menu_open
Columnists Actual . Favourites . Archive
We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close
Aa Aa Aa
- A +

Bracing for MAGA's backlash: The strategy behind secret Kamala Harris voters is safety

8 68
05.11.2024

When it comes to political bait, it was the tastiest sort: a cheeky ad run by Vote Common Good, and voiced by Julia Roberts, reminding women that they don't have to tell their husbands if they vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.

It followed a Lincoln Project ad based on the same premise, though with a more somber tone.

Whatever the intention behind these ads, they set off a major tantrum in the GOP, which confirmed that feminists have been right all along: the MAGA movement is about controlling women. Fox News host Jesse Watters, who cheated on his first wife with his current wife, compared a wife refusing to vote for Donald Trump to having an affair. Former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is married to his third wife after cheating on his second, called the ad "sick" and evidence of moral "decay." Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA obsessed about this, claiming Harris could only win by "the largest mass conspiracy of spousal lying in political history" and suggested wives who vote for Harris are "stealing money." Trump himself, of course, got caught up in the MAGA outrage about wives who exercise their own judgment.

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

In an election that may have the largest gender gap in history, these ads couldn't have done a better job of making their point than drawing this reaction. Trump is out there talking about how he'll "protect" women "whether the women like it or not," making the threat underlying the........

© Salon


Get it on Google Play