Half of white women continue to vote Republican. What's wrong with them?

[niyad]

(a lengthy, depressing, informative read)


Half of white women continue to vote Republican. What's wrong with them?
Moira Donegan

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Some 53% of white women voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election – the real story of white women voters is both more grim and more complex than the figure reveals
@MoiraDonegan



For the past two years, the American left has been haunted by a number: 53. It is the percentage of white women who voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. In the sectors of the left where the figure and its implications have become a perennial theme, the number is treated both as disappointing and darkly unsurprising, a reflection of the conventional wisdom that white women would rather choose the racism espoused by the Republican party than join in the moral coalition represented by men of color and other women. On the left, this number can elicit exasperation, rage, and even suspicions about the moral legitimacy of the feminist project. It casts doubts on the political convictions of liberal white women, colors leftist perception of female-coded liberal political projects like the Women’s March, and has prompted long-overdue calls for increased political leadership by women of color.

The real story of white women voters is both more grim and more complex than the 53% figure reveals. The truth is that the 53% of white women who voted for Trump in the last presidential election was actually an improvement on even worse numbers from previous cycles. White women supported Mitt Romney at 56% in 2012, and supported George W Bush by 55% in 2004. Even these robust showings by Republican white women were down from their previous highs: Ronald Reagan won a staggering 62% of white women in 1984. All of these totals were lower than those for white men, who continue to support Republicans at alarming rates, but they were solid majorities nonetheless.



Preliminary results from this week’s midterm elections seem to suggest that the trend is continuing, with Republican candidates slowly losing the support of suburban white women across the country. According to the Wall Street Journal, white women’s overall support for Republicans slipped from the infamous 53% in 2016 down to 50% in 2018. CNN’s polling places white women’s support for Republicans just lower, at 49%. As the Republican party has shifted its rhetoric away from drab Romneyite fiscal conservatism and towards the sadistic racism that is Donald Trump’s stock and trade, there is some evidence that growing numbers of white women are turning away, repulsed.
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This shift makes white women at once one of the largest voting blocs in the nation and also one of its most divided, least ideologically coherent demographics. No other race and gender group is so split. There is a battle on for the soul of America, between the peevish, racist cruelty of Trump and his supporters and a vision of inclusion, justice, and decency forwarded by an increasingly diverse coalition on the left. Much of that battle is being waged in white women’s hearts, with the left hoping that more and more of them will break with their historical loyalty to white supremacy and embrace a kinder, more sustainable model for the future.

. . . .
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/09/white-women-vote-republican-why

[Soxfan58]

1. Their husbands handle those types of decisions

[BigmanPigman]

2. They aren't real women, they are real Stepford Wives.

Do not confuse the two!

[zipplewrath]

3. I hope people inside don't say this

When trying to understand someone, it's best not to do it from a "what's wrong with them" point of view. "What don't we understand" is what one should ask themselves.

[sfwriter]

4. They benefit from patriarchy...

Usually via their husbands

[SunSeeker]

7. They don't benefit from patriarchy. But they hate them some people of color.

And keeping people of color out of their communities and away from the levers of power means more to them than women's rights.

[sfwriter]

8. Your clairvoyance is astounding.

You base this on...

I took the implication of the question to be why do these women vote against their interest. I'm pointing out it is not against their interest. They see their station through their man.

[SunSeeker]

9. Rich white women heiresses don't see their station "through their man"...

They see it through their money. Yet they tend to be just as racist as white women of a lower "station." They enjoy their white privilege.

They do not enjoy the effects of patriarchy. Patriarchy is against the interest of white women. It is against the interests of all women. It infantilizes women, denies them dignity and value.

I base this on the same things the article bases it on, and decades of life experience. As the article states:

What is wrong with white women? Why do half of them so consistently vote for Republicans, even as the Republican party morphs into a monstrously ugly organization that is increasingly indistinguishable from a hate group? The most likely answer seems to be that white women vote for Republicans for the same reason that white men do: because they are racist.

White women’s identity places them in a curious position at the intersection of two vectors of privilege and oppression: they are granted structural power by their race, but excluded from it by their sex. In a political system where racism and sexism are both so deeply ingrained, white women must choose to be loyal to either the more powerful aspect of their identity, their race, or to the less powerful, their sex. Some Republican white women might lean into racism not only for racism’s sake, but also as a means of avoiding or denying the realities of how sexist oppression makes them vulnerable.

You need not sarcastically insult me just because you disagree with me. Try reading the article before arrogantly attacking a fellow DUer.

[Guppy]

5. The drop is the suburbs is probably closer to 6-8%

If it dropped from 53 to 50. then they retained their 95% in the rural area. So to average it to 50% then the drop in the suburbs is actually quite high for a single election. Now we have to deliver and cement these suburban women.

[BlueJac]

6. My neighbors wives do what they are told!

They are total Fox News, all day people! Sad none free thinkers are very similar folks.

[SunSeeker]

10. Your neighbors' husbands do what they're told by Fox News.

Because Fox plays on their racism. Same goes with their wives.

[Harker]

11. My old man told my mother how to vote.

His vote was important, dammit, and he didn't want hers "cancelling his out."

I could always tell by the slightly raised eyebrow and faint smile when the subject arose that she did the right thing in the voting booth.

[Farmer-Rick]

12. Here in the rural South, I've been astonished by how quickly a woman will attack another woman

It is always the woman's fault, it is always the woman who gets blamed. Of course these are well off, healthy, white women.

They have been carefully trained to hate each other.