Women Tend To Be Democrats - Young Women Overwhelmingly So

 

The charts above are from the National Public Opinion Reference Survey (conducted annually by the Pew Research Center).

Disdain Of Women Is Deeply Imbedded In Trumpism

 

The following post is by Robert Reich. He Is RIGHT!

Connect these dots:

• Trump initially nominated Matt Gaetz for attorney general despite charges that Gaetz paid for drug-filled orgies with underage girls.

  
  

• Former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Trump’s choice for secretary of defense, is alleged to have raped a woman. In a newly released police report, the woman said Hegseth took her phone, blocked his hotel room door when she tried to leave, and sexually assaulted her. Hegseth has admitted paying the woman hush money because, he says, he was afraid he’d lose his job at Fox News if the allegation became public.

  
  

• Hegseth’s nomination had already generated concern because of his opposition to women serving in combat. 

  
  

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick for secretary of health and human services, is alleged to have groped a family babysitter. She went public with her allegation in July. 

• Kennedy allegedly had an affair with reporter Olivia Nuzzi, whose former fiance said in a court filing that she told him Kennedy wanted to “possess,” “control,” and “impregnate” her. 

  
  

• Elon Musk is being sued by several former employees for “treating women as sexual objects to be evaluated on their bra size,” “bombarding the workplace with lewd sexual banter,” and creating a sexually charged workplace that treats women as objects.

  
  

• Trump himself was found in civil trial to have sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll, and she won two civil court judgments against him for $83.3 million. 

  
  

• Trump says that the more than two dozen other women who have accused him of sexual misconduct were lying. 

  
  

• And, of course, Trump is heard on the “Access Hollywood” tape saying, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything.” 

  
  

• Trump’s Republican National Convention was an exercise in hyper-masculinity, including Hulk Hogan roaring and ripping off his shirt.

   

• During the 2024 election, Trump surrogates mocked Democrats for not being able to define a “woman.” 

  
  

• In the election, more than 40 percent of the advertisements aired by Trump's campaign and pro-Trump groups focused on Harris’s support for transgender people: The ads claimed Harris “supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners” and “even supports letting biological men compete against our girls in their sports.”

  
  

• Trump said he would protect women “whether the women like it or not.”

  
  

• During the campaign, JD Vance said that declining rates of birth in the U.S. constituted a “civilizational crisis” and proposed that adults without children should pay higher taxes and have fewer voting rights. 

  
  

• In a 2021 interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, then-Senate-candidate Vance complained that the U.S. was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” Vance continued: “It’s just a basic fact — you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC — the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

  
  

• Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade.

• Among them was Brett Kavanaugh, whose confirmation was dominated by allegations that he sexually assaulted a young woman. 

• In recent court filings, the attorneys general of Idaho, Kansas, and Missouri claim that expanded access to abortion pills is “causing a loss in potential population or potential population increase” and that “decreased births” were inflicting “a sovereign injury to the state itself.” 

What’s the connection?

 

Disdain of women, a belief that they exist for male pleasure and reproduction, and fear of non-standard forms of gender identity and sexual orientation. 

All are deeply embedded in Trumpism. 

Zoom out and we can see that neofascism (as exemplified by Trump, Viktor Orbán, and Vladimir Putin) is organized around male dominance. Women are relegated to subservient roles.

Under neofascism, anything that challenges the traditional heroic male roles of protector, provider, and controller of the family is considered a threat to the social order. Anything that challenges the traditional female role as reproducer of the male bloodline is viewed as a danger to society. 

Neofascism targets gay and transgender people because they are thought to challenge or weaken the heroic male warrior.

Seen through this prism, Trump’s appointment of many men charged with sexual harassment, men who believe women should not be in combat and should be mothers, and men who oppose abortion and believe women should be forced to have babies even if they don’t want them, forms a coherent neofascist belief system.

 

The basic tenet is male dominance and female subservience.

