger in her direction. Harris was more animated than Trump, and that might matter. Again, television is theater, and that cannot be ignored.
This article was published on September 15th, five days after the debate, and it may take at least two weeks to get a better feel for how undecided or independent voters, or even Trump supporters who are wondering whether to vote for him, switch to Harris, or sit out the election, are making up their minds.
Furthermore, the ethnic/race issue makes Harris different from Clinton. Her father was born in Jamaica, and her mother was born in India. Trump felt the need to question or challenge her ethnicity and race. He stated:
I’ve known her a long time, indirectly, not directly very much, and she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until several years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian, or is she Black?
A journalist, Rachel Scott of ABC News, tried to correct Trump by stating that Harris had identified herself as black, but Trump disagreed. This seemed to be an odd attack, and one has to wonder if this adds to any developing opinions that women voters still deciding who they will vote for begin to choose to vote for Harris. It might be seen as a reason to vote against Trump, which is always that odd notion that some percentages of the voters are voting for someone because they see it as voting against the other person. The issue of Trump saying that Harris has only recently decided to see herself as black, I think, might carry less weight with women than the response he gave to a Scott after she asked him to address his attacks on people of color. In her question, she asked:
You've attacked Black journalists, calling them a 'loser,' saying the questions they asked are stupid and racist. You've had dinner with a white supremacist at your Mar-a-Lago resort. So, my question, sir, now that you're asking Black supporters to vote for you, why should Black voters trust you, after you've used language like that?
His response was condescending—and that may matter with women. If he continues to make condescending remarks, it may tip some women voters in her direction. Driving across parts of the Midwest, I have listened to talk radio shows that refer to Harris as not particularly smart. One show said that the song from The Wizard of Oz, “If I Only Had a Brain,” was regularly played at the White House, implying that it was a sarcasm/joke aimed at Harris. I wondered if women listeners to the show saw it the way the host thought he saw it. Surrogates of Trump can influence women voters just as much as Trump and how he addresses Harris.
In the case of Trump, he responded to Scott at the gathering of black journalists by stating:
I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner, first question. You don’t even say, ‘Hello, how are you?’ Are you with ABC? Because I think they’re a fake news network, a terrible network. I think it’s disgraceful that I came here in good spirit.
Regarding this appearance at a black journalists’ convention, Trump claimed that the event started 35 minutes late because Scott was late. That was not why the event started late: Trump objected to being fact-checked in real-time, which delayed the event’s start, and argued about that off-stage.
The race/ethnicity issue matters in distinguishing Harris and Clinton. When she was running for the Presidency, Clinton was advised to present herself as a grandmother figure to Latino voters, particularly to reach Latina voters—this backfired miserably. Clinton, the college-educated former First Lady living in affluence, had a tagline: "7 Things Hillary Clinton Has in Common with Your Abuela.” This just made her look as being unrelatable to many people struggling financially. As one analyst of Latino voters put it, “The contrast between the grandmother Hillary Clinton and the story of our own grandmothers wasn’t just unrelatable, it was downright offensive.” Trump won Arizona in 2016 by a margin of 91,234 and Pennsylvania by 44,284. The Electoral College votes of these two states, 31, would not have been enough to prevent Trump from being elected President, but every little thing matters in a close election.
Voter turnout will determine the outcome of the election, which goes without saying. However, the issue is whether female voters will greatly outweigh male voters. In 1980, for the first time, women edged out men (59.4 percent to 59.1 percent). Since then, in every Presidential election, the gap has widened, although not continually increasing with each election. 2016 when Clinton ran, the gap was 4.3 percent and declined in 2020 when Biden won to 3.5 percent. The comparison that will be examined for Harris is the 2008 election when Barack Obama was elected President, and the gap reached a high of 4.7 percent.
Clinton, unlike Harris, played on her gender. One of the slogans at the Democratic National Convention in 2016 was “I’m With Her.” Harris is not emphasizing her sex—although Trump and his supporters continually do, usually in insulting ways. Carol Moseley Braun, former Illinois senator and the first black woman to serve in the Senate, stated:
Quite frankly, talking about, ‘I’m the first Black this, I’m the first that,’ gets you nowhere. It really puts you in a corner and leaves you open to being accused of ‘playing the race card,’ and so she has not done that, and that’s very smart of her.
For example, voter registration of black women has, as one publication put it, “nearly triple the rate from the last presidential election four years ago.”
