Kamala Harris has a problem with men. Will misogyny cost her the election?

[IwantToRetire]

There was an earlier thread about whether the Democrats would support a WOC candidate https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5124648-will-us-democrats-support-a-woc-as-their-candidate-or-will-they-by-pass-kamala-harris

And I think there were some later about her policies, but then maybe there weren't. https://kamalaharris.com/issues/

But was depressed to see this article Kamala Harris has a problem with men. Will misogyny cost her the election?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/20/kamala-harris-has-a-problem-with-men-will-misogyny-cost-her-the-election
(Should have been men have a problem, not making out she is the problem.)

Polls reflect this age-old dichotomy. Men are more likely to back Trump; women lean towards Harris. A recent New York Times-Siena poll put her 16 points ahead of Trump among female voters. NBC gave her a 14-point lead with women. Trump leads by up to 16 points among men.

Harris’s gender may be tacitly affecting or reinforcing attitudes in other voter categories. In the New York Times poll, 60% of white college-educated voters backed Harris, while 63% of white non-college-educated voters backed Trump. Likewise, Trump, who is white, has a significant advantage among white people while Harris, who identifies as black and Asian, leads among non-whites. Yet voters in two other key categories, blacks and Hispanics, are less supportive of Harris than of Biden in 2020, surveys show – a decline partly driven by younger, non-college-educated Hispanic males. Speaking in pivotal Pennsylvania, Barack Obama angrily castigated his black “brothers” for finding “all kinds of excuses” not to support a woman.

Its just really depressing to think this is the basis on which the decision about the next US President is taken. Because like it or not what the US does or doesn't do impacts on the rest of us.

Even though they are now talking about Trump's mental capacity Trump’s Unwieldy Speeches Raise Questions About His Mental Acuity https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2024/10/16/trumps-unwieldy-speeches-raise-questions-about-his-mental-acuity/ it doesn't seem likely it will change the minds of his supporters. And is already clear he doesn't feel the need to abide by accepted norms in terms of procedures.

Divisive politics in the UK seems to have lead to an apathy, disengagement (low turn out at GE) but it seems, if news channels are to be believed, that in the US the devisions are making people more active engaged. More oppositional

Or rather men not caring about women's issues, or even trusting a woman to be President.

Thanks for this point. I don't think many people outside the US are really aware of issues that mainstream media gloss over.

Harris has problems which progressive and mainstream media are not acknowledging.
Many people feel that she was not a choice - she was parachuted in.
She relies on billionaire and celebrity supporters. This isn't enough in the current climate. Some of the people who were advertised at the Dem convention who are in Harris's corner are people like Jeffrey Marsh. Terrible look.

She is perceived as fake by many black people, male and female. She does a "blaccent" which offends many. Quite a number of Black people question her quite privileged Jamaican ancestry of plantation ownership.
Obama going out to lecture Black men was a huge mistake - it has produced a backlash from both men AND women.
Black support in polls has declined to 80% - that's historically low. In vox pops Black people of both sexes say they are tired of being taken for granted as Democrat voters - I don't know if people have heard the phrase "I don't live on your plantation any more", but it seems to be catching on.

She didn't do interviews for a long time - none with hostile media, and then did the Fox interview when the polling started to turn.
The Fox interview was a terrible mistake - she didn't answer questions about the border. Whatever her supporters feel, the border is an issue for millions of Americans. She deflected questions about Biden. She mentioned Trump 19 times in the shorter than promised interview - that's NOT good strategy.
She says stupid things that people remember, like when pressed about not going to the border as the "border tsar" , she said: "and I haven't been to Europe"

She really doesn't answer questions - no matter how much you like her, this is a weakness that people can see. People are tired of her "middle-class childhood" deflection answer. If SNL is parodying her, she's in trouble.

Women are getting tired of the abortion carrot and stick the Dems use. Obama promised in 2008 it would be the first thing he did - it wasn't, because AC was more important.

Then the big issues that worry many women - she is deep in the trans woods: support for the medicalisation of children with gender issues; support for men in women's prisons, women's sport, women's DV shelters, tax payer funded trans surgery...

Again, the USA voted for Hillary CLinton.

If, as someone said upthread, M. Obama ran tomorrow, it would be a landslide.

The candidate is a problem and even more than that, the two parties are a problem. The parties are increasingly undemocratic.

America has a population of over 320 million people.

Trad wife, if it exists, is so niche and to be seen in daily life.

It is more of a social media thing than a real life thing.

