Lower than 24 hours earlier than American voters solid their poll, pundits and pollsters had been lifeless positive of a detailed verdict. “Nationwide polling is neck and neck however even swing states are so,” conservative historian Niall Ferguson said in an interview.
We all know now that Donald Trump gained, and decisively, 301 to Harris’s 226. It’s a victory that comes on the again of ladies voters, Latino voters and even African-American male voters. Removed from being a coin toss, all of the swing states fell behind Trump.
Kamala Harris had the higher funded marketing campaign with way more celeb endorsements from Beyonce to Taylor Swift. Why did it go so badly flawed?
Hindsight hand-wringing commentary is taking a look at numerous causes. From Harris’s lack of a transparent message on the economic system to the Democratic celebration’s failure to learn the room, together with considerations about unlawful immigration. From Harris’s assist for Israel that price her the Arab-American vote to her failure to distance herself quick, and much, sufficient from Joe Biden.
Whereas the entire above has undoubtedly performed a task, what’s plain is the position of misogyny. After 59 elections since 1789, America just isn’t nonetheless prepared for a lady, particularly a Black girl president.
In comparison with 87 international locations which have elected ladies heads of state, the US is wanting positively Neanderthal. Even its neighbour Mexico earlier this 12 months voted for its first girl president, Claudia Sheinbaum.
An election says as a lot about its voters because it does about its leaders. What do you say about voters who selected to disregard Harris’s confirmed benefit of a profession as a public prosecutor who put away males like Trump (“I do know his sort,” she stated quickly after changing Biden)? These are voters who selected the choice of Trump, a convicted felon who faces prices of sexual assault by over two dozen ladies and who has been ordered to pay defamation prices working into thousands and thousands of {dollars} towards a lady who says he raped her.
Trump gained regardless of making statements that turned extra deranged as voting day grew nearer. He has persistently taken credit score for appointing three Supreme Court docket judges who overturned Roe v Wade that set abortion rights again by half a century. He has referred to as Harris a “low IQ particular person” who’s “dumb as a rock”. Hours earlier than voting, he imagined Republican Liz Cheney, who brazenly endorsed Harris, face a firing squad.
It didn’t make a dent to the electoral consequence.
Harris was merely held to a better customary, as Michelle Obama pointed out days earlier than the election. And that customary was nonetheless not excessive sufficient.
But, whereas rejecting Harris, voters have cleared the way to undo abortion bans in seven states together with Missouri, Arizona, Colorado, Maryland and Montana. Missouri is now the primary state the place a vote will undo some of the restrictive bans on abortion within the nation.
America might have did not vote for its first girl president, however for the first time in its historical past as a democracy, two Black ladies, Lisa Blunt Rochester and Angela Alsobrooks, will serve within the Senate. In Delaware, Sarah McBride turned the primary brazenly transgender particular person elected to Congress.
The president-elect’s first appointment can also be trigger for some cheer. By naming Susie Wiles, the political strategist from Florida who has run his political operation for the previous 4 years, as his White Home Chief of Employees, the primary girl to carry the highly effective place, Trump has made a sensible transfer. Not solely has he appointed one of the best particular person he considers for the job, he’s helped break not less than one glass ceiling. He might need defeated Harris by way of a sexist, abusive and ugly marketing campaign, however, he’s now making an attempt to say, he isn’t towards ladies. At the very least not all ladies.
But, to clutch at these silver linings and ignore the threats made throughout his marketing campaign could be silly. Trump has promised to crackdown on “transgender madness”. He has stated he’ll cease transgender athlete participation in ladies’s sport. He routinely misrepresents gender transition take care of minors, together with hormone remedy, as one thing that’s determined by faculties that bypass parental consent. If he pulls Medicare and Medicaid eligibility for gender transition, it’ll “successfully halt most of that therapy throughout the nation,” notes Washington Put up.
Eight years in the past, pundits had predicted a transparent win for Hillary Clinton. The New York Instances had prepped a dummy web page one with a daring font headline heralding Madam President. Then the outcomes got here in. Clinton’s defeat was attributed partly to complacency amongst her ladies supporters who, positive about her victory, didn’t trouble to exit and vote.
Leaving nothing to probability this time round, ladies had been exhorted to solid their poll. Republican ladies had been reminded that their vote is a secret and they also had been free to endorse Harris with out their households ever understanding. There’s an terrible sense of déjà vu that the identical man who defeated Clinton has now trounced Harris.
Trump heads one of many “most prolific harassment and intimidation machines within the nation with nearly zero political price,” writes Jill Filipovic in The New Statesman. His MAGA (make America nice once more) followers “have hounded anybody they see as his enemy” and is “among the many most annoying and under-appreciated dynamics of latest US political life.”
The ugly triumphalism amongst Trump’s MAGA followers has been sickening. On November 6, even earlier than Trump had been declared the winner, white supremacist Nick Fuentes tweeted, “Your physique, my alternative. Perpetually.” The Institute for Strategic Dialogue notes a 4,600% improve in comparable hashtags. Elsewhere there are reports of Black college students receiving texts asking them to report for work as slaves on plantations.
The response was swift and offended with some posts calling for American ladies to revolt towards males by adopting South Korea’s 4B motion that follows the 4 guidelines of no intercourse with males, no relationship males, no giving delivery and no marriage.
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