The issue of abortion is one that Clinton did not address in the same way that Harris has to address it: When Clinton ran, Roe v. Wade was still the law of the land, but since that ruling was overturned, increasingly abortion has become more of an issue. In looking at polling between May and August, for men, the economy, immigration, and abortion have all increased in importance, and the same is true with women. But while abortion increased slightly for men, abortion has become a much more significant issue for women. I addressed abortion in an article (Abortion will not Stay a State Issue, Despite Whatever Trump says: Serious Issues Have a Way of Becoming National Issues). The concern is that if Trump were back in the White House, there would be pressure for him to sign a bill that would outlaw abortion nationally. It does not matter what he says now as he tries to sidestep the issue; it is what he could do as President.
One issue that might favor Harris is that on October 1st, the first woman President of Mexico (Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo) will be sworn into office. It is one thing to see women as Presidents or Prime Ministers overseas, but this is next door. This may play into an issue I mentioned above: Clinton emphasized her sex, while Harris has not used it. Harris's running for President is seen as a more natural development of social change in America; in the case of Clinton, voters had to think about what it meant to have a woman as President. Harris is working to make that seem like a normal development, which may play better with voters—women, in particular, both for both sexes.
Notes
Ken Bensinger, Karen Yourish and Michael Gold, “Trump Keeps Turning Up the Dial on Vulgarity: Will He alienate the Voters He Needs?” New York Times (August 29, 2024): https:// www.nytimes.com/2024/08/29/us/politics/trump-crass-imagery.html
Daniel Dale, “Fact Check: Trump’s lie that Harris ‘all of a sudden’ embraced a Black identity,” CNN (July 31, 2024): https:// edition.cnn.com/2024/07/31/politics/fact-check-debunking-trumps-lie-that-harris-suddenly-embraced-a-black-identity/index.html
Election 2016 Favorability Ratings, RealClearPolitics: https:// www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president/clintontrumpfavorability.html#!
Ruth Igielnik, “More Voters, Especially Women, Now Say Abortion Is Their Top Issue,” New York Times (August 31, 2024): https:// www.nytimes.com/2024/08/31/us/elections/abortion-polls-women-trump-harris.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&ngrp=mxp&pvid=8ABA3FA6-5C35-4F22-B08D-4D47D53AB9B0
Ben Kasmisar and Jake Traylor, “Trump turns to Truth Social to share sexual jokes and calls for ‘military tribunals’,” Washington Post (August 30, 2024): https:// www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-turns-to-truth-social-to-sfidelity.comhare-sexual-jokes-and-calls-for-military-tribunals/ar-AA1pJDdB?ocid=BingNewsSerp
Latest Polls, 538: https:// projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/kamala-harris/
Mike Madrid, The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority is Transforming Democracy (New York, Simon & Schuster, 2024)
Lisa Mascaro and Jill Colvin, “Republican leaders urge party members against racist and sexist attacks,” PBS News (July 24, 2024): https:// www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/republican-leaders-urge-party-members-against-racist-and-sexist-attacks-on-harris
Jessica McBride, “Kamala Harris’ Ethnicity: What Is Her Ethnic Background?” Heavy (August 1, 2024): https:// heavy.com/news/kamala-harris-ethnicity-ethnic-background/
Joey Nolfi, “Donald Trump calls ABC’s Rachel Scott ‘nasty,’ ‘hostile,’ accuses her of being late at Black journalist convention,” Entertainment (July 31, 2024): https:// ew.com/donald-trump-nabj-interview-rachel-scott-nasty-hostile-8686897#:~:text=Donald%20Trump%20appeared%20at%20a%20Black%20journalists%20convention
Elena Schneider and Holly Otterbein, “Kamala Harris is making one big strategic break from Hillary Clinton,” Politico (August 19, 2024): https:// www.politico.com/news/2024/08/19/kamala-harris-gender-2024-election-00174530#:~:text=It’s%20a%20marked%20departure%20from%20Hillary%20Clinton,%20the
Mark Swanson, “Trump Wasn’t First to Violate Hillary’s Personal Space Onstage,” NewsMax (August 23, 2017): https// www.newsmax.com/Politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-rick-lazio-violate/2017/08/23/id/809309/
Voter turnout rates among male and female voters in U.S. presidential elections from 1964 to 2020, statista: https:// www.statista.com/statistics/1096291/voter-turnout-presidential-elections-by-gender-historical/
Quintessa Williams, “Black Girls Lead: The Link Between Public Schools and a Voter Surge,” the Atlanta Voice (September 3, 2024): https:// theatlantavoice.com/black-women-voter-registration/#:~:text=Surging%20Ahead.%20Black%20girls,%20who%20account%20for%207.8%