In 2021, Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, denounced women for leaving abusive husbands. The same year, he also decried allowing rape victims to abort their pregnancies, claiming all pregnancies should be forced to term, "even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient." Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson also spoke. In the past, he has argued that raping underage girls is less bad if the rapists marry them first, and complained about rape shield laws that protect the identity of victims.
This is part of the Trump campaign's strategy of shoring up support among younger men by appealing directly to the Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson fanboys. The tactic runs the risk of backfire. If female swing voters learn how much the GOP is built on apologia for sexual violence, focus group information suggests it will turn them away from Trump. With Biden as the nominee, there was a real chance this issue would stay on the back burner. Even though he was the author of the Violence Against Women Act in the 90s, Biden has proved incapable of making Trump's sexual violence a defining issue. He's tried, even using the word "rape" to describe Trump's behavior. But Biden's overall problems communicating got in the way of this message.
Harris, however, is not hobbled by the issues with talking that plagued Biden in the end. More than that, sexual violence is an issue that she can speak about with a level of authority that Biden — really, most male politicians — never could achieve. Her gender is only part of it. As she often discusses on the campaign trail, Harris got her start in criminal law by working in the sex crimes division of Alameda County. She spent years talking about these hard issues in a court setting, and it shows in the way she strikes a deft balance between sensitivity and frankness when speaking about sexual violence. I recommend watching this co-interview she did on MSNBC with Hadley Duvall, a child sex abuse survivor who has been speaking out about abortion rights. Harris tells the story of her high school friend who told her that her stepfather was molesting her. "I said to her: ‘you have to come live with us. I called my mother and my mother said, ‘of course she has to come stay with us.’"
It's going to be a much better race.
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