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.

No, it really isn't. It's a reference to globalism which is the economic reality we live in, where discrete economies don't really exist to the degree they used to, money, investment, etc, are international, and much of it is mediated through banks. This reduces the ability of nation states to control their own economy, and it gives a lot of power to people who aren''t really part of any nations government. It has very real consequences for workers in every country.

I would love to know what language you'd use to talk about this, or is the idea we just don't?

There are idiots who claim really stupid shit like banking is Jewish conspiracy - those people are antisemites. And more to the point, they are wrong. Globalism is not a Jewish conspiracy.

The vast majority of people who talk about globalism know that, and are actually talking about economics.

Here is a good thing to remember - if you find some other words to substitute for globalism, or even bankers, you will find the same antisemitic conspiracy theorists will use those words too, because they mean the same thing.

That's globalisation, not globalism. See Joseph Stiglitz for example. Globalism specifically is linked to conspiracy theories of control.

American here. Re the electoral college: the Constitution allows each state to decide how it will elect the President. All well and good, until you get to California, which has been a one-party state for decades. Its legislature, with a Democratic supermajority, has enacted a series of utterly batshit insane voting laws designed to make very sure that they never lose their power. California lets everyone and anyone vote without showing ID. In fact, it is ILLEGAL to ask someone who shows up to vote to identify themselves in California. Anybody can walk off the street, register to vote using any name they wish, and vote the same day in any election. They can vote multiple times in multiple places, because there is no one to stop them. California also has more non-citizen residents than any other state. These people are allowed, even encouraged to vote, multiple times if they feel like it. No questions can be asked, BY LAW. It sounds crazy to have a system with no safeguards, but it serves the Dems in California very well.

Not coincidentally, California is also where the popular vote totals are run up for the Democrats. There are many counties in California where the popular vote totals greatly exceed the number of citizens over 18. The result of this is that people in other states do not trust the numbers that come out of California. When a state counts more votes than they have citizens, there is a huge problem, and because the states can't force other states to secure their elections, the only defense they have is to keep the electoral college in place so California doesn't turn the entire US into a one-party state. The other states will absolutely never allow that.

@LifeExperience

Anybody can walk off the street, register to vote using any name they wish, and vote the same day in any election.

What is the process for vote registration?

Oh what a load of conspiracy nonsense. There's no evidence of all these illegal voters in California. The state is largely one party because the GOP goes according to what the national party wants and not what the locals want. Look at Massachusetts and Maryland, they've elected Republican governors. Even CA elected Schwarzenegger from 2003-2011. the CA GOP still wins in rural parts of the state. They don't want to figure out a way to win in the liberal areas. They lost Orange County only quite recently and it's still knife-edge.

CA adopted the jungle primary, so now sometimes there isn't even a Republican in the general election. They have nonpartisan districting and have still elected influential House members like McCarthy.

Harris was assistant district attorney in Alameda County when they met. Brown then appointed Harris to two political posts while he was speaker of the California Assembly, but that was in 1994 — years before Harris was elected district attorney of San Francisco in 2003. She would remain in that post until 2011, when she won the office of California district attorney. In 2016, she ran for U.S. Senate and was elected.

She destroyed Trump so badly in their only debate that he's run away from any further debates and can now be found ranting at various staged town hall events about any old crap apart from policy.

@MonkeyToHeaven you might want to read this and reassess her speaking prowess.
By the way I'm no Trump fan nor as a pp stated am I a racist I just think Harris is a dangerous shit show and is more dangerous for women than Trump and that's shockingly scary as we all know what sort of nightmare he is

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2024/10/24/kamala-harris-cnn-town-hall-our-experts-react-verdict/

I think restoring Roe vs Wade & extending child tax credits, providing first-time homebuyers with up to $25,000 for down payments, plus more generous support for first-generation homeowners, build 3 million more rental units and affordable homes, outlaw new forms of price fixing by corporate landlords, reversing tax cuts to the wealthy & banning assault weapons will benefit women.

Much more than a plan to deport millions which won't happen, tariffs and a "concept of a plan" for healthcare.

@MonkeyToHeaven unfortunately she can't just restore roe v wade.
She could champion an amendment to the constitution to add abortion rights but it's unlikely to pass and there'd need to be a word for women that excluded all males for it to work but Harris doesn't want that and quite frankly Democrats have been promising to make that amendment for over 2 decades and have done nothing and I don't believe she's any different

Its not misogyny that is Harris’s problem.

