It’s payback time for women in America
President Donald J. Trump has a woman problem. “Nothing new,” you say? Trump had a woman problem long before he was elevated to the White House. And he is a problem for the many women he has divorced, denigrated, insulted and oppressed.
Yet, incredibly, Trump was elected in 2016 with the help of millions of women voters.
How, I asked then, could any woman vote for a misogynist who spews racism, sexism, and division? How could women support a man who had been accused of sexual harassment, abuse and assault?
How could they? Especially after the emergence of the notorious “Access Hollywood” audiotape in which Trump bragged about forcing himself on women.
But in 2020, something is new. Trump’s struggles to win critical suburban voters “stem in particular from his changing fortunes among white women, a group that backed him over Clinton by 9 points four years ago,” the PBS NewsHour reports.
A PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll, taken Oct. 8 through Oct. 13, asked registered and likely voters about Trump’s job performance as president. In the national poll, 50% of noncollege-educated, white women disapproved, while 43% approved and 8% were “unsure.”
Among white female college graduates, 68% disapproved, 30% approved and 1% were unsure.
To win the Nov. 3 election, Trump must win over those voters, especially in suburban areas in the crucial swing states.
So now, after a lifetime of afflicting women, Trump is desperately wooing them. If you vote for the other guy, “they” are coming for you, he warns on the campaign trail. Those people in public housing, urban looters, gangbangers and — worst of all — the radical left are coming for you. So, he says, vote for me.
Last week, fresh off his brief bout with COVID-19 and chock-full of steroids, Trump hit the campaign hustings in Johnstown, in the swing state of Pennsylvania. “Suburban women, will you please like me?” he pleaded at his MAGA rally. “Please. Please. I saved your damn neighborhood, OK?”
American women, please, please. Help save our country. It is time to silence Trump’s divisive, hateful agenda.
To all women, suburban, urban, rural, feminists, pro-lifers, pro-choicers, all:
It is time to say, “Mr. President, I’m speaking.”
Mr. President, I’m speaking for the hundreds of thousands of women who have marched, again and again, from your inauguration until today, to protest your divisive and oppressive policies.
Mr. President, I’m speaking for all who have lost grandparents, parents and children to the ravages of COVID-19, the terrible disease you dismiss as “disappearing.”
Mr. President, I’m speaking for the immigrant mothers who were separated from their babies at our borders, thanks to your inhumane immigration policy.
And I’m speaking for all the women and their families who may lose their right to vital insurance coverage, as you appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act.
I’m speaking for the mothers grieving for their black sons, lost to the hands of racist and institutionalized police misconduct.
And for all the other women who, for decades, you have divorced, denigrated, insulted and oppressed.
It’s payback time. Time for all women to speak, with our vote, and say, “Mr. President, it’s time for you to go.”