OPPOSITION TRIES TO SHELLAC TRUMP, BUT HE’S GOT THIS VOTE
If you want to know what women are thinking, head to the nail salon. That’s what this writer did, and here’s what she found out about what non-politico women think about Donald Trump:
He’s a typical male. He talks a big game about women sometimes. Bravo. Big deal, the women said. We’ve heard it before, and we’re not perfect either.
“If people heard some of the stuff I’ve said about men and their big swinging d—s…” said one patron, to a ripple of uncomfortable laughter. Yes we’re all guilty of being crass.
Of course, we all want our presidents to be perfect, not crass. During his 2000 campaign, George W. Bush was caught on a hot mic calling New York Times reporter Adam Clymer a “major league a–hole.” The media went berserk. It was as if they’d never heard the word before, certainly never applied to one of their own. Queue laugh track.
Or how about the hot mic that caught Ronald Reagan joking, just before his weekly address to the nation in 1984: “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”
Or Barack Obama calling Kanye West a “jackass.” Or that time he said: “And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Speaking of jackasses…
This is different. This is Donald Trump being a New York boor. This is a side of the Donald we know is there and we don’t like.
And yet, the women in the salon said: “I don’t care. I’m so sick of the political ruling class and it’s never going to change unless we get someone in there who is a change agent, and besides, he’s been a businessman all his life, not a politician.”
What’s surprising is that while some women are reacting from a place of trauma, and Donald’s words are the equivalent of picking at a very painful scab, many others are going to be voting with their heads, in spite of all the things that may have happened to them in their lives.
They don’t care that he has a wife that looks more robot than human. They don’t care that he has orange hair and even oranger skin. They care about the country and getting it back on the right track. They care that they’ve been sliced and diced and divided by Obama and they are sick of it. They’re worried about having more government crammed down their throats.
And they don’t think Hillary has what it takes to bring back sanity or move the country forward. “She’s going to be another four years of Obama,” said one Alaskan, examining her newly trimmed hair in the mirror. “In fact, I’ve always thought she’d lie her way to the top, and was I right, girls?”
This is not a scientific sample. In fact, it’s merely a slice of life in midtown Anchorage on a bright Tuesday afternoon.
Over at the Fivethirtyeight blog, Daniel Nichanian says women favor Hillary over Donald by a nearly unbelievable margin. If only women voted in November, Hillary would win by the largest landslide in history, 458 electoral votes for Hillary and 80 for Donald, he says. Today, those 80 electoral votes were getting their nails done.
It’s abundantly clear that women voting in November will be the deciding factor and that between now and Election Day, they’ll be bombarded in the media with gender-sensitive messaging that tugs them toward Hillary and away from Donald.
Trump had better put on his big-boy pants and start courting the women’s vote, or he will have a hee-yuge amount of explaining to do on Nov. 9.