#MeToo backlash may give GOP boost
Kavanaugh conflict riled conservatives as well
WASHINGTON – Women driving the midterm elections as energized voters and first-time candidates fueled a record-breaking gender gap boosting Democrats.
But the battle over Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court provoked a backlash among those who argued the #MeToo movement has gone too far, a reaction that increases the odds Republicans can hold control of the Senate.
Call it the gender wars, a midterm battle that could be a dry run for the presidential election in 2020 and fundamentally reshape political parties.
It was the defeat of the first woman nominated for the presidency by a major party that helped spur political engagement by millions of women. Since Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016 to Donald Trump, his disruptive leadership and hard-line policies on immigration and other issues have forged bonds with
core supporters but also opened a breach with many women, including some GOP-leaning and independent women who voted for Republicans.
The result has been a midterm election defined by women. “Women candidates, women voters and women issues are all together at the forefront, and that’s been true the whole cycle,” Democratic pollster Margie Omero said.
The disparity between the way women and men view issues and how they vote has never been so yawning. It’s propelled in large part by Trump.
The aftermath of Kavanaugh’s dramatic nomination hearings and narrow confirmation spotlighted the gender divide that has inflamed some voters since Trump claimed the Republican presidential nomination two years ago. One side saw a credible woman whose account of sexual assault against a powerful man was not taken seriously.
The other side saw an accomplished man whose reputation was smeared by an accuser who couldn’t provide proof of her allegations or remember the details.
Trump decried “the Democrats’ shameless campaign of political and personal destruction” at a campaign rally in Topeka, Kansas, hours after Kavanaugh was confirmed. He mocked Christine Blasey Ford’s account of an attempted rape and complained that he himself had been the victim of unfair accusations of sexual misconduct. “This is a very scary time for young men in America,” he told reporters.
‘The Kavanaugh effect’
The message seems to resonate among Republican voters who had been less enthused about the midterms than Democrats. GOP candidates in several too-close-to-call Senate races saw their standing rise over the past week or so.
“The Kavanaugh effect ... is changing their U.S. Senate picture,” GOP pollster Bill McInturff said. In Arizona, Republican Martha McSally led Democrat Kyr- sten Sinema by 6 percentage points in a statewide poll this week. In Tennessee, Republican Marsha Blackburn led Democrat Phil Bredesen by 8 points. In Nevada, Republican Dean Heller edged up to a 2-point lead over Democrat Jacky Rosen.
In North Dakota, Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp hurt her chances of winning a second term when she voted against Kavanaugh.
Though key Senate races are mostly in conservative red states that Trump swept in 2016, many of the swing House races are in suburban districts where voters tend to be more moderate.
A Washington Post poll of 69 battleground House districts Sept. 19 to Oct. 5 – as Kavanaugh’s nomination was debated – found women’s support crucial in giving Democrats a narrow 50 per
cent-46 percent edge over Republicans in the contests that are likely to determine which party elects the next speaker of the House. Women supported Democratic candidates by 14 points,
54 percent to 40 percent. Men supported Republican candidates by 5 points,
51 percent to 46 percent.
In these districts, the “Kavanaugh effect” may galvanize voters who felt his accuser wasn’t given a fair hearing.
“It was just another, additional piece of evidence for Democratic voters and particularly Democratic women that ... women are not valued as much as men, and they aren’t to be believed, and they don’t matter,” said Shana Kushner Gadarian, a political scientist at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University.
A fundamental shift
The day after Trump’s inauguration, the massive Women’s March signaled the strength of the resistance to his presidency. The coalition of groups that helped organize the Women’s Marches is holding a series of them leading up to the midterms.
This fall’s midterms are poised to provide the latest evidence of a fundamental shift in politics: the movement of white college-educated women (many of them once Republican or Republican-leaning) to the Democrats, and the movement of white men without a college education (part of the old FDR Democratic coalition) to the GOP.
In a Wall Street Journal/NBC Poll taken before Kavanaugh’s confirmation, white, college-educated women said they planned to vote for the Democratic congressional candidate by 23 points. White, working-class men planned to vote for the Republican by 29 points.
If that trend holds, it might mean the gender wars are just getting started.
“Women candidates, women voters and women issues are all together at the forefront, and that’s been true the whole cycle.”
Margie Omero Democratic pollster