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Oops, women are paying attention

Donald Trump sexism tracker: Every offensive comment in one place

I don’t know it this is anything more than porn for desperate Americans hoping for a landslide but I thought I’d share it anyway. This is from the Never Trump site, The Bulwark:

How will the coming Supreme Court vote impact the presidential race?

On Thursday, I convened a focus group of 2016 Trump voters—all college-educated women in swing states—to ask them what they thought. What I heard was bad news for Republicans.

Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell seem to hope that nominating a conservative woman to the Court will pull suburban women back into their camp. The group I spoke with indicated the opposite.

Some quick background on this group: It was nine women and I had spoken to them once before (last week on September 16). I reconvened this group because it had an unusually high proportion of undecided voters (Yes, they exist!). Of the nine, one was definitely voting for Biden, one was leaning toward Trump, and seven were very much undecided. But all intended to vote in the upcoming election.

When I logged onto the Zoom call I began the discussion with an open-ended question: “How has your thinking about the presidential race changed—or has it—since we last spoke?”

Their answers surprised me. No one even mentioned the Supreme Court. Instead many of the women volunteered that they were leaning much more toward Joe Biden because of Donald Trump’s recent refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power.

Their disgust was palpable.

As one woman said:

I’ve been hearing a lot, especially, about not making it a peaceful transition and it’s just making that bitter taste in my mouth grow a little bit more profound with each passing day. And it gets very frustrating just at the lack of professionalism…But I would say it’s probably pushing me further towards Biden but also pushing me more into looking into the Independent party.

I was caught a bit off guard, because after doing a year’s worth of focus groups, one of the things I’ve learned is that the crazy things Trump says that cause an uproar on Twitter and in Washington often don’t break through to regular voters.

And it’s not anywhere close to the first time Trump has made outrageous norm-busting comments about the integrity of the election. In the last few months he’s suggested postponing the election, encouraged voter fraud by telling people to vote twice, and said he’s entitled to a third term. Why was the transfer-of-power comment different?

I believe the answer is simple: The election is 40 days away and voters are paying closer attention.

I think that last comment is worth thinking about. Most people aren’t political junkies and they may just tune out the noise most of the time. What people like us see as an atrocity a day may just be in the background for a lot of people. But the election is upon us and regular people who aren’t normally engaged are focusing.

And he is acting like a despotic nutcase. I doubt many people will change their minds. But it’s possible that some might. Recall that his approval rating took a precipitous drop when he held those crazy coronavirus rallies in the White House. At the time much of the country was staying home watching TV. And they were stunned by what they were seeing. Likewise, in June when his ratings took another dive after his loathsome behavior after the killing of George Floyd.

There’s no guarantee of course. The timing of events is everything with this guy — he’s always dancing as fast as he can and he often gets lucky. But from the looks of it he’s going to keep ratcheting up the crazy.

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