It’s that she not a leader. She was chosen as the democrats nominee because

1. There was limited time to find a new candidate with Biden withdrawing. They also feared any nominee elections could make the party look divided
2. They were concerned with the optics of passing over a black woman

She isn’t a good enough candidate for president. Her campaign is to highlight how awful Trump is and how Harris is a decent person. Well by that account, most Americans would be good candidates. Its not enough to say she a better human than Trump. Most of us are.

Many people who will vote for Trump don’t even like him. They respect that Harris is hardworking and a decent person, but that’s not what they think will help them keep their jobs, fill their fridges etc

Trumps main asset is his ability to remain unaffected by criticism. Most people would be affected by this, so likely to u-turn or backtrack. He is called racist , misogynist everyday. It makes not difference. To Trump supporters, he a weapon of war. He can take the bullets (literally) and he still goes on. As a weapon of war, he’s all the terrible things you might expect but he keeps on going. So people are willing to vote for him if he deliveres. For example, immigration. Which is a topic only a few years ago that seen him labelled as racist. But now, the majority of Americans of all ethnicities believe that greater control should be at the border and illegal immigrants deported.

So against this candidate, an ugly weapon of war…… they put up Harris?
She isn’t leading the party, it’s the Democrats pointing the way for her. People can see that. For democrat supporters, that doesn’t matter, they will vote democrat regardless but it’s why she has stagnated the last few weeks. She’s unable to flip a lot of the undecided. Which is astonishing seen as a billion dollars has been raised for her campaign. Many saying that this sort of money needs to be spent so that America gets to know Harris. She’s been VP for 4 years, the fact that they believe the electorate don’t know her well enough is shocking. This is because she doesn’t have leadership qualities and this has been shown while in office.

As such, she will be made a scapegoat when they loose. Black men will also be used as a scapegoat for not voting for her. The democrat big wigs will state that they used all their resources to help her win etc but the truth is they set her up for a fall. They knew Biden was going to lose, they weren’t willing to have any of their future rising stars put their name in the hat when it meant going against Trump. That means an ugly battle and they want their stars untarnished for the next presidential race. When Harris loses this race, she will not return to be the democratic nominee for 2028. They will back someone else.

For precisely the reasons why the democrats picked her, is precisely why she won’t be able to gather enough votes. She will prob win the popular vote, like Hilary because as I said, she’s a decent person. But she won’t win over the swing states because she doesn’t have what it takes to be a leader of the worlds largest economy.

Worst of it is the party will get away with setting her up. People will choose to ignore it, like they chose to ignore a declining Biden.

Trump is also seen as a means to an end, not the end in itself. Which is why people that dont even like him, can vote for him.

The opposite of Harris, whose presidency is seen as the end in itself. This isn’t enough for voters in 2024

It’s a very close race. Harris had a good boost to start with and I thought she had it but now it looks like it could go either way

No, that is actually the meaning of globalism.
If by "theories of control" you mean that politics and economics are linked, of course they are.

"Globalisation" is just the process of globalism. They are the same thing.

I think Twisty is right. To a large extent, people know how Trump is, if they aren't willing to vote for him, they decided that long ago. He'd have to do something newly awful to change their minds.

A lot of people who would rather not vote for Trump though are unsure of Harris. What she says and how she performs could influence them one way or the other, so she has a lot more to lose or gain potentially. If she loses I think it will likely be due to people staying home more than anything else.

As such, she will be made a scapegoat when they loose. Black men will also be used as a scapegoat for not voting for her.

They are fools if they do that, but it's hugely likely. It will push that group even further from being reliable Democrat voters though.

It was interesting watching the Obama speech. I always thought of him as someone who could really read the room and deliver a targeted message, and so it was a shock to see it go so astray - there he was talking to these guys confidently, and I was thinking, oh my God, don't say that, what are you thinking! He seemed oblivious to how it was going to go over. There was one of the guys he was talking to, his body language was wild, you could see the tension building up.

I've wasted a lot of my time recently diving into YouTube looking at political commentary from black men, a lot of them normally music reactors of one kind of another. I think things have really changed since Obama's presidency, and partly because of Obama.

It seems like a lot of them had felt that somehow Obama would change things in a fundamental way, that he was one of them - and of course he was just a fairly regular Democrat president. The language I hear again and again is that they have woken up or been enlightened - they aren't interested much about the race or sex or party the president belongs to, they want to hear about policy. They are also very cynical about the "one of them" thing and seem to feel this about Obama and Harris - their experience is as differernt as a white kid from rural Ohio would be from Harris or Obama's upbringing which was upper middle class, international, from a highly educated background. A lot of them seem to see both of them as "acting black" to pander to them - I don't think they generally care about the fact that they have a different background, but they almost feel mocked.

