As the media pivots with the candidates towards the general election so are their narratives about them. As reporter for The Daily Beast Betsy Woodruff put it on MSNBC Live Thursday, “this election is becoming a battle of the sexes.” A social justice warrior’s dream election between “not just the first female presidential candidate, but the first feminist presidential candidate” Hillary Clinton and the “misogynist” Donald Trump, as articulated by Michelle Goldberg of Slate on the same show.
Goldberg also claimed that this is only the beginning and his campaign was going to become more sexist. She claimed the men who support Trump do so because they can’t handle a women becoming a president because they would lose their place in society. “When you think about the amount of racism that has been unleashed by Obama being president. And then think of all of the submerged gender anxieties of men losing primacy in kind of the American system, and all of that,” Goldberg pontificated.
Host Chris Hayes theorized that it would be very easy for Clinton to defend against Trump’s attacks, all she has to do is talk about being a woman. “To the extent what is going to allow Hillary Clinton to do is talk about the fact that she's a woman in, I think, the most politically advantageous way she can, which is parroting attacks about her gender,” stated Hayes.
It’s not a stretch to expect that the liberal media’s strategy will be that every attack against Clinton will be labeled as sexist. Even if the GOP nominee isn’t Trump they’ll continue calling them sexist because it follows the Republican’s #WarOnWomen narrative. Woodruff said it best when describing Trump’s general election strategy, “We know what this is going to look like, brace yourself for the next six months.”
Transcript below:
MSNBC
MSNBC Live
April 28, 2016
4:11:03 PM EasternCHRIS HAYES: Michelle, since I have you right here let me start with you. There's a GOP, some GOP official in Florida, whose title I'm forgetting at moment, who made some awful Monica Lewinsky reference –
MICHELLE GOLDBERG: On her knees.
HAYES: Yeah, that Hillary Clinton in a Trump debate would go down like Monica Lewinski. Really disgusting.
This is going to be everyday multiple times a day till November. The floodgates are just opening and we are just seeing the beginning of it.
GOLDBERG: Right, I think you know, early on the Clinton campaign said that Trump would be both the candidate they think they could most easily beat, and the candidate they least want to run against. Right?
HAYES: Right.
GOLDBERG: Because it's just going to be so vicious and so ugly. When you think about the amount of racism that has been unleashed by Obama being president. And then think of all of the submerged gender anxieties of men losing primacy in kind of the American system, and all of that. You know, that being crystallize in this contest between not just the first female presidential candidate, but the first feminist presidential candidate, you know. A hate object for anti-feminists for over 20 years now.
HAYES: Over decades.
GOLDBERG: Against this sort of like er-misogynist. I mean---
HAYES: Self-styled. Yeah.
GOLDBERG: Yeah. It's kind of unbelievable, the starkness of it.
HAYES: Yes. Betsy, what strikes me, one of issues we're going to see surfacing, you know, Trump is going to set the tone of the top. There's so many other people around him that are going to be say things all the time that-- To the extent what is going to allow Hillary Clinton to do is talk about the fact that she's a woman in, I think, the most politically advantageous way she can, which is parroting attacks about her gender. Which is so far all she's had to do, two or three days into what has felt like a new phase of the campaign.
BETSY WOODRUFF: Without a doubt. It’s like we're just cutting to the chase. There's no formality, there's no dancing around the subject. I mean this election is becoming a battle of the sexes. Trump has been explicit about the fact that's how he's going to run against Hillary. We know what this is going to look like, brace yourself for the next six months. That said, yeah, in a weird way, he’s making it easier for Clinton to sort of pull the woman card, if you will. He's letting her do that. He’s letting her frame it the way she wants to frame it.
Of course the issue here is, can Trump capitalize on the male vote? Can he get so many men to vote for him it outweighs the loss he's going to get with female voters? At this point it doesn't look super-duper likely. Although, predicting how these elections go has been a fool's errand. So we’ll have to see.
