The Current - Why gender matters in the U.S. election

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

What role will the “man-o-sphere” and “childless cat ladies” play in a tight U.S. presidential election? We look at how Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are campaigning along gender lines — and whether the result will come down to whether men will vote for a female president.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current Podcast. There's promise that lies in change, and the time for change is now. So what the hell are you waiting for? Because if it's the woman thing, it's time to get over that. It's time for hope, for change. It's time to be a man and vote for a woman. men to vote for Kamala Harris. The ad is from the Lincoln Project, which is a group of Republicans who oppose Donald Trump. And it's part of attempts from both Democrats and Republicans to sway votes along gender lines. With exactly four weeks to go until the U.S. election, gender is playing a crucial role in a very tight race. The former president, Donald Trump, appealed directly to

women in a recent rally in Pennsylvania. You will be protected and I will be your protector. Women. Women. Women will be happy, healthy, confident and free. Trump has also been staking out territory in what's been called the Maniverse, appearing with YouTube influencers at ultimate fighting matches to woo young male voters. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris has been in swing states, shoring up support among young women with an assist from Taylor Swift. And that's before we even get to the childless cat ladies.

Joined now by two guests to talk about the role that gender is playing in this election. to talk about the role that gender is playing in this election. Kelly Dittmar is Director of Research at the Center for American Women in Politics and Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University. And Dan Cassino is a Professor of Government and Politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Good morning to you both.

Good morning. Good morning. Kelly, let's talk about that ad from the Lincoln Project. That last line, it's time to be a man and vote for a woman. What is it saying about the place of gender in this election that, as I say, is in many ways too close to call? Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to remember that at the end of the day, the primary factor

or primary predictor of people's votes is going to be, are they a Republican or a Democrat? And are they supporting, therefore, the Democratic or Republican nominee? But the ad is trying to appeal, of course, to those folks who may be at all wavering and considering whether or not they are willing to vote for somebody who disrupts what it looks like and what it has meant for the entirety of our history to be president. And so while I don't think, and we know from research, that gender is likely not the determinative factor on election day, in other words, folks will vote for a woman

if she aligns with their policy beliefs and their party identification, that ad is trying to just push that even further to say, don't stay home just because you're concerned or have any doubts about the capacity of Harris to be president. And I should add that, of course, Donald Trump is trying to mine that thing. So when he, you know, criticizes her, especially on gendered lines, he's trying to cue those stereotypes that a woman is somehow unprepared, unfit or incompetent to be the leader of our nation. That's the woman thing that comes up in the ad, and the line is, get over it.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, of course. Dan, there are these predictions that when the votes come in, there could be a gulf, a record gulf, in terms of how men and women vote. What is that about? So this sex gap in voting between men and women is something that's actually relatively new in American politics. And it only goes back to about the 1980 election. But I think what's really interesting about that is that it's less about the difference between men and women and more about the difference between a certain group of

men and everybody else. So when we ask men to rate themselves on how masculine or feminine they are, we find that about half of men in the US who say they are completely masculine, you know, they're at the far end of whatever scale we give them. Those men are in Trump's bag, right? They are pro-Trump by about 35 points over Harris. Other men, the half of men who don't say that they're traditionally masculine, well, they pro-Harris by about 20 points, which is almost exactly the same as women voters. And what that tells me is this is not really about men versus women. This is really about this one group of traditional men versus everybody else.

And who are they? Well, they're dominantly older, they're dominantly whiter, they're dominantly less educated. They are, in short, Donald Trump's base. And we've actually seen some polarization where as recently as 2016, that group was pretty split between Democrats and Republicans. And a lot of them were actually voting for Bernie Sanders in 2016. And we've seen over the last eight years, them gravitating much, much more towards the Republican Party. Just, I ask you this because you've done this polling with your university. Is there, if we're talking about a traditional male gap, a man gap, is there a traditional women gap? There's a much smaller one. So we do find that women who assert a very traditionally feminine

gender identity, which are also dominantly older, whiter, less educated women, do tend to favor Republicans a little bit more than other women do. But that gap is much, much smaller than the gap we see among men. Kelly, we heard in that clip Donald Trump speaking directly to women, saying he will be their protector. Who is that language meant to appeal to, do you think? I mean, it's largely meant to appeal, again, to that base. And I think to Dan's point, there are women in the Trump base who align with more stereotypical beliefs about appropriate gender roles. And if your belief is that women are meant to be protected by men, dependent on men, a much more patriarchal and traditional patriarchal belief of the family,

often that's going to come from your more religious evangelical base of voters, then you're glad to hear that message. The problem for Donald Trump, of course, is that that base, he doesn't need to win. He already has that base, right? So in a close election, he has to figure out, can he win back any of the women who've deserted the Republican Party since 2016? Those tend to be more moderate, college-educated white women who have just trended completely away from the Republican Party. And with comments like that, and of course, with the comments coming out from J.D. Vance, both before and during the campaign, he's further isolating those women. So I think the Harris campaign's response to that comment is quite on point to those groups of women where she says women don't want to be protected. They want to be trusted.

