July 23, 2024

One of the most depressing things about the 2020 election was seeing more white women move into the Trump voting pool. While only 47 percent of white women voted Republican in 2016, 53 percent voted for the GOP in 2020, according to Pew Research. While women of color largely remained Democratic voters, the “soccer moms” seemed to be falling for Trump. Those Republican women were rewarded in June 2022 when the Supreme Court took away their reproductive rights in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case. Dobbs woke many of those Republican women up. That fall, conservative women in redder than red Kansas voted, en masse, against a proposed state abortion ban. Was the sleeping giant waking?

Dissertations are being written on why so many white women support a convicted felon, who brags about wanting to date his daughter and grabbing women by the genitals. “And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything,” he said. A man who was found, by a jury of his peers, liable for sexual assault, in a case the judge equated with rape. Why would white women support this pig? What woman would tell their daughter that, “This is a good man and should be our president”? My theory is that their racism trumps his sexism. They see themselves as white first and women second.

Now, of all possible running mates, Trump has picked first term Ohio senator J.D. Vance to be his wingman. While it’s not surprising Trump picked a white male MAGA loyalist (who won’t stray like that Constitution-abiding Mike Pence), it is a little surprising that Trump would pick someone as anti-woman as Vance. Vance opposes no-fault divorce and wants a national ban on all abortion, even if a girl is raped by her father. (As J.D. says, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”) You’d think forced government birth for rape victims would not be a good look for the G.O.P., who should be trying to lure female voters back after Dobbs. But there is no G.O.P. anymore. There is only Trump, a party of one. In high school, I learned this was called “fascism.”

So the Trump-Vance ticket is the most misogynistic ticket of this century. And, suddenly, they are up against, not Old Man Biden, but Vice President Kamala Harris, who has also been a successful senator, state attorney general, and prosecutor of the same crimes for which Trump has been convicted. Sunday, after Biden’s announcement, I dove into right wing social media and charted the avalanche of racism and sexism that was being unleashed by the white men of MAGA. Then I took the shower.

Accusations that Harris is “incompetent,” “slept her way to the top,” and is a “DEI hire,” should be familiar to every single woman who has tried to find equity in the workplace. This includes Republican women – the ones in the workplace, not the ones homeschooling their kids. That women have to work twice as hard and get half as much is a lived reality known to all working women (and people of color). These are the women that belt out the line from the Taylor Swift song, “I’m so sick of running as fast as I can, wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man.” But the fact that this avalanche of “women are not qualified” misogyny is coming from the supporters of Trump-Vance may work in Harris favor.

Kathleen Blee’s pioneering 2008 book, Women of the Klan, found that women joined racist hate groups with their racist men, not on their own, and were challenged by the sexism that went hand in hand with the racism. Trump women who fawned over Trump at the RNC, with fake bandages on their right ears, may start to fall away when they hear the uncheck anti-woman rhetoric coming from their men, especially when they start to understand Harris has their back.

I’ve already witnessed this. Don’t tell anyone, but I belong to a Gen X Swiftie Facebook page. (Not all Taylor Swift fans are 9-year-old girls, like my daughter.) Swift is a strong feminist and has come out as a Democratic supporter. The 2020 documentary Miss Americana tells the powerful story of her political coming out. Taylor’s epic break-up song, “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” which is an updating of Dylan’s “Tangled Up In Blue,” contains the line, “And you were tossing me the the car keys, ‘Fuck the Patriarchy’ keychain on the ground.” Of course, being a feminist Swiftie over fifty, I went straight to Amazon and bought a “Fuck the Patriarchy” key chain.

After the Republican convention last week, which was the pinnacle of patriarchal bullshit, I posted a picture of my keychain on Gen X Swifties, with the tag, “Current mood.” I got hundreds of likes but some anger from a few Swifties that felt I had introduced politics into their “safe space.”

Then something amazing happened.

The other women on Gen X Swifties started a conversation with the “no politics” women. Not a “You’re stupid!” shouting match but a calm conversation that clearly stated, Taylor is political and so being a Taylor Swift fan is political. That Taylor has strongly come out for women’s rights and LGBTQ rights and against politicians who oppose those civil rights and you can’t separate these things. To be for Taylor is to be for women’s and queer rights and the taking of a strong stance against those that would suppress those rights is in line with Swift’s values of equality. People began posting memes of friendship bracelets that said, “In our Kamala era,” and repurposing Swift lyrics, like, “Kamala’s a relaxing thought.” And those “no politics” women didn’t bail. They stayed and listened.

I’d like to make a prediction. Swift’s Eras tour returns to the United States in October. As boyfriend Travis Kelce joined her onstage in London, there will be night when the vice president takes the stage. Preferably it will be during “You Need to Calm Down,” Swift’s brilliant anti-homophobia anthem, and Harris will do her famous Kamala dance. Swift will wink and that will be that. No words will be said and the massive Swift voting block will be activated.

So let Trump-Vance and their MAGA droogs unleash their pathetic misogynistic attacks. It’s like water off of Kamala’s back. She’s heard it all before. It can only work to peel those coveted white women, formerly known as soccer moms, away from the Trump cesspool and into the Harris camp. They may tell their men that they are voting for Trump, but in the privacy of the voting booth they’ll pull the lever for the prosecutor, not the felon. And when Taylor Swift sings, “Screaming, crying, perfect storms, I can make the tables turn. Rose garden full of thorns, keep you second guessing, like ‘Oh, my God, who is she?” They can sing along and say, “Yeah, that was me.”