To say that this year's Republican presidential ticket doesn't know how to talk to or about women, or what matters to women, would be the understatement of the century. And I hope they keep it up.
It’s all mind-boggling, from candidate Donald Trump’s racist and sexist comments about Vice President Kamala Harris to his running mate Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio’s, ah, unusual views on parenting. Now the star-crossed pair are digging themselves deeper into the sand as they try to navigate the post-Roe v. Wade world, which Trump’s Supreme Court appointees spawned and Vance celebrated.
There are two major obstacles in her path, and they are related. One is the alienation of women (particularly white, college-educated, Republican women) from Trump and the Republican Party. They dislike the attitude of their party.cultural extremism,” says Mike Madridan anti-Trump author, strategist, and election data analyst based in Sacramento.
The second obstacle is that Trump and Vance are in denial. “I think abortion has become a much smaller issue. I think it will actually be a very small issue.” Trump said At his Mar-a-Lago press conference on August 8, he said: “I think the abortion issue has become much less important. I don’t think it’s a big factor today.”
Vance followed the same path when Fox News host Laura Ingraham told him that according to a “dear friend” of his, “all these suburban women“All they care about is abortion,” Vance responded. “I don’t believe that, Laura. I think most suburban women care about the normal things that most Americans care about. Right? They care about inflation. They care about the price of food. They care about public safety on the streets where their children play.”
This is part of the broader Republican insistence that immigration, inflation and crime are the keys to crushing Democrats at every level of the ticket. “The problems and conditions favor “Donald Trump should win this election,” a frustrated Republican pollster Frank Luntz said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
It's not working, and Luntz is among Republicans who blame Trump. They want him to show focus, discipline and consistency and to stop the incessant personal attacks on Harris (those that Trump maintains are “entitled” to do). He needs to “stop acting like a petulant child,” Luntz said. saying on CNN.
But that won't work either, because it's a flawed theory. In today's United States, inflation is easing, crime is in crisis and Democrats can persuasively argue that the border would be much safer and more orderly if Trump had not eliminated a tough bipartisan immigration package negotiated by a conservative senator and Approved by both Harris and President Biden.
In other news from Planet Earth, the election results of the last four years have made it clear that “the Big Lie” electoral denialism is not a winner, Abortion bans They are not winners and Trump has issues With enough fellow Republicans to cost him a close race in a presidential battleground like Pennsylvania, especially now that Harris is the Democratic standard-bearer.
Madrid has three points prescription on how Harris can win Republican crossover votes (and the White House): focusing on the big lie that Trump, not Biden, won the 2020 election; the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol to block Biden's victory; and the Supreme Court's decision to end the nation's right to legal abortion.
“There are many people who suggest fatigue” with these issues, Madrid said recently. said Jennifer Horn, an independent who never supported Trump and once chaired the New Hampshire Republican Party, said polling and focus group data show otherwise: “Not only is there no fatigue, but these are the only proven messages that have actively turned these two-time Trump Republican voters away” from him, the party and the promise of, say, a capital gains tax cut.
Additionally, Madrid said Democrats can regain much-needed ground with U.S.-born Hispanic men by delivering the same three messages to Hispanic women, through as many Latino messengers as possible: “The more they involve Hispanic women in this fight, the more they can limit Hispanic men from drifting to the right.”
Trump and Vance may be getting the hang of things on abortion. Vance, who supported Trump, who in the past banned abortion nationwide, now agrees with Trump's stance, as the party's leader. “Look, as Donald Trump has said, he wants the American people to decide abortion policy at the state level,” he told Ingraham. And Trump continually boasts that, as he said at his Mar-a-Lago press conference this month, “all “I wanted to return to the United States and that's what I did.”
But that is not a safe space. In fact, it is politically quite dangerous.
Abortion protections are literally on the ballot in at least eight states So far, related ballot measures could be approved in up to 11Her presence tends to spur women’s registration and turnout. Harris herself, with her general message of “freedom,” is another galvanizing force. She has been the administration’s leading messenger on abortion care and reproductive freedom since long before she catapulted into the first presidential race since the overturn of Roe.
Trump and the GOP should be quaking in their boots at the prospect of voters who support reproductive rights voting. Not “everyone” wanted abortion back to the states. In fact, in a startling new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation Survey of 3,901 women of reproductive age74% opposed leaving abortion in the hands of the states, including 53% of those Republicans in the survey.
Nearly half of Republican women supported federal abortion rights (48%, compared with 70% overall) and said abortion should be legal in most or all cases (47%, compared with 74% overall).
Of course, not all of these Republican women will vote for Harris, even if they support abortion protections in their state. Still, Luntz said Wednesday on CNBC that Harris has transformed the electorate — that undecideds have swung to her and that voters who used to weakly support Trump have swung to the undecideds. And he said the shift, though statistically small, could mean a victory for Democrats.
Those are the facts. Here's how Luntz described the mood: “I'm trying to do a focus group tonight with undecided voters under 27 for a major news outlet. And I can't recruit young women for this, because They do not exist as undecided voters.”
The warning signs are written in capital letters. Even Trump can see them. What is he going to do about it? Prediction: Nothing, but it doesn't really matter. He's a well-known figure, both politically and personally, and the fundamentals are not solid.
Jill Lawrence is a writer and author of “The Art of Political Deal: How Congress Overcame Adversity and Brought the Deadlock.” @JillDLawrence