The Pay Gap Between Men And Women Still Persists

The charts above are from the Economic Policy Institute. They have written an excellent article on the persistence of the pay gap between men and women. I urge you to read the whole article, but her is their conclusion:

There is no silver bullet to solving pay equity, but a wide array of policy options can close not only the gender pay gap but also gaps by race and ethnicity. These include requiring federal reporting of pay by gender, race, and ethnicity; prohibiting employers from asking about pay history; requiring employers to post pay bands when hiring; and adequately staffing and funding the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission and other agencies charged with enforcement of nondiscrimination laws.

We also need policies that lift wages for most workers while also reducing gender and racial/ethnic pay gaps, such as running the economy at full employment, raising the federal minimum wage, and protecting and strengthening workers’ rights to bargain collectively for higher wages and benefits.

Why Do Some Men/Women Cross The Political Gender Gap?

For several decades now, there has been a gender gap in American politics. A majority of men vote Republican and a majority of women vote Democratic. But this is not an absolute. Many men vote for Democrats and many women vote for Republicans. Why do they cross the political gender gap? 

Thomas B. Edsall examines this question in The New York Times. Here is part of what he wrote. There is much more, and I encourage you to read it here.

The deepening gender gap in American voting, with men favoring the Republican Party and women favoring the Democrats, is well known, if not well understood. So what explains the presence of millions of men in the Democratic Party and millions of women in the Republican Party? What distinguishes these two constituencies, whose partisanship runs against the grain?

I asked Heather L. Ondercin, a political scientist at Appalachian State University who has written extensively on gender issues, including in “Marching to the Ballot Box: Sex and Voting in the 2020 Election Cycle,” for her thoughts on these questions. She emailed back:

Regardless of identification as a man or a woman, more stereotypically “masculine” individuals (male and female) — aggressive, assertive, defends beliefs, dominant, forceful, leadership ability, independent, strong personality, willing to take a stand, and willing to take risks — tend to identify with the Republican Party. Individuals (men and women) who are more stereotypically “feminine” — affectionate, compassionate, eager to soothe hurt feelings, gentle, loves children, sensitive to the needs of others, sympathetic, tender, understanding, and warm — tend to identify with the Democratic Party.

In a case study of what Ondercin describes, Melissa Deckman, a political scientist at Washington College who is also chairman of the board of the Public Religion Research Institute, and Erin Cassese, a political scientist at the University of Delaware, published research into “gendered nationalism” in 2019 that sought to identify who is most “likely to believe that American society has grown ‘too soft and feminine.’”

Deckman and Cassese found a large gender gap: “56 percent of men agreed that the United States has grown too soft and feminine, compared to only 34 percent of women.”

But the overall gender gap paled in comparison with the gap between Democratic men and Republican men. Some 41 percent of Democratic men without college degrees agreed that American society had become too soft and feminine compared with 80 percent of Republican men without degrees, a 39-point difference. Among those with college degrees, the spread grew to 64 points: Democratic men at 9 percent, Republican men at 73 percent.

The gap between Democratic and Republican women was very large but less pronounced: 28 percent of Democratic women without degrees agreed that the country had become too soft and feminine compared with 57 percent of non-college Republican women, while 4 percent of Democratic women with degrees agreed, compared with 57 percent of college-educated Republican women.

The data described by Deckman and Cassese illuminate two key aspects of contemporary American politics. First, despite the enormous gaps between men and women in their voting behavior, partisanship is far more important than gender in determining how people vote; so too is the crucial role of psychological orientation — either empathic or authoritarian, for example — in shaping allegiance to the Democratic or Republican parties.

The Deckman-Cassese study is part of a large body of work that seeks to answer a basic question: Who are the men who align with the Democratic Party and who are the women who identify as Republicans?

“Gender and the Authoritarian Dynamic: An Analysis of Social Identity in the Partisanship of White Americans,” a 2021 doctoral dissertation by Bradley DiMariano at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, found patterns similar to those in the Deckman-Cassese study.

