The criminal defendant’s Restoration agenda is festooned with fascist goodies – he’s vowing to fire any U.S. attorney who refuses to prosecute whoever he wants prosecuted, he’d unleash the National Guard wherever and whenever he wants, he’d abolish the U.S. civil service and pack every federal job with MAGAts, he’d pardon the criminals jailed for the Jan. 6 insurrection, he’s threatening violence again if he loses this fall – but one particular exchange, in a must-read Time magazine interview posted this week, really caught me eye.
The adjudicated rapist and serial groper of women said he’s fine with governments monitoring some of women’s most private bodily functions.
Q: “You think (abortion) should be left to the states. You’ve made that perfectly clear. Are you comfortable if states decide to punish women who access abortions after the procedure is banned?”
Trump: “I don’t have to be comfortable or uncomfortable. The states are going to make that decision.”
Q: “Do you think states should monitor women’s pregnancies so they can know if they’ve gotten an abortion after the ban?”
Trump: “I think they might do that.“
Q: “Prosecuting women for getting abortions after the ban. But are you comfortable with it?
Trump: “It’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not. It’s totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions.”
Has any other president in memory oppressed women the way he has? He put three MAGAts on the Supreme Court, and Roe‘s federal protection of reproductive rights went into the trash; now he’s washing his hands of the entire issue and declaring that if a red state wants to police women’s private lives, then hey, don’t blame him. One in three American women of childbearing age live in states where abortion is now essentially banned, but if those states want to monitor women’s pregnancies and craft other draconian measures, he won’t care a whit. He’s too busy lying to himself, insisting (contrary to all polling evidence) that most Americans wanted Roe overturned; at a rally yesterday, he uttered this batshit sentence: “People are absolutely thrilled with the way that’s going on.”
But are women voters “absolutely thrilled?” Or perhaps they’re furious en masse? Alas, there’s no way to know.
In the 2020 election, 44 percent of women cast their ballots for Trump; worse yet, according to the number-crunchers at the Pew Research Center, a whopping 53 percent of white women voted for Trump. I’d dearly love to know how many, if any, regret the choice they made and intend to vote more sanely this year.
President Biden’s campaign is banking on mass female outrage, driven by the true belief that Trump and his MAGA cult view women basically as vessels in a 1950s time warp. Maybe Biden will indeed benefit. The latest New York Times-Sienna College national polls shows Biden leading Trump among women by 16 percentage points – 53 to 37 – and that’s encouraging, although one could argue that, given Trump’s vile policies and misogyny, his share of women should be far smaller.
I see two potential problems with forecasting a pro-Biden surge on abortion:
(1) Women voters who live in critical swing states – such as Pennsylvania and Michigan – don’t need to worry about the loss of abortion access, because their blue governments are protecting it. As a result, they may be less likely to prioritize the issue and vote on it. By contrast, abortion will likely be a top-tier voting issue in red Florida, where a virtually total ban went into effect yesterday, but because that state has been strongly trending MAGA for the last eight years, it’s highly questionable whether even a surge of outraged women voters can turn it blue.
(2) The racial divide among women is a critical factor. As I mentioned earlier, Trump won white women in 2020 – and in 2016 as well. Broadly speaking (and stating the obvious), white women have more income and resources than black women, and are thus better positioned to travel to a blue state for an abortion. White female Floridians seeking abortions can more easily afford a plane ride to Virginia or North Carolina. Bottom line, nationwide: White women may be less likely to prioritize abortion as a top-tier issue despite the destruction Trump has wrought – whereas Black women, broadly speaking, are more vulnerable. But they’ve been voting blue already, favoring Biden over Trump in 2020 by a 95-5 margin.
I hope my skepticism is proven wrong.
Vice President Harris, talking about abortion in Florida yesterday, identified the obvious flaw in Trump’s post-Roe agenda. Historically, “state’s rights” has been an instrument of oppression, of granting freedom to some while denying it to others. Now it’s happening with abortion. She said: “This is a fight for freedom, the fundamental freedom to make decisions about one’s own body and not have their government tell them what they’re supposed to do.”
Will women voters in sufficient numbers hold Trump accountable? The fact that I even need to pose the question is a symptom of despair.