Thursday introduced people who find themselves frightened in regards to the survival of democracy welcome polling information from Quinnipiac College: For the primary time in months, Joe Biden is cresting 50% in a head-to-head match-up with Donald Trump. That places the present president 6 factors forward of the previous president, who had been having fun with an alarming lead in polls for months, regardless of being underneath 91 felony indictments in 4 separate jurisdictions. We now have girls to thank for this swing in direction of primary sense and decency within the polls.
“Ladies 58 – 36 p.c assist Biden, up from December when it was 53 – 41 p.c,” explains the Quinnipiac evaluation. “Males 53 – 42 p.c assist Trump, largely unchanged from December when it was 51 – 41 p.c.”
So that you take pleasure in bashing Taylor Swift, Republicans? Properly, how’s that figuring out for you?
Okay, it is in all probability not simply in regards to the hyper-famous pop star whose romance with a Tremendous Bowl-bound soccer participant has pushed Republicans batty. Trump has been on TV bragging about how he is the one who received Roe v. Wade overturned, a clip that has fortunately drowned out mainstream media efforts to color him as in some way “average” on abortion. He additionally misplaced in courtroom once more to E. Jean Carroll, which resulted in an enormous quantity of reports protection reminding voters that, within the phrases of the decide, “Trump sexually abused — certainly, raped — Ms. Carroll.” Plus, Trump gained each the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire main, inflicting loads of voters who had been beforehand skeptical to grasp that sure, the sexual assailant who tried a coup actually would be the Republican nominee for president once more.
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However let’s face it: The Taylor Swift factor will not be serving to Republicans. For these remaining 7 individuals nonetheless unaware, there’s been a rising quantity of Republican hate in direction of the beloved singer-songwriter and her beau, Kansas Metropolis Chiefs tight finish Travis Kelce. They’re mad that she is an unashamed cat woman, that she’s extra focused on being a famous person than a housewife, and, in fact, that she is a Biden-endorsing liberal. However largely the fitting is mad that Swift and her followers crush the stereotype that cat-loving feminists are ugly and unloved. That is why the fury metastasized over the weekend when Swift kissed her hunky boyfriend on the sector after his huge win.
We now have girls to thank for this swing in direction of primary sense and decency within the polls.
Fox Information went ape with outrage at this younger (ish) love. Trump received concerned, pathetically mendacity by saying he is “extra widespread” than Swift whereas his allies dramatically declared “holy conflict” on her. The mix of overkill, silliness, and popular culture relevance despatched the story of GOP angst over Swift into each nook of the media. So even individuals who pay little or no consideration to politics had been listening to about MAGA’s beef with America’s sweetheart. Most individuals, nevertheless, didn’t react how Republicans had hoped, by deciding they now hate Swift. As a substitute, they had been grossed out by the misogyny. As widespread sports activities commentator Colin Cowherd stated in a viral video this week, the hate is coming from “bizarre, lonely, insecure males” who “are sometimes misogynistic and resent girls.”
Or, as the massive brains setting the MAGA technique would possibly say, their voting base.
Beginning in 2014 with “Gamergate,” an internet harassment marketing campaign in opposition to girls within the gaming trade, Trump advisor Steve Bannon has championed the concept misogynist tantrums within the face of “woman energy” popular culture would entice younger male voters to the GOP. That is why there’s this focused GOP hate at the whole lot from Cardi B’s hit songs to the “Barbie” film.
As Adam Serwer lately wrote within the Atlantic, Republicans hope the overt misogyny is “a solution to broaden their base of assist past the core of white Christian conservatives,” by reaching some males of shade and non-religious males. The technique has had some success, particularly in radicalizing indignant younger males by blaming feminism quite than their very own hygiene/online game addictions for his or her romantic failures. However what Bannon and his crew did not account for is that girls may also vote, and they’re getting more and more indignant about this crap.
The pandemic uncovered how a lot the nation nonetheless depends on girls’s unpaid labor to maintain the financial system operating. The thanks girls received for holding issues collectively, nevertheless, had been abortion bans.
It does not assist that these misogynist pile-ons are taking place in opposition to a backdrop of rising frustration from girls over being overworked and underappreciated. As Melanie McFarland wrote at Salon, relating to the cultural impression of the “Barbie” film, there is a cause audiences gushed for America Ferrara’s “being a girl is unimaginable” speech. The pandemic uncovered how a lot the nation nonetheless depends on girls’s unpaid labor to maintain the financial system operating. The thanks girls received for holding issues collectively, nevertheless, had been abortion bans and a cascade of media tales demanding that girls accept unsatisfying marriages so males do not need to undergo the indignities of wifelessness. The injustice of all of it is getting tougher to disregard.
I have been struck, for example, by this weird and sudden freakout over the Stanley cup — not the hockey trophy, however the thermos that has instantly turn into a scorching commodity amongst woman influencers and their legions of followers. As Daniela Pierre-Bravo at MSNBC documented, the Stanley Quencher mannequin has been round since 2016, however exploded in recognition after three on-line influencers satisfied the corporate “to begin advertising to girls for the primary time.” The marketing campaign centered on mothers by highlighting that it is a good way to caffeinate and hydrate whereas driving youngsters round to soccer video games and, oh yeah, it is dishwasher-safe.
However in fact girls cannot merely take pleasure in one thing, even one thing so harmless as a water bottle, with out it kicking off an enormous ethical panic. We’re now deluged with scare tales about how the cups are harmful (they don’t seem to be) and sensationalist tales about how girls are going too far of their enthusiasm for the cups. “Saturday Night time Dwell” even had a sketch in regards to the “huge dumb cups” that went viral regardless of being solely mildly humorous.
I admit I laughed a number of instances, however principally the joke of the skit was a sequence of stereotypes about middle-class soccer mothers being vapid. Which is not simply unfair, however frustratingly so. These are girls who’re doing the whole lot they had been advised they’re “supposed” to do. They received married and had youngsters. They attempt to keep horny and trendy, and preserve their marriages attention-grabbing regardless of being overwhelmed with obligations. And their reward for exhausting work and sacrifice and conforming to social expectations? They get shamed as a result of they need a pleasant cup to make their countless obligations just a little simpler. As a result of a girl’s job is outwardly to sacrifice and by no means need the slightest creature consolation for herself.
Thus far, the right-wing noise machine has largely left the Stanley cups alone, although give it time. However the cup discourse provides to the bigger aggravation that comes from the Taylor Swift hate or the parade of hand-wringing articles demanding girls decrease their requirements to get married to Trump voters. It truly is unimaginable to be a girl. Even in case you clip your individual wings and marry somebody who’s beneath you, the following section of your life is being advised you are a bimbo since you need your espresso to remain scorching in between PTA conferences. Complicity, it seems, buys you nothing however extra bulls**t.
I do know that Biden’s marketing campaign will reject my proposed slogan: “Stanley cups and free abortions.” Nonetheless, it is a vibe and one they’d be smart to experience all through what’s going to be, if the Swift paranoia is any indication, a ridiculously sexist