Bc I was responding to the statement that "No one was complaining about the electoral college in states like Tennessee when it voted for Clinton in 1996.
What I am saying is everyone rails against the election system in any country when it elects someone they don’t like, and everyone keeps quiet about it when it elects someone they like." The part I omitted didn't seem relevant to the claim

Ppl did complain about the EC in 1996. I tried to show that ppl have consistently opposed the EC. I couldn't find 1996 specifically but there is no reason to think that ppl, in general, overwhelmingly disliked it in 1968, 1981, and 1987 but suddenly liked it in 1996.

I never claimed that no one supported it. Obviously, they did or the US would have eliminated it already.

It was used as an example. It's appeared around the same time as Americas move to the hard right.

So do you believe any misogynist crap as long as its something you want to believe? She said no such thing.

www.factcheck.org/2024/08/posts-mislead-about-harris-romance-with-willie-brown/

How do you know MO would have been a brilliant president?

YES. Came to say this. She is not the problem.

US elections are so utterly depressing. The only thing that matters in the end is the electoral college, and I am so nervous.

DT beat every other much better qualified candidate (i.e. white men) to with the Republican nomination. This is even after he didn't hand over power peacefully after the last election and has been convicted of a felony since. Its not a fair test that the only two times that women have been up for president they have been up against DT.

I am confident that she is giving a bloody good go, and she picked a great running mate that is systematically taking brilliant pot shots at DT. But the only reason he was went last time was because of COVID which toppled alot of popularist politicians. They were put up against experts who were very skilled in evidence based reasoning and it really sorted the wheat from the chaff.

I think DT will still become president again even if he loses this one. Part of me wants him to win so he will just go away and we don't have to deal with the news being jammed up with his reactions and his run next time. The world is better prepared this time, we can see him comming and the sooner its over the better.

Ppl did complain about the EC in 1996. I tried to show that ppl have consistently opposed the EC. I couldn't find 1996 specifically but there is no reason to think that ppl, in general, overwhelmingly disliked it in 1968, 1981, and 1987 but suddenly liked it in 1996.

But there will always be people who like it and people who don’t like it and it will always come up, and most likely around elections. People didn’t like or dislike it anymore in 1996 than they did at other times, but I doubt Bill Clinton and the Democrats complained then.

No one has yet explained on this thread why the electoral college/popular vote discrepancy in 2016 is an indication that things need to change. In practically every presidential election in the history of the USA it hasn’t been an issue, why should it change because of the rare occasions it is?

The danger is in setting a precedent for altering a system to better enable candidates one might like or prefer, because it quite easily can go against you. If it’s unfair to everyone, that’s a check that is needed.

But, they were not trying to keep people out (they did not see that women or poc would ever be in play), they were trying to set up circuit breakers to prevent one person grabbing power (a KING) and on the one hand, prevent mob rule.
And there was a lot of both those issues in 1700s.

And now. The mob attempted to rule after the last election.

Great thread OP.

I am learning a lot!

Honestly people seem to think insulting other posters is the way to win an point.

Nobody is saying the Electoral College is wrong because of Trump.

Those of you saying this have invented it as a way to pretend the issue of the Electoral College is just sour grapes.

Actually, some people have been politically aware for a long time, and a lot of people say the Electoral College is ANTI DEMOCRATIC.

The role of the President is NOT the same as those in both house who are the direct representatives, so there is NO need to weight the vote in the presidential election as voters already have representatives in both.

It such a whatabouterry arguement.

This is about making the President genuinely representative of a US wide vote by individual voters.

It should not be part of the party system. It should be apart from that.

So please stop with the weighting arguement and try and escape from the ding dont of party politics.

Can you not begin to grasp that in fact it might be better to have someone who is not tied to a Party.

So just to go through this for the zillionth time.

US citizens get to vote for those who they hope will represent them through the elections for Congress and the House of Representatives (NB the name of the last).

The President is not there as a respresentative.

The very last thing the vote should be is something manipulated by political parties, which political parties have done in the past century.

Why do you want to kowtow to such a blatant attempt to corrupt the concept of individuals directly voting in the idividual who should be above the distorting decision making of party politics.

Quote:

The power of the Executive Branch is vested in the President of the United States, who also acts as head of state and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. The President is responsible for implementing and enforcing the laws written by Congress and, to that end, appoints the heads of the federal agencies, including the Cabinet. The Vice President is also part of the Executive Branch, ready to assume the Presidency should the need arise.

Note the word "executive" branch ie carrying out.

Note the responsibility for implement etc., written by Congress.

I am not saying this because I think it is ideal, but because these are the facts.

Do voters think the person they want to be President is qualified to effective carry out the decisions made by those they have directly elected to represent them in Congress etc..