They seem to think - we've voted Democrat consistently for three generations - maybe we need to be a little harder to get if we want these people to actually address our policy concerns.

One guy who I often listen to for his music reviews basically said, I will listen to any politician who does three things: addresses my taxes (kept 40% more of his pay under Trump); doesn't add new gun control stuff; and a third mundane thing which escapes me at the moment. Racial stuff did not enter into it. He also had a strong sense that the Democrat party dislikes men in general, which I suspect might be a part of the reason they are losing men across the board.

A lot of this isn't about Harris specifically, it's about the Democrats and whether what they are saying speaks to the voters. I'm not suggesting that they need to give up policies they believe in - but the fact is, if the voters don't like those policies - that's probably why they aren't voting for you.

I often think the left fails to understand why poor people might vote right. They often seem to campaign on ‘we will make your lives marginally better’ but ignore that many do not want their lives to be just marginally better. They aspire to be part of the rich and don’t want to be punished when they get there.

You don't think the left understand false class consciousness?

Translation : - I want to be rich and pay no pesky taxes. I'm voting Trump in case I win the Lotto. You never know....

The American Dream

America has a different attitude to those who are successful and wealthy than the UK. We can be almost resentful of it whereas it is more admired in the US, Even your comment about the Lotto shows that - the only way achieve wealth is through luck. Only lotto winners are to be admired for their wealth. The idea that you can work hard and build a successful business to achieve wealth is dismissed.

edited as posted too soon.

If you work in agriculture, or steelworking, or car manufacture protectionism will absolutely protect your job. It isn't good for the country overall, or for consumers, but that's irrelevant here - he's selling a protectionist and low immigration vision to people who don't believe they have seen any benefits to free trade and high immigration.

For most Americans, the federal government only affects them in three ways: taxes, trade policy and immigration policy. It's not like the UK where the national government is involved in the minutiae of every day life. For Americans their state and even municipal governments loom much larger in everyday life. So even if you don't believe in anything else that Trump says and does, if he aligns with your values in those areas why would you NOT vote for him. His opinions on abortion, environmental matters, minorities, education etc are largely irrelevant, because they are mostly state matters.

So you can happily live in a Democratic voting, environmentally and socially progressive state like Colorado, but STILL vote for Trump because it won't affect anything in your state, but you'll pay lower federal income taxes, which means more time for skiing (and bemoaning climate change). And you can be an old-time union diehard in Pennsylvania and STILL vote for Trump because his protectionism will help your local industries (or what remain of them).

His voters aren't stupid - they know that his policies will benefit them personally.

As such, she will be made a scapegoat when they loose. Black men will also be used as a scapegoat for not voting for her. The democrat big wigs will state that they used all their resources to help her win etc but the truth is they set her up for a fall. They knew Biden was going to lose, they weren’t willing to have any of their future rising stars put their name in the hat when it meant going against Trump. That means an ugly battle and they want their stars untarnished for the next presidential race. When Harris loses this race, she will not return to be the democratic nominee for 2028. They will back someone else.

Glass cliff.

It finally occurs to me what the nagging little irritant is in that title.

Kamala Harris has no problem with men.

[Some] men have a problem with her.

When Harris loses this race, she will not return to be the democratic nominee for 2028. They will back someone else.

Who? I thought the whole point was, there was no other feasible candidate on the horizon.

Agree, I always believed that the USA was a forward thinking country, but what I have read,watched and heard, it sounds like it will become a country that is going backwards , and probably it will when it cones to peoples human rights .Trump will win then there will be discord, a country who's leader will become the laughing stock of the world,bet Putin is rubbing his hands and Zelenksy needs to find a safe place.They can stick Disney land where the sun don't shine as it will be called Trump land, I heard he wanted to make the Trumps a dynasty omg he will want to become a king next 😆 lol

Please do explain how the 60% tarrif on Chinese goods Trump has proposed will protect jobs.
Car manufacturers in particular rely heavily on parts imported from China. It would shut down production, because the vast majority of consumers are not going to be able to pay 60% more for a car. The same is true in other industries.
If you actually understand how these things work, you don't vote for dangerous idiocy like Trump is proposing. That's suicidal.
So either they are ignorant or perversely seek their own destruction. Take your pick, but you cannot reasonably argue they are well informed and rational.