Labile electorate (apparently gender-dependent)

Trump won (2016 vs Hillary Clinton), Trump lost (2020 vs Joe Biden), and Trump won (2024 vs Kamala Harris). 

While the margins of victory and loss were slim, they are meaningful. In the educated environments Trump was given no chance of victory in 2016. While the university president where I teach had some very different views than I did, he chose to sit next to me at a summer dinner in his presidential manor backyard with approximately 35 others sitting at various picnic tables on his huge deck. It was July, 2016, and I said, "Looks like Trump might win." He scoffed, saying, "No chance of that." Of course he listened exclusively to very educated people in his political and social ecology. I was a professor, yes, but also a street activist who interacted every day with working class folks in many ways, including trips to the lumberyard for my many home projects. While Trump had no chance in Portland, Oregon, I knew from many working class and activist connections in southern and eastern Oregon that the pulse of the working class was not favorable to Hillary Clinton, exacerbated by her term for the violent supporters of Trump at his rallies: deplorables. And the majority of those who were driven hard by sexism were going to vote for Trump. 

Another white man is apparently the only thing that can beat a racist, misogynist, toxic nationalist like Trump in racist, misogynist, toxic nationalist America. So Biden did, in 2020. America will put aside some of its focus on racism and toxic nationalism, as we saw with Barack Obama's great successes, but apparently the gender question is a bridge too far for at least a slim majority of us.

That Trump picked up percentages of women from 2020 to 2024[1] shows deep levels of internalized oppression as well as susceptibility to an onslaught of fake news and lies about the economy--both from rightwing candidates and spokespeople but also from Russian digital placement of stories and articles full of lies. As all independent analysis of the Biden-Harris economy showed amazing strength in virtually all categories--stock market, unemployment, recovery from covid-caused inflation--Trump lied about it all at every turn, often parroting fake news[2] planted by Russian sources.

Putin got his wish again. Ukraine will be forfeit and we will see about other free former republics of the Soviet empire. Watch this space.

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[1] https://apnews.com/article/election-harris-trump-women-latinos-black-voters-0f3fbda3362f3dcfe41aa6b858f22d12

[2] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-russian-active-measures-disinformation_n_58dd49c0e4b08194e3b8320e