Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have made it abundantly clear that they think Kamala Harris is dumb. But apparently they think that women voters are even dumber.
Never mind that Harris is a law school graduate who was later elected San Francisco district attorney, California attorney general, U.S. senator, and vice president of the United States. Trump commonly casts his opponent as intellectually lacking, calling her “dumb as a rock” and “low IQ” at his rallies, and advancing crude, sexist tropes suggesting that Harris used sex to get ahead professionally. And last week, his running mate took the insult to a crueler level, with collateral humiliating damage.
Vance on August 29 tweeted a 2007 viral video of a Miss Teen USA contestant who flubbed a question about geography, and added this comment: “BREAKING: I have gotten ahold of the full Kamala Harris CNN interview.” The contestant, Caite Upton, was only 17 at the time, and was so mortified by the video and the ensuing mockery that she had considered suicide. After Vance’s post dredged up her past, threatening to subject her to more humiliation, Upton posted on X, “Regardless of political beliefs, one thing I do know is that social media and online bullying needs to stop.” She then deleted her account—for reasons we can probably guess. But Vance, when confronted with the troubling history of the video he resurfaced, was unmoved. “I’m not going to apologize for posting a joke,” he said.
It is fair to say, at this point, that Vance and his would-be boss don’t see women as equal in any way to men. They are punch lines. They are targets of insult and ridicule and disdain. Their purpose is to satisfy men sexually—“You can do anything” to them—and provide children. Those who don’t provide children are loathsome cat ladies.
Oh, and every once in a while, Trump and Vance see women as voters, too. And because women are so dumb, these guys can say any old lie to win them over.
Let’s review the tape. Earlier this year, Trump referred to his primary opponent Nikki Haley—a woman he once selected as ambassador to the United Nations—as a “birdbrain” and called MSNBC anchor Mika Brzezinski “dumb as a rock.” Trump is particularly fond of demeaning Black women who have challenged him, calling California Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters “a seriously low IQ person” and saying New York Attorney General Letitia James has “a big, nasty, and ugly mouth”—and, of course, “is a Low IQ individual,” as well. Vance, meanwhile, barely finished fielding backlash against 2021 comments about “childless cat ladies” before two more past interviews surfaced in which he lambasted women who refuse to reproduce. The pair have become a tag team of misogyny.
For all of their denigration of women’s intelligence, it’s Trump and Vance who seem to have an awfully long learning curve. It’s truly not smart to insult voters. Just ask Hillary Clinton whether referring to some Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables” helped in her 2016 campaign, or how much backpedaling then-candidate Barack Obama had to do in 2008 when he said small-town, economically distressed voters “cling to guns or religion” out of frustration. Nor does it make sense to disparage a group that made up 52 percent of the voting electorate in 2020 (not to mention 56 percent in Georgia, 54 percent in Michigan, and 53 percent in Pennsylvania, according to exit polls).
Trump’s frantic efforts to finesse his ever-changing position on reproductive rights isn’t helping either. Asked last week how he would vote on a Florida referendum enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution, Trump appeared to back it, saying, “I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks,” which is the current cutoff for abortion access in Florida. But after blowback on the right, he said he would oppose the referendum. And on protecting access to in vitro fertilization—an emotional, powerful issue even for some in the anti-abortion camp—Trump is flailing, trying to thwart concerns that so-called “pro-life” state laws will imperil it. He promised last week that if he’s elected, the government or insurance companies would cover the cost. He did not say how he could make that happen, especially since the cost—an average of $23,474, according to FertilityIQ—is exorbitant.
Are women really this stupid? Empirically, no. Women are a strong majority of college enrollees now and make up a steadily increasing number of those with Ph.Ds. And in polling, the gender gap is stark: A recent Ipsos/ABC News survey found that Harris leads among women voters, with 54 percent support compared to 41 percent for Trump. Notably, Harris is closing the gap among white women, who favored Trump by nine percentage points in 2016 and 11 percentage points in 2020. Before the Democratic National Convention, Trump led among white women by 13 percentage points, the Ipsos poll found. Now it’s a virtual dead heat among that voter group, with Trump ahead by two percentage points.
Trump’s problem with women voters this year, compared to previous election cycles, is that he has both a governing record and a legal record, having been found liable in 2023 for sexually abusing and defaming columnist E. Jean Carroll. Trump may have felt emboldened after winning the 2016 election even after the notorious Access Hollywood tape, but his presidential legacy, including appointing the pivotal Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, can’t be dismissed as locker-room talk.
Trump, who casts himself as a master negotiator, doesn’t seem to understand that he can’t simply come in at the eleventh hour with a better deal for women who want access to abortion and IVF. It’s not a dollars-and-cents business deal; it’s women’s bodies and lives, and his parrying on the issue isn’t helping him with either camp.
“I think during the 2016 cycle when Trump would suddenly change his position, or lean in a different direction, maybe it looked like evolution, or the possibility of nuance, or even conversion” on reproductive rights, said Shannon Watts, a gun violence prevention activist who organized a “White Women—Answer the Call!” fundraising Zoom call for Harris. “No one had seen him in office.” What Trump is doing now “looks like desperation, like, ‘I’m promising you a pony if you give me your vote.’ I don’t think women are buying that,” Watts said.
Much of the gender gap in politics is due to party identification, says Kelly Dittmar, director of research at Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics. But when it comes to abortion rights, she added, “it’s an Achilles’ heel for him. It’s not clear he has strong beliefs on reproductive rights and abortion. What you’re seeing is that women—and men—can see through that lack of personal belief system.”
Another factor is turnout among women. Reproductive rights ballot initiatives in 10 states in November could motivate more women to vote. Tom Bonier, who analyzes voter registration and turnout, reported a jump in registration among women voters in 13 states that have updated their voter files since July 21, with the increase more than twice that for male voters. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis found that in the three and a half weeks after Harris got into the race, registrations were higher than at the same point four years previously—largely because of women voters.
With just two months to go before Election Day, Trump doesn’t have much time to smooth things over with women voters. And he lacks the discipline to keep his thoughts to himself, no matter whom they offend. The presidential campaign “doesn’t do anything but reveal who you are. It shows character,” Michael Binder, a University of North Florida political science professor and pollster, told me. “It’s grueling, and it’s hard, and it’s constant. There’s only so much you can do to fake it.”
But thinking you can hoodwink women voters into believing you respect them and will protect their reproductive rights, after a litany of insults and flip-flops? That’s just dumb.