Among white Democratic men, an overwhelming majority, 70.7 percent, were classified in the DiMariano study as either non-authoritarian (50.71 percent) or “weak authoritarian” (19.96 percent), while less than a third, 29.3 percent, were either authoritarian (10.59 percent) or “somewhat authoritarian” (18.74 percent). In contrast, among white Republican men, less than half, 48.3 percent, were non-authoritarian or weak authoritarian, while 51.7 percent were authoritarian or somewhat authoritarian.

The partisan divisions among white women were almost identical: Democratic women, 68.3 percent non- or weak authoritarian and 31.7 percent authoritarian or somewhat authoritarian; Republican women, 45.6 percent non- or weak authoritarian and 54.4 percent authoritarian or weak authoritarian.

Trump-Loving Men Ask: Why Won't Women Date Us?

 

The reason Trump-loving men can't find a date is something right-wingers are trying to answer. But they ignore the obvious answer -- that being a Trump-lover exposes many negative things about a person, especially the inability to truly care about other people. They tend to blame women instead.

The following is most of an excellent article on this by Andi Zeisler at NBCnews.com:

The occasional Republican might bravely step forward to draw the line at violent insurrection, but on balance conservatives have ceased articulating actual policy platforms in favor of simply adopting the cartoon villainy that animates their leader. It’s a turbulent time. Yet the key question that seems to be keeping many conservatives up at night is: Why don’t people want to date us?

In 2018, Washingtonian magazine reported on young D.C. conservatives who found that working in the Trump White House or for right-wing media outlets were dating-app dealbreakers. A 2017 piece in The Federalist argued that dating sites that allow for “associative mating” — also known as “selecting partners with interests and beliefs in common” — were in fact the reason Trump was elected in the first place. The New York Times’s Ross Douthat applauded the British economist Robin Hanson for advocating the “redistribution” of sex as a remedy for the murderous misogyny of incels.

The newest entry in this pantheon of conservative lonely hearts comes from Eric Kaufmann, whose piece this week in the National Review, “Political Discrimination as Civil-Rights Struggle,” argues that college women’s disinterest in dating Trump supporters doesn’t just hurt their feelings, but is in fact discrimination. This, Kaufmann maintains, is evidence of a “progressive authoritarianism” that’s compelling “young elite Americans” to be turned off by “conservatives' resistance to racial, gender, and sexual progressivism.”

It’s true: A growing number of Americans are increasingly intolerant of racial, gender, and sexual intolerance. Bigotry just isn’t sexy, and few people seek partners who don’t acknowledge their full humanity. But for Kaufmann, the fault lies not with the people who hold noxious views, but with those who have the temerity to not want to get naked with them. His solution? If you can’t date, legislate. After identifying right-wing conservatives as a “small and declining political minority in elite institutions,” he calls for institutional remedies to prioritize this minority, writing, “Those on the right, along with freedom-minded allies on the left, will have to use government and the law to limit institutional autonomy just enough to protect individual freedoms.”

It’s worth asking why Kaufmann, along with the aforementioned conservative men, care about a lack of romantic interest in Trump supporters. Men on the internet have long charged that progressive, feminist Democratic voters are ugly, unlovable harpies, simultaneously sexless and slutty, and destined to die alone with their cats. Meanwhile, MAGA men regularly crow about studies indicating that conservative women are hotter than those on the other side. If these guys are happy to date within their own political affiliation, that’s great, right? Wrong. The problem, per Kaufmann, is that a majority of young women have the nerve to not want to date the men who don’t want to date them. How dare they?

Kaufmann is somewhat creative in interpreting the studies he cites. But even taken at face value, their findings aren’t truth bombs. Most women, not just educated “elite” ones, want to date people they actually like and who actually like them back. And it’s hardly surprising that people whose very existence has always been politicized tend to want to share their hearts, bodies, and futures with partners who hold similar values; with whom they can thrive in love and partnership. Pretending that pre-Trump daters didn’t have political preferences and standards is disingenuous. Framing it as a civil-rights issue is just creepy. There’s a term for people who force others into sexual and emotional intimacy, and it’s not “marriage material.”

