Donald Trump has now run for president against two different women – and he’s beaten both of them.
What does that say about the world’s greatest democracy?
Cynics – women friends among them – will say: it just shows how much they (men) hate us. There are just too many voters who will never, ever vote for a woman. They’d rather have the bloke last seen posing for a mugshot.
In our hearts, women know it’s not that simple. The truth is that women have been coming out of the kitchen, standing on their own two feet, ringing on their own bells, for a very long time.
Israel, India, Italy … they’ve all had female leaders.
Chile. Mexico. Australia!
Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Peru.
Voters will elect a female candidate. They’ve decided that this woman’s place isn’t in the White House. Why not?
Here’s a few theories, none of them bulletproof, all of them broad brushstroke. But let’s start with Beyonce, shall we? Turning up at the rally for Kamala Harris, with a gold manicure, and an iceblock diamond?
Such a bad idea.
Then you’ve got J-Lo – a woman not so long ago seen hanging off the arm of one P. Diddy – making a weepy speech for Harris, saying: “We should be emotional. We should be upset. We should be scared and outraged … Our pain matters!”
From there, one assumes, she got into her bulletproof J-Lo mobile, and returned to her mansion.
Our pain? These people should be paid to stay home.
Time and again, the voters have made it plain that they do not like celebrities telling them how to vote. And yet, it’s tricky, because Trump’s name recognition when he announced his candidacy was about 100 per cent, while Harris (despite being Vice-President) wasn’t really a name known to anyone.
The Democrats had to get her out there, and if Taylor Swift wanted to endorse her on Instagram, they were hardly going to say no. But having Drew Barrymore lean in during an interview, to say: “We need you to be the Momala of America?”
The momala?
Harris was trying at the time to present herself as the commander in chief of a fearsome superpower. The Iron Lady knew how to do it.
The hypocrisy gets to people too. The Democrats are all: tax the rich! But not my friends, obviously.
Then came that very odd, last-minute intervention, whereby celebrities made videos, telling “ordinary women” they could vote for Harris Kamala and their husbands wouldn’t ever know?
Patronising in the extreme. Independent, intelligent women are insulted by this sort of thing.
Next up: was Joe Biden too late, in standing down? Yes.
Biden gave Harris just 13 weeks to make her case. It’s not enough against a candidate with Trump’s star wattage.
Are people over the woke agenda, by which I mean the push for men in girl’s bathrooms, and pronouns, and all that? Yes, people are sick of it.
Just the other day, I heard somebody say: “I’m not woke. I’m awake!” I should have known then that Trump would win.
In her defence, Harris did not emphasise her gender, nor her bi-racial identity. Trump made an issue of her colour. Still, she needed black and Hispanic women to turn up for her, in numbers … well, let’s just say it, shall we? In numbers too big to ignore. It seems that they didn’t.
But wait .. weren’t they concerned about abortion rights? Because we’re always being told what a big issue that is. Nobody seems to have noticed that abortion isn’t actually the issue it was 40 years ago, because there just aren’t that many abortions anymore.
Big Pharma made abortion safe, and legal, when it developed the pill, and the morning-after pill.
Now let’s look at Harris’s campaign.
Voters were miserable under Biden – about two-thirds were saying they didn’t like the direction in which the country was heading when he was in charge – so she decided to go for joyful, which was clever, I think. (As a woman, it’s her prerogative to have a little fun, right?)
But she was an underwhelming campaigner. She made precious little effort to reach young men, perhaps assuming that young people can always be counted on to vote Democrat. But college kids – boys, especially – aren’t sitting around, smoking weed, hoping to get a hairy-armpit girl in to bed, listening to Bob Dylan.
It’s 2024, not 1964. College kids are trading crypto, and listening to Joe Rogan.
People seem surprised that Latinos didn’t turn on Trump, after he (or his team) disparaged the countries whence they came. But I mean, they don’t want to live there, either.
They voted with their feet when they left. They’re for upward mobility, like any other American.
Finally, Trump is vulgar – just the other day he said he’d be fine with a stray bullet finding its way toward a few journalists, so I guess I would say that – but he knows how get attention.
Remember the illegal immigrants, eating cats and dogs?
Of course you do.
What did Kamala Harris say during that debate?
I’ve no idea. Do you?
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