In Sunday’s New York Times, reporter Katie Glueck, who covers the Democratic Party for the paper, cynically hyped up a hypocritical new way for Democrats to smear Republicans: “Trump’s Opponents See New Ways to Cast the G.O.P. as ‘Team Misogyny.’”
It’s hard to imagine a more slanted Team Kamala lead sentence than the one Glueck came up with.
In a race between a Democrat who could be America’s first female president and a Republican who has been found liable for sexual abuse, the issue of gender was always going to be inescapable.
But this week, the subject surged to the forefront of the fall contest in new and vivid ways, as Democrats found fresh fuel for their argument that today’s Republican Party is disrespectful of women and their autonomy -- sometimes with dangerous consequences.
On Monday and Wednesday, the deaths of two mothers in Georgia were linked to the state’s far-reaching abortion ban in new reports from ProPublica.
ProPublica’s abortion death story has been discredited, but the Times used the phony story as an example, with no evidence, of the “dangerous consequences” of Republican policies.
On Thursday, the deeply conservative Republican nominee for governor in North Carolina scrambled to deny that he had made graphic and incendiary remarks on a pornographic forum, including about women.
Honestly? North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s remarks about women are probably the least inflammatory detail in that sordid case. But the boomlet of anti-Robinson stories bring hope and vibes to Kamala's campaign.
And on Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris took to a stage in Atlanta to argue with new urgency that the Republican Party was infringing on some of the most personal decisions a woman can make.
“It’s clear that they just don’t trust women,” said Ms. Harris, speaking a day after joining a livestreamed event with Oprah Winfrey that attracted hundreds of thousands of viewers. “Well, we trust women.”
But not enough to trust them to make their own decisions on vaccines?
For years, Democrats have tried to paint their Republican opponents as anti-woman, with mixed results.
In 2012, they effectively highlighted Republican comments, like the use of the term “legitimate rape” by Todd Akin, a Senate candidate in Missouri, to press their claims of a G.O.P. “war on women.”
Four years later, however, Mr. Trump defeated another would-be first female president, Hillary Clinton, despite being caught on a recording bragging about sexually assaulting women. And in plenty of races before and after, many Americans simply did not buy the Democratic argument that Republicans would take away abortion rights if given the chance.
Amazingly, Glueck failed to mention Hillary’s husband -- former Democratic President Bill Clinton, who spoke at the 2024 Democratic convention -- who settled Paula Jones’ sexual harassment charge, and was credibly accused of rape by Juanita Broaddrick, Then came the Liz Cheney types:
“This is ‘War on Women’ on steroids,” said former Representative Barbara Comstock, a Virginia Republican who is voting this year for Ms. Harris, the first Democratic presidential candidate to ever earn her vote, she said.
Compared with Mr. Akin’s remarks, Ms. Comstock said, this moment is “exponentially politically toxic because there’s nothing worse than being a hypocrite, particularly on these things that are so toxic with women.”
“It is Team Misogyny with Trump,” she added.
The Times clearly liked Comstock's line, recycling it for the headline..
Glueck reveled that the Democrats’ anti-Republican “misogynist” message would be even stronger than in 2012.
“Back then, that’s what the Democrats had: They had outrageous statements” from their opponents to discuss, said Christine Matthews, a pollster who has worked with Republicans but opposes Mr. Trump, citing the 2012 races.
“Now,” she said, “they can point to policies.”
