Washington:
For the second time in eight years, a lady has received the Democratic nomination for US president, solely to come back up quick in a marketing campaign the place gender was a central concern.
Like Hillary Clinton in 2016, Kamala Harris had a shot at changing into the primary lady to occupy the Oval Office however stumbled on the closing hurdle.
While the charisma of their opponent — Donald Trump, in each circumstances — clearly performed a task in these historic defeats, many observers additionally noticed misogyny as an element.
In their dueling campaigns, Harris and Trump laid out starkly completely different visions for girls’s standing and rights.
Trump, who has confronted a number of accusations of sexual assault he denies, sought to broadcast a hypermasculine picture, showing alongside blended martial artists and providing reward for autocratic world leaders.
He and his marketing campaign surrogates additionally made a number of feedback that had been criticized as insulting or contemptuous of ladies.
He known as Harris “loopy” and “mentally disabled”, and claimed she could be “like a play toy” for different world leaders if elected.
His working mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, doubled down on a quip he made in 2021 about “childless cat girls” working the nation, saying “I’ve acquired nothing in opposition to cats.”
Trump additionally introduced himself as a “protector” of ladies, saying he would shield them whether or not they “prefer it or not.”
Defender of ladies’s rights
Harris in contrast relied closely on feminine celebrities resembling Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey, betting that they might assist her attain even conservative girls voters.
Harris didn’t marketing campaign overtly on the truth that she would have been the primary feminine president of the United States.
But she made the protection of ladies’s rights, and abortion particularly, one of many cornerstones of her marketing campaign.
But this seems to not have received over sufficient reasonably conservative girls.
At a marketing campaign rally final month, former first woman Michelle Obama denounced the obvious double customary by which the 2 White House candidates had been judged.
“We count on her to be clever and articulate, to have a transparent set of insurance policies, to by no means present an excessive amount of anger, to show time and time once more that she belongs,” she stated of Harris.
“But for Trump, we count on nothing in any respect. No understanding of coverage, no skill to place collectively a coherent argument, no honesty, no decency, no morals.”
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