Commentary: Democrats keep expecting white women to save them, and they keep getting burned
I’d like to speak to the manager.
The election did not go the way I wanted it to go. I’m angry. I demand a redo.
Except that’s already Karen’s line, and the election did go her way.
A quick refresher on Karen: The name, which became a widespread meme around 2019, has been used to describe a certain type of middle- or upper-middle-class white woman who overexerts her privilege in situations she finds to be unfair. Her angst is often aimed at service workers and people of color.
Karen’s viral acts include calling the police on a young Black girl selling water on her block, throwing her grocery basket at Trader Joe’s employees when asked to wear a mask during the pandemic and calling the police on a Black family who dared to barbecue in the park.
The Karen meme sends up a laughable, often feckless symbol of racism in America. But it’s cold comfort against the violent truth of white nationalism.
Karen’s latest act of aggression in service of protecting her own self-interest? Voting for Donald Trump.
National exit polls show that 53% of white women voted for an adjudicated rapist whose previous actions in office laid waste to Roe vs. Wade. So much for Democrats tapping into the hidden power of a “silent majority” of women who were thought to be hiding their political views from their husbands. They were in step with white men, 59% of whom voted for the former president.
Remember way back to, say, three weeks ago, when the media and pollsters were prognosticating that Black men were leaving Harris for the other side? They were going to throw the election to the Republicans, many worried. But the very same exit polls show that just 20% of those men voted for Trump, and Black women’s support for him was barely at 7%. Both were nearly identical to 2020 levels, according to exit polls.
As disappointed Harris supporters perform a post-mortem on the vice president’s candidacy in an effort to root out America’s entrenched misogyny, they need to look in an entirely different direction — toward (white) women themselves.
More than 150 years after Susan B. Anthony was arrested for the crime of voting while female, we’ve still had just two female contenders who’ve made it to the top of the presidential ticket. Both lost to the same candidate, a man with less experience in lawmaking and public service but more disdain for women and their rights than any nominee in modern memory.
For many, it’s hard to imagine a mother or auntie who thinks it preferable to vote for a man who paid hush money to a porn star and bragged about groping women than for a scandal-free female candidate with more experience in politics. Or that such a large swath of women were unmoved to change their vote despite rape victims forced to give birth to their attacker’s child for lack of abortion access, or by deaths due to pregnancy complications in states where the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision has led to restrictions on doctors.
But these weak sisters exist — and persist. The same share of white women that voted for Trump over Harris, based on exit polls, supported Trump over Biden in 2020, which followed the plurality of white women who supported Trump over Clinton in 2016.
The question is, why does this keeps happening? And is there’s any hope of the left changing the grim pattern? Democratic “campaign experts” apparently think so. They keep giving Karen four more years to see the light. By gum, the old girl will get it soon!
I don’t buy the argument that Clinton and Harris weren’t strong candidates, especially considering who they were up against. Trump had no experience in governance going into the 2016 election, and 34 felony convictions headed into 2024, with a questionable track record on everything from pandemic deaths to the economy.
Yes, that’s right, the economy, which the media now point to en masse as a driving factor in Trump’s victory. Let’s get real. Trump was the first president since Herbert Hoover to depart office with fewer jobs in the country than when he entered. To paraphrase Democratic operative James Carville, it’s about identity, stupid. In our uniquely fractured times, Trump and his allies like Joe Rogan and Elon Musk have weaponized racism and misogyny, including of the self-inflicted variety, to create their winning coalition.
They are building on a long tradition, of course. For a country that loves to shout “We’re No. 1,” we’re woefully behind the rest of the world when it comes to electing female leaders.
Mexico elected a female president. Pakistan chose a female prime minister — in 1988. There are, or have been, women elected as heads of state and government in Honduras, Turkey, India, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Guyana, Ireland, Britain, Israel and Germany. Throw a dart anywhere on a world map and she’s there, or has been there, leading nations and governments that Americans often label as inferior or intolerant.
From the perspective of those who see Trump as a danger to democracy, this election marks an incredibly dark turn for our nation. I won’t cry “fraud” or “vote-rigging” — that’s a MAGA thing. But I will blame some of my sorrow over the outcome of this election on Karens. These women weren’t secretly hiding their vote for Harris from their Trump-loving husbands. They were hiring a supervisor who understands entitlement.
Now we’ll see how quickly he responds when they demand to speak to the manager.
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