2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: No You Cant : Why Im Still Crying Over Hillary Clintons Loss. [View all]Jim Lane
(11,175 posts)As you point out in #96, you wouldn't have voted for Palin. My guess is that, if the race had been Sanders versus Palin or O'Malley versus Fiorina, most people would have voted for the same party they actually voted for.
What was the net effect of the first major-party nominee being a woman? My (uneducated) guess is that it moved some votes each way. There were probably lifelong Republican women who would vote for just about any Republican over just about any Democrat, but when they looked at this year's ballot, things changed. They remembered all the times they'd suffered from misogyny. They saw a woman who was trying to break that "highest, hardest glass ceiling". They said to themselves, "You go, girl," and cast their first-ever vote for a Democrat. As against that, there were lifelong Democratic men (mainly older ones), who stated a belief in feminism but had lingering doubts. They thought about a woman as Commander in Chief and worried whether she'd be tough enough to stand up to Putin. They cast their first-ever vote for a Republican.
Which of these groups was larger? I really don't know. It might be hard to get hard data because people would lie about their motivations.
As for Trump's deplorable behavior toward women, it was probably a positive factor with some of his voters, but they were themselves the deplorables who were going to vote Republican in any matchup. For many others (women and men), it was a hold-your-nose thing; they didn't like it but saw other factors as more important. According to the exit poll linked by progree in #58, on the question "does Donald Trump's treatment of women bother you," those who answered "some" still split for Trump by 73% to 20%. Even among those who said "a lot" he got 11% of the vote. If such a voter favored radical deregulation and huge tax cuts for the rich, s/he had no good choice. Vote for a candidate whose personal conduct toward women bothers you a lot, or vote for a candidate whose policies you consider fundamentally wrong.
There's an analogy on our side. The poll asked, "does Clinton's use of private email bother you," and 18% answered "some". Among that group, Clinton won, 68% to 25%. That would be where I was. I thought her email handling was a mistake but I voted for her anyway. My vote doesn't mean that I favor procedures that could evade FOIA and/or endanger classified information. Similarly, a vote for Trump doesn't mean that the voter is on board with Trump's misogyny.
These considerations may or may not be relevant to this author's personal reaction to the outcome. I'm not questioning the legitimacy of her feelings. The open question is how she would have felt if Palin or Fiorina had lost to a man. Would she still have concluded that "the world at large really does hate women that much"? Of course, the parallel is imperfect because the Democratic Party would not have nominated a man of Trump's overt misogyny.