And I think it's a good rebuttal and way to ensure that you don't lose some of those women that have helped in terms of increasing Democratic advantage in some of our recent elections. In an effort to get beyond that base, Donald Trump has been appealing to younger men directly by doing interviews with social media influencers and streamers. Spent 90 minutes recently with the streamer Ed Ross, who has this following of more than what, 7 million people, is known for having hosted a white supremacist in the past, was banned from Twitch for hateful speech. Here's part of his interview in August with Donald Trump. My sons told me about you, and, you know, they told me about how big. Dad, you know, my baron. Yeah. He said, Dad, he's really big.

I said, yeah, but what about else? He said, he's also a friend of mine, right? Yeah. But big stuff, Aidan. So I just have to say outstanding to do what you've done at a young age. And I know how old you are. You're young. You're seriously young. My suit is older than you. How old's your suit?

So what, 500,000 people, Dan, watched that interview with Aidan Ross. He was also on this, in this conversation with the Nelk Boys, 8 million followers on social media. Who is he trying to appeal to, do you think, Dan? So we do find, so we've got this group of men who are traditionally masculine, but there is another group of men that's potentially winnable for Trump. And this is young men, dominantly, who value traditional masculinity, who like the sort of benevolent sexism appeals we heard Donald Trump making earlier, where he's saying he's going to protect women. They like that, but they don't feel they're living up to the standards of masculinity. So they

say, boy, masculinity would be great, traditional masculinity. I aspire to that. But they also tell us they're not meeting that standard. And those young men, by and large, are disinterested in politics. They are on the manosphere. They're buying cryptocurrency. There's a lot of them. But traditionally, campaigns aren't reaching out to them because 20-something men are not traditional voters. It doesn't normally seem worthwhile to reach out to them. However, when we poll them, they say they're going to vote, and they are leaning towards Trump pretty strongly. interesting about that is, you know, we talk about he's going to lose women voters with these sort of benevolent sexism comments. However, the group he might be winning over are these young men who value traditional masculinity. And those young men are also disproportionately, you know, black and Hispanic men who do tend to have more traditional views of gender than white men do. And if he can cut into Harris's margin among blacks and Hispanics, that's potentially a real restructuring of the

American electorate. Especially when the race is so tight. Exactly. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. It's not just Donald Trump that has been reaching out through social media and through influencers to try to cultivate perhaps votes beyond his base. On Sunday, Kamala Harris was on the podcast Call Her Daddy. This is one of the most listened to podcasts by women. Here's Kamala Harris speaking with the host, Alex Cooper. At a rally in Pennsylvania, former President Trump recently told women, you will be protected and I will be your protector. What do you make of that? So he who, when he was president, hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade. And they did just as

he intended. And there are now 20 states with Trump abortion bans. It's interesting, Kelly, Alex Cooper, the host of that podcast was saying that she initially didn't want to have Kamala Harris on, but then thought that it would be important for her listeners, but also just for the broader conversation because the podcast is so insanely popular. What do you think Harris got out of going on that podcast now? Well, I think as you and Dan are talking about, you know, the kind of young white male appeal and young black and Latino male to kind of Gen Z appeal to these other groups, you have to remember at the same time that Gen Z women, in particular LGBTQ Gen Z and Gen Z women of color, are increasingly progressive and more likely to engage and

participate. And so if you can also counter that attempt with these young men, with young women and women who, in this case, I think also appealing to women who otherwise kind of feel disenchanted or are less politically engaged day to day and motivate trying to get out there through different avenues of media, less traditional media, and appeal to those groups and remind them why it's so important that they turn out this year. At the end of the day, this election is going to be very much about turnout. So I think Harris's strategy is very much that. And if you listen to the whole episode, you have about 45 or 40 concentrated minutes talking about issues of gender, her own experience of gender and race, issues of women's rights, not just reproductive rights, issues around sexual assault. And so you get from that an understanding of the ways in which having a

woman at the highest level will also change the perspective and lived experiences of those in the Oval Office who can actually impact policy. And yet it has been pointed out that Kamala Harris herself has not said a lot about the fact that she would be a, you know, ceiling-breaking, groundbreaking president were she to win this race. She's not talking about she would be the first female president. She's not talking about how she, in part because... Go on. Why do you think she's not doing that? Yeah, because she doesn't need to. She doesn't need to tell people

that she's a black and South Asian woman. She doesn't need to tell people that she'll be the first woman president. We know that. And so she can instead talk about her lived experiences, her perspective, and it brings with it a sense of authenticity by nature of her identity. And by the way, those around her are absolutely celebrating that fact.

If you watch Tim Walls, he's talking about the historic nature of her candidacy on the stump, as are many of her advocates and surrogates on the campaign trail, just as a way to, again, mobilize and energize a base. Is there a danger for her in talking about that, though? Hillary Clinton was on this program just a couple of weeks ago, and one of the things she said, she said it, I think, a couple of times to us, is that Kamala Harris would be a president for all Americans, was very specific in saying that. And I just wonder whether there is a message in that as well.