Such arguments don’t just read like “Handmaid’s Tale” fan fiction; they also directly contradict the stated principles of American conservatism itself. Educated women not wanting to date Trump supporters, for instance, is a solid example of the free market that conservatives hold so dear. These guys are a demonstrably shoddy product: They mistake being loud for being factual; they conflate guns and masculinity; they’re incurious and dismissive of anything they don’t understand; and, like the twice-impeached Florida retiree they revere, they’re not great at taking no for an answer. If women reject them and the market corrects in response, everything is working exactly how conservatives believe it should. . . .

What enrages these men isn’t the lack of opportunities for romantic discussions of marginal tax rates and defunding Medicare; it’s that women can choose what they do with their bodies, and with whom they do it. “Progressive authoritarianism” is simply a new name for the same kinds of fearmongering rhetoric that already drives conservative positions on abortion access, birth control, childcare, gender identity, and more, and no amount of academic jargon and economic bloviating can conceal it.

Most of us learn early in life that you can’t bully someone into liking you, that not all desire is reciprocal, and that we can all learn from self-examination. Those who apparently haven’t should keep this important dating tip in mind: When a critical mass of people find your values regressive, your political beliefs inhumane, and your political hero repellent, it’s not them. It’s you.

Gender Alignment In The Democratic & Republican Parties

I thought the chart above (from NBC News) was interesting. It shows the gender alignment in each of the two major political parties -- and how it has changed in the last 10 years.

In 2010, the Democratic Party was 58% women and 42% men -- a 16 point advantage for women. In 2020, it is 61% women and 39% men --a 22 point advantage for women.

In 2010, the Republican Party was evenly split between men (50%) and women (50%). But in 2020, the party has 54% men and 46% women -- an 8 point advantage for men.

I think this goes a long way in explaining why the policies of the two parties are so different.

NOTE -- There is also another re-alignment happening. Those with a college degree are moving toward the Democratic Party, while those without a college degree are moving toward the Republican Party.

The Gender Difference In U.S. Politics

The charts above are from the Pew Research Center.

While men are fairly split between Biden and Trump, women are not. Trump is in serious trouble with women -- every poll shows that.

And that's good news for Democrats, because as the top chart shows, women make up a larger segment of the voting population (about 4% more than men). This difference holds true among Whites (3 point), Blacks (10 points), and Hispanics (5 points). Only Asians are different, with men having a 1 point advantage.

Women also hold the advantage among all education levels.

With political party identification, Men have an 8 point advantage in the Republican Party, while women have an 18 point advantage in the Democratic Party.

Some Charts That Should Worry Donald Trump About 2020

Donald Trump has a problem with women voters. And it is a problem that has remained consistent since he took office. It's also a problem that will limit him to one term if he can't change it before the 2020 election.

The top two charts use information provided by the Pew Research Center. They relate that the electorate is 53% women and 47% men. That would be bad enough for Trump, but as the second chart shows, women voted in a larger percentage than men did in 2018 (just as in past elections) -- and they are likely to do that again in 2020.

The bottom chart shows that 53% of women say they will definitely vote for someone other than Trump in 2020, while only 23% say they will definitely vote for him. The percentage among men is much closer (42% against and 32% for).

If there is a large turnout in 2020 (and I believe it will be massive), then women are going to kick Trump out of the White House.

The bottom chart reflects the results of the latest Politico / Morning Consult Poll -- done on April 28th and 29th of a national sample of 1,995 registered voters, with a 2 point margin of error.

Republicans Have Told Us What They Are - BELIEVE THEM!

(Cartoon image is by Monte Wolverton at cagle.com.)

