Vice President Kamala Harris was briefly interested in reaching out to male voters in the final weeks before Election Day. Recent events suggest the candidate has abandoned those efforts in favor of joyless fearmongering intended to rile up the Democratic base of #resistance-obsessed single ladies who scream at children. (No, we’re not making this up. A deranged young white woman accosted a little girl in a stroller outside a Harris rally in Houston on Friday. “I don’t give a f—, your dad’s a b—!” the female Harris supporter yelled just inches from the child’s face.)
Harris appeared in Houston alongside Beyoncé, a female musical artist of some renown. The former Destiny’s Child member echoed the candidate’s women-focused closing message. “We are so happy to be standing here on this stage as proud, country, Texas women supporting and celebrating the one and only Vice President Kamala Harris,” Beyoncé said. “I’m not here as a celebrity. I’m not here as a politician. I’m here as a mother. A mother who cares, deeply, about the world my children and all of our children live in. A world where we have the freedom to control our bodies.”
Once on stage, Harris wasted no time attacking Trump on the issue of abortion. “No one is protected,” Harris warned, joyfully. “Because a Donald Trump national ban will outlaw abortion in every single state.” Trump, who was also in Texas last week to tape an interview with celebrated male podcaster Joe Rogan, has said he “would not support a federal abortion ban, under any circumstances.”
Harris’s next campaign stop in Michigan featured a fiery speech from former first lady Michelle Obama. The New York Times described it as an “impassioned plea” to male voters that was “anchored in a searing and intimate depiction of women’s bodies and reproductive health.” Many disagreed with that assessment, noting the angry tone with which Obama scolded men for being “angry” and “disillusioned” while attempting to shame them into voting for Harris.
“I am asking you all from the core of my being to take our lives seriously. Please! Do not, do not put our lives in the hands of politicians, mostly men, who have no clue or do not care about what we as women are going through,” Obama said. “So fellas, before you cast your votes, ask yourselves, what side of history do you want to be on?”
The former first lady continued: “If we don’t get this election right, your wife, your daughter, your mother, we as women will become collateral damage to your rage.” Men who voted for Donald Trump, she argued, would be complicit in an “assault” on women’s safety. Voting for Harris, she implied, was the only way for men to prove that they consider women to be “more than just baby-making vessels.”
Harris continues to lead Trump among female voters by a considerable margin—54 percent to 42 percent, according to the latest New York Times poll. That same poll, however, showed the former president leading Harris among male voters by an even greater margin—55 percent to 41 percent.
The Harris campaign might argue they haven’t stopped trying to appeal to male voters. On Sunday, for instance, while millions of Americans were watching actual football, vice presidential candidate Tim Walz played a football video game with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) on the streaming platform Twitch. Walz’s other attempts at male outreach have included taking part in a staged hunting expedition and appearing on The View, the daytime television program not especially well known for its popularity with men. He reportedly declined an invitation from NBC News to appear on Meet the Press on Sunday.
Harris reiterated her abortion-themed message during an interview that aired Sunday on CBS News, the bottom-ranked network still mired in controversy due to its handling of the vice presidential debate and its selective editing of Harris’s 60 Minutes interview. “My first priority is to put back in place those protections [under Roe v. Wade] and to stop this pain, and to stop this injustice that is happening around our country,” Harris told anchor Norah O’Donnell. Days earlier, during a CNN town hall event, Harris refused to say what her first priority as president would be because “there’s a lot of work that needs to happen.”
O’Donnell pressed the vice president to identify what, if any, restrictions on abortion access she would be willing to accept, but Harris declined to answer. “I’ve told you,” she said. Let’s put back in place Roe v. Wade.” Last week, during an interview with Hallie Jackson of NBC News, the VP said the issue of abortion access “cannot be negotiable.”
Harris, who launched her campaign with “joyful” “vibes,” is expected to embrace a darker, more sinister message next week in Washington, D.C., where she plans to attack Trump in a major address near the White House. “I would, and do, think about that place more in the context of what will be behind me, which is the White House,” she told O’Donnell. “This is a real scenario. It’s either going to be Donald Trump or it’s going to be me sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.”
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