Yeah, absolutely. And historically, we know that women and also candidates of color have been criticized for, quote unquote, playing the gender card or playing the race card if they talk too much about identity, right? Because it plays into people's fears that you're only going to serve that part of the nation. And so, yeah, she doesn't want to make it the central part of her campaign again a reminder folks are not voting on that they're not voting just to make history they're voting on issues but if she can do both which is leverage the way in which her experience which is tied to her

identity is going to allow her to be a more representative leader then that's a win-win and i think she is doing that without in more subtle ways without having to just talk about history-making and the history-making nature of her candidacy. What do you think she learned from Hillary Clinton's campaign? I think that she's learned a couple of things. One is, look, she's running against the same candidate, and so she's able to learn the ways in which you navigate Donald Trump, in particular on the debate stage,

but throughout the campaign. How do you engage him or not? How do you try to contrast him? How do you appeal to voters? But she's also had the advantage of, since Hillary Clinton, having a lot of move in our country and open dialogue about both racial equity and gender equity. And so I think she's also found ways to more and more opportunity to more openly talk about the ways in which Donald Trump has engaged and promoted in misogyny and racism in ways that are disadvantageous to the nation, not just for those populations, but economically, for our well-being, for the strength of the nation, for democracy, right? And so you're able to paint those messages, I think, in a more effective way than Hillary Clinton, who was dealing with

a Donald Trump that didn't have, you know, eight years of the country knowing him in a political space. Dan, what did you make of, I mean, Kamala Harris was on 60 Minutes last night and was asked about comments that she had made earlier about guns and the fact that she owns a Glock. And the line was, you know, if somebody breaks into her house, they're getting shot. That's what she said. She said that intentionally, was asked about it again last night in the 60 Minutes interview and didn't back away from it, leaned into it. What do you make of that in the context of the conversation we're having? Yeah, I think we can tell this is not a terribly serious comment just because if someone breaks into the vice president's residence, I imagine

the Secret Service would probably get to them before, you know, somebody else is doing the shooting. Yeah. But I think this is indicative of the challenges that face female candidates, right? In the U.S., we still, for whatever reason, the public still believes that masculine traits are leadership traits. They find those to be similar. So female candidates have to prove that they are masculine enough to be a leader while still being feminine enough that they don't scare men and they don't scare people by being not feminine enough. So essentially, male candidates don't have to show they're feminine, but female candidates have to be masculine and feminine. I mean, they're running for office backwards in high heels. It is more difficult. It's a balancing act. And, you know, the idea of owning a gun, this is, you know, in that service, that idea of the identity as protector, that's very much a masculine role. And so what she's saying is, look, I am masculine as well as feminine. She's trying to put that out there as a way of saying shorthand for I am masculine and therefore I can be trusted with leadership positions. Kelly, that sounds like quite a tight rope to walk.

It absolutely is. But I want to add for Kamala Harris and other women who've been able to navigate this successfully, having this background as well as a prosecutor allows her to also play into some of the traditionally masculine stereotypes of being assertive, aggressive, tough, but also fighting crime. So I think there are less overt ways in which she and others also can navigate this tightrope. At the same time, leveraging those more traditionally kind of feminine traits and stereotypes and saying, hey, maybe instead of putting forth an image of a president or expectation that is so rooted in masculinity, maybe we think about the ways in which we could disrupt those expectations. And so when she's talking about being a joyful warrior,

it is that balance, right? Because it's both masculine and feminine, but it's also lifting up things like joy and compassion and empathy, things that maybe we should value more in the presidency. Just in the last minute and a half or so that we have, if you go back to where we started with that ad saying, get over the woman thing, that you need to, you're speaking to a specific constituency, but you need to man up and vote for a woman. How much of that do you think is a factor, is going to be a factor, Kelly, in this race? It's very, very tight. Yeah, I mean, again, I don't think that at the end of the day, we are going to have a huge drop off of people who aren't voting for Kamala Harris simply because she's a woman. At the, you know, at the end of the day, it's going to be on issues. Which is

encouraging. I mean, that's kind of what you want, right? Yeah, absolutely. So for her, I think, you know, for both candidates, a key is how do you get out those base voters that, yes, you're courting, yes, you're trying to energize, but it's less about persuasion and more about young voters and voters of color, you're trying to get people who otherwise wouldn't vote to come out. And that's where some of the arguments, I think, on the more positive side for Harris are, you know, saying I'm something new, different, and I can make history. Dan, just very briefly, how big of a factor do you think gender will be in this election? You know, Kelly's absolutely right. Partisanship matters most. But what we've seen over the last eight years is that partisanship and gender views are becoming increasingly aligned, whereas this is one of the biggest cleavage points in American politics between traditional gender and less traditional gender identities. Great to talk to you both. We will watch, I mean, four weeks from now. The clock is ticking. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you so much for having us. Kelly Dittmar is Director of Research at the Center for American Women in Politics, Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University. Dan Cassino is a Professor of Government and Politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Much more to come in those remaining four weeks before the U.S. election. We're heading to the states, down to Arizona, up to Michigan to talk in swing states with voters who could help determine what happens in four weeks' time. Stay tuned to The Current for that.