Although I am a solid Democrat, I mourn what has become of the Republican Party. They used to be a party capable of compromise for the good of the country. That is no longer true, as they have demonstrated conclusively in the last few weeks. They are now the party of angry white men -- racist, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT, and rabidly anti-woman.

The following is most of an op-ed by Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post. All I can say is -- she's right!

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) barked at female sex-crime victims, “Grow up!” He called Christine Blasey Ford a “pleasing” witness. He shooed women away with a flick of his wrist. Hatch also posted “an uncorroborated account from a Utah man questioning the legitimacy and sexual preferences” of Julie Swetnick, one of Brett M. Kavanaugh’s accusers. . . .

Not a single Republican spoke up to criticize him. One would think someone would point out that he brought dishonor on himself, his party and the Senate. But clearly Republicans take no umbrage at such conduct.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) attempted to excuse the lack of a single Republican woman — ever — on the Judiciary Committee. “It’s a lot of work — maybe they don’t want to do it.”

Kavanaugh snapped and sneered at female senators on the Judiciary Committee. Republicans didn’t bat an eye or hold it against him. He was just mad, you see.

President Trump repeated the calumny that if the attack was “as bad” as Ford said she’d have gone to the police. He declared it was a “scary time” for young men. He openly mocked Ford at a rally to gin up his base’s anger. Republican apologists said he was just explaining the facts. He actually misrepresented her testimony, falsely claiming she couldn’t recall many facts — the neighborhood of the house where she was attacked. William Saletancalled out Trump and his defenders: “It’s true that Ford can’t recall important details about place and time. It’s true that she can’t recall how she got to the house or how she left. It’s true that every accused person is entitled to a presumption of innocence. But Trump’s portrayal of Ford’s testimony wasn’t true. It was a pack of lies. And people who defend it, like Lindsey Graham, are liars too.”

Trump and other Republicans accused sex-crime victims protesting Kavanaugh as protesters paid by George Soros (a Jewish left-wing billionaire whose name is routinely invoked in anti-Semitic attacks). The GOP Senate whip, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), called the victims a “mob” and echoed the bogus claim that they were paid protesters. They deny victims’ very existence; they are non-persons — props sent by opponents to ruin a man’s life.

Graham snorted that he’d hear what “the lady has to say” and then vote Kavanaugh in. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he’d “plow right through” (more like plow over) Ford’s testimony and confirm Kavanaugh. Republicans’ defense of Kavanaugh — that Ford and others were props of a left-wing plot and therefore lacked agency of their own — evidences the party’s attitude toward women.

You cannot say a party that embraces a deeply misogynistic president who bragged about sexually assaulting women and mocked and taunted a sex-crime victim; accepted a blatantly insufficient investigation of credible sex crimes against women in lieu of a serious one that the White House counsel knew would be disastrous; repeatedly insulted and dismissed sex-crime victims exercising their constitutional rights; has never put a single woman on the Judiciary Committee (and then blames its own female members for being too lazy); and whips up male resentment of female accusers is a party that respects women. Its members resent women. They scorn women. They exclude women. They use women to maintain their grip on power. But they do not respect them. . . .

The Republican Party no longer bothers to conceal its loathing of immigrants, its contempt for a free press, its disdain for the rule of law or its views on women. Indeed, these things now define a party that survives by inflaming white male resentment. 

GOP Still Has A Serious Problem With Women Voters

These charts reflect the results of the newest Quinnipiac University Poll -- done between September 27th and 30th of a national sample of 1,111 voters, with a margin of error of 3.7 points.

It shows the voters prefer Democrats in the House and the Senate by a 7 point margin. That margin is because women are opposing Republicans by huge margins. Men support Republicans by 5 points (House election) and 8 points (Senate election). That is dwarfed by women's views. They support Democrats in House by 18 points and in the Senate by 20 points.

And Trump is not helping GOP candidates bridge this gap. While men support Trump by 4 points, women disapprove of him by a whopping 25 points.

This is still shaping up to be an election decided by women voters.