phl63 How Gender Became the Election’s Crucial Fault Line

In an alternate universe, Nikki Haley is running for president against Kamala Harris in the true Year of the Woman. In our world, Haley is on the sidelines wishing Republicans would stop alienating a large swath of voters. “Donald Trump and JD Vance need to change the way they speak about women,” Haley said on “Fox & Friends” in September, when she was asked why Trump and Vance were trailing by 14 points among female voters. “When you call even a Democrat woman dumb, Republican women get their backs up, too.”

Trump didn’t take her advice, if he heard it. The next day, while debating Vice President Harris on national television, Trump said Harris’s actions were “stupid” as he falsely accused her of failing to negotiate peace between Russia and Ukraine. (In fact, Harris did not negotiate with these countries.) Trump also gave muddled answers on abortion — Republicans’ biggest weakness, especially among women — twice resorting to the false claim that Democrats have said it’s acceptable to execute babies.

In the moments after the debate, Taylor Swift made Trump’s bad night with women worse. She endorsed Harris in an Instagram post that she signed “Childless Cat Lady,” taking ownership of a phrase Vance had used as an insult and aligning herself with the many women who had posted photos of themselves with their cats as a retort.

The night was one indication among many that gender is the deepest fault line in this year’s presidential campaign. But this isn’t because Harris is running on her claim to becoming the country’s first female president. She has largely avoided declarations about breaking barriers. It’s Trump and Vance who have made the election all about gender.

Rather than taking what seems like the safe path — treating Harris with respect, affirming some basic support for equality, and steering toward a clear middle path on abortion — they’ve produced some of the campaign’s most memorable moments by firing the kinds of insults at Harris that many women will recognize. Trump stooped to the oldest attack in the book when he shared a crude social media post in August that claimed Harris had used sex to advance her career. At the end of September, he took to calling her “mentally impaired.”

Trump and Vance have also embraced hyper-masculinity. The retired wrestler Hulk Hogan appeared at the Republican National Convention, ripping his shirt in half. The former president has given interviews to bro-y social media stars like Dave Portnoy of Barstool Sports and the Nelk Boys, YouTubers who made a video of themselves watching Harris speak at the Democratic National Convention in which one guy in the group smashes her face on the TV with a sledgehammer.

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