To borrow from his own limited lexicon, it’s been a tremendously bad week for The Donald. Whether he’s picking a fight with the family of the late Captain Khan, receiving enthusiastic endorsements from KKK and neo-Nazi leaders, gaslighting a mother who attended one of his rallies and kicking her out when her baby started crying, or glibly telling women to just find new jobs if they’re sexually harassed at the ones they have, he never seems to get it right. In the wake of this mess, the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll released on Sunday, August 7, confirms Clinton’s lead among one group Trump has degraded his entire life: women.
According to the latest poll, Clinton is more popular than Trump among college-educated white women by a 19-point margin, and among women overall by 23 points. That this came after the RNC and DNC is particularly telling – before the conventions, she had a 14-point lead; after going to Cleveland for his lowest rated pageant yet and after her historic week in Philadelphia, that number rose by nearly double digits.
Increasingly, Trump’s racist and xenophobic beliefs are an Achilles heel for the continually-bankrupt businessman: Clinton led Trump by 43 points with Hispanic voters – it seems most folks in that group prefer being treated with respect to being labeled murderers and rapists. Strikingly, 92 percent of Black voters said they were #WithHer, while Trump barely managed to scrape up 2 percent in the same group. That’s a pretty yuuuuuuuuge loss.
The Republican nominee’s never-ending stream of gender-based gaffes are reminiscent of the 2012 election, when GOP candidates just couldn’t seem to stop themselves from making offensive and untrue comments about women, sexual assault, birth control, and abortion. Those of us who paid attention know that most of those candidates lost their races or dropped out in disgrace – and we know that Obama won that year with the largest gender gap in Gallup’s history. The only thing that seems to be saving Trump from the same fate as Santorum, Mourdock, and Akin in 2012 is the cult of personality surrounding him and his refusal to pay attention to facts.
Ultimately, it’s no surprise Trump can’t manage to rally support from a group for which he harbors such a deep and irrational hatred. 60 percent of people polled said Trump is “biased against women and minorities”, up from 56 percent in July, but this is nothing new. We’ve all read about how he’s treated women, the names he’s called women, and his refusal to take responsibility for his own self-induced failure with women. His misogyny worsens when we examine it at the intersections of gender, race, class, and socioeconomic status. He is his own worst attack ad – all he has to do is keep talking.
So, look out, Donald. Women know who you really are, and we really don’t like you.
Better start practicing the phrase “Madam President” – you’re gonna hear it an awful lot these next four years.