Morning Reads for Monday, April 8, 2019

@Theresa:

The so-called gender gap – as it afflicts the GOP – is actually a racial gap. As was much-discussed and lamented about by progressives, liberals and Democrats, in 2016 white females voted for Trump by 53-47. This was down – but only slightly – from the percentages that voted for Romney (56%) and Bush (55%). So the source of the “gender gap” is that nonwhite women support Democratic candidates overwhelmingly, with 98% of the vote in some cohorts. This fact is obscured because the white females that are represented by the mainstream media – either as journalists, oped writers or activists and scholars cited by the mainstream media – are uniformly progressive to the point where scholar Christina Hoff Sommers – moderate ideologically and a Democrat politically – is often depicted as a right wing extremist (to her personal horror. It shows as a “gender gap” because in many cohorts nonwhite females have a much higher voter participation rate than their nonwhite male counterparts.

So, then, the true gender gap is with Democrats and white men. The reason is that the white women who heavily lean Democrat tend to be single women. White women that are married to men and/or have sons vote Republican by a healthy margin and are hence part of the gender problems that Democrats experience. And yes, voter participation of such white females are high. It makes a difference. This cohort very much dislikes Trump. The problem in 2016: they disliked Hillary Clinton more because Clinton specifically excluded their husbands and sons’ economic plight (her very campaign slogan: “a lifelong fighter for women and children”). But their presence was made known in the Alabama Senate race last year when the Roy Moore allegations caused them to sit at home (no one pays attention to how low the GOP turnout was in that race, preferring to focus on the high Democrat turnout instead) and it also tanked the poll numbers of Herman Cain in 2012 after his sexual harassment allegations were aired, which cost Cain consideration for the VP slot.

This means that the group of candidates that are currently most favored by the media and Democratic activists – Gillibrand, Warren, Harris, Abrams – are the ones most likely to have an even bigger gender gap than in 2016, especially if the Trump collusion/obstruction of justice/income tax return scandals turn up empty. The candidates that the media seems to be bent on taking down – O’Rourke, Biden, Kloubuchar – would have smaller gender gap problems. The worst case scenario for the Democrats would be a candidate who would perform worse among white women than Clinton did without being able to increase the nonwhite turnout to make it up like Obama did and Clinton didn’t. That is definitely an issue with Gillibrand and Warren. Whether it would also apply to Harris and Abrams is a toss-up.