For Donald J. Trump to take the presidency, he must win support from undecided female voters. For that reason, don’t expect to hear much more from him about Hillary Clinton playing the “woman’s card.”
Instead, Trump is reshuffling his deck, as the campaigns retool for the general election. In interviews over the weekend, the Republican candidate gave the impression he’ll spend less time demeaning Clinton’s gender because – news flash – that insults women.
Three weeks ago, Trump said that if she were a man, the former secretary of state would fail to attract even 5 percent support. That is a ludicrous statement, of course; Clinton has built an impressive resume of national public service.
The same night Trump referred to the “woman’s card,” Clinton deftly parried that attack line, saying, “If fighting for women’s health care and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the ‘woman’s card,’ then deal me in.”
And later that week, Clinton’s team rolled Trump’s attack into a fund appeal by offering donors their “very own official Hillary for America woman card” – a hot pink credit card bearing the words, “Congratulations: You’re in the majority.”
But the Clinton campaign cannot count on being able to jump on misogynist remarks, even though personal attacks served Trump in the primaries, as he dismissed Republican rivals as small, dishonest and lacking energy.
Deriding Clinton’s gender was a risky strategy for Trump, and it’s no surprise it may be muted from here on out. He’s gotten good mileage this year saying things that normally derail campaigns. Trump prevailed in primaries in part by playing his own “man card” with attacks on Marco Rubio’s height and Jeb Bush’s respect for his mother. When Rubio tried to deploy a similarly odious attack on the size of Trump’s hands, that only gave Trump another macho moment.
Pollsters say men are more readily influenced by insults and negative ads. Women tend to recoil from personal attacks and they don’t like it, for good reason, when a candidate such as Clinton is insulted or bullied by a man, even with code words. Trump has said Clinton lacks “strength” and “stamina” and spends too much time shouting.
Trump didn’t need to appeal to Republican women during the primaries. His comment about the “woman’s card” tapped into resentment across a certain segment of white and male America that he has long kindled. Some Trump backers may resent women’s gains in the workplace. Others are apparently OK with a candidate who impugns women as fragile, lesser beings but, in the same breath, can claim he loves women and women love him.
As he turns to the November election, Trump needs women’s support, but recent polls say as many as 70 percent of female voters have an unfavorable opinion of him. It’s clear why. His putdowns of Clinton echo things women hear every day.
This goes beyond campaign strategy. In a story Sunday, the New York Times explored Trump’s relationships with women and found many instances in which he has degraded women and judged them on their sexual appeal, not their abilities.
Candidate Trump has sex on the brain. This weekend, he said again that he sees former President Bill Clinton’s sexual indiscretions as fair game for this election. In January, after Hillary Clinton accused him of sexism, Trump countered that Clinton is anti-women because she has discounted claims that women have made against her husband.
That may play well with confirmed Clinton-haters, but undecided women voters will see it for what it is: a contrived complaint from a candidate scrambling to fault an exemplary rival.
Clinton’s election in November, after securing her party’s nomination, would be historic. No woman has gotten this close to winning the presidency. While the “woman’s card” rhetoric may be muted in months to come, Trump’s attacks can be counted on to illustrate how far American women have yet to go to win equality.