Personally I find it scary that apparently that a complete novice could become Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces.

And appoint judges(?)

So all this endless twaddle about people needing to know the President will represent them, is not relevant. That is relevant in terms of the 2 Houses.

Another repeated fallacy, which again is really strange on a forum about women. Repeating a falsehood over and over again doesn't make it true.

Hilary Clinton GOT MORE VOTES THAN TRUMP.

It doesn't matter if you hate her, it doesn't matter if there was some conspiracy, or Trump circulated lies.

When it came to making a choice between Trump and Clinton MORE individual US citizens voted for Clinton.

Analysis of validated votes:

When we talk about the US, it is understood that we are talking about voting in terms of the electoral college, not the popular vote, Some states are definitely more misogynistic than others. It is a little disingenous to look at the rolling back of women's rights, especially reproductive rights in these states and not say that misogyny is not at play, let alone Vance's constant comments on the matter of what women are good for.

Instead we have a woman who has admitted that she got her start as a politician by having sex with her boss, she's incapable of stringing a cogent adhock sentence together.

Utter, laughable lies. Btw, the word is adhoc, language expert. 😄

The title phrasing makes it sound reasonable for men to have a problem with her, whereas if it were ‘Men say ‘No Girls Allowed!’ to Harris White-House Bid’, then that puts things into a better perspective.

The admission about her boss was from a tv interview she did years ago I can't remember where sorry.

Suuuure it was.
She was already an assistant DA when she met Willie Brown, so saying he was responsible for her getting the job is a lie. It has been thoroughly debunked.

"No one has yet explained on this thread why the electoral college/popular vote discrepancy in 2016 is an indication that things need to change. In practically every presidential election in the history of the USA it hasn’t been an issue, why should it change because of the rare occasions it is?

The danger is in setting a precedent for altering a system to better enable candidates one might like or prefer, because it quite easily can go against you. If it’s unfair to everyone, that’s a check that is needed"

It's coming up more now bc there is a discrepancy between the popular vote and Electoral College vote more often than there used to be. Ppl I know generally care about the issue but it's not a hot, burning topic unless someone wins the EC but loses the popular vote. They think that the EC is antidemocratic but as long as the person with the most popular votes wins the EC as well, they aren't too bothered by it. A candidate winning the popular vote but losing the EC vote has only happened five times in US history. Two of those times were fairly recently: 2000 and 2016., In 2020, Biden won both but he won the popular vote by more than 7 million votes, while his Electoral College victory was decided by fewer than 50,000 votes in a handful of states. Ppl are more vocal about it now bc it seems to be more of a problem in recent years. .

I've been against the Electoral College for decades. So have most of the ppl I know, even if "my" candidate wins the election. (BTW, I almost always vote for third parties bc I live in a state where my vote doesn't matter so "my" candidate hasn't won in decades. But I was strongly opposed to the EC even before that.)

" If it’s unfair to everyone, that’s a check that is needed"
It doesn't hurt everyone, it systematically underweights the votes of ppl in large states and overweights the votes of ppl who live in less populous states. Why do you think it's unfair to everyone? I don't understand why you think that but even if it was unfair to everyone, my goal would be to try to find a system that's fair to everyone, not unfair to everyone. Why is unfair better?

Well, you can’t say that the American political campaigns aren’t thorough. Imagine getting as far as a British Women’s forum to target your propaganda.
I reluctantly salute you.

One of the big reasons Trump won was a majority of white females voted him over Hilary.

It's coming up more now bc there is a discrepancy between the popular vote and Electoral College vote more often than there used to be.

But that isn’t true. The discrepancy between Clinton and Trump was 2%.

The discrepancy in other years when this has been an issue:

1868: 3%
1888: 0.83%
2000: 0.51%

So two occasions it’s been a fine margin and one occasion was bigger.

There was a 20 year gap between the first two occurrences, then a 112 year gap, then a 16 year gap. It’s not increasing in frequency, becoming more common, or a more modern issue.

Why do you think it's unfair to everyone?

I don’t think it’s unfair, but if both Democrats and Republicans at various stages of history have thought it unfair then it’s treating them both equally.

The democrats had an opportunity not to have a coronation and they blew it. We forget the US is a conservative country with both misogyny and racism so any woman of colour has to be exceptional unfortunately and Kamala is not. It was such a lost opportunity as Trump has no many poor features to target.

Compared to Biden, Harris and Trump she's a rock god who can speak intellectually about most subjects and shock horror she actually admits when she doesn't know something and goes and researches it. That makes her someone who in my books has the potential to be a great president though ofcourse I could be weong