Dr. Katherine Jellison, Professor and Chair of History at Ohio University, was quoted in an Irish Times article by Simon Carswell on “Donald Trump moves to hurt Clinton’s support among women.”
By attacking Clinton on playing the gender card, Trump might be following a strategy George W. Bush used against John Kerry in 2004 when he questioned his war hero status in the “Swift Boat” campaign that claimed the Democratic nominee had inflated his Vietnam war record, according to Katherine Jellison, a professor of history at Ohio University who studies gender issues.
“If Trump is following a thought-out strategy, he is taking a page from the playbook that some other Republican candidates have in the past, which is to take what seems like on the surface appears to be your opponent candidate’s strong point and somehow try to turn it into a weakness,” says Jellison.
Democratic candidates have traditionally enjoyed a big advantage among women – the so-called gender gap – helped by the party’s massive advantage among minority women. Trump’s massive negative rating among minority voters means he would have to outperform Mitt Romney’s support among white women in the 2012 election or, should Clinton secure even half of white women in November, win an even larger majority of white men – a problem demographic for Clinton – than Romney did four years ago to beat the likely Democratic nominee.
Jellison says Trump has turned the gender gap that Republicans have suffered from since the 1980s and “made it a cavern” based on current polling data. His gender-card attacks on Clinton may erode her support among women, but he has much work to do to “make a serious dent” in that support, she says.
“The demographics are against him,” says the Ohio professor. “Based on that, it would be impossible for him to get elected, but this is such a crazy year, I just don’t want to lay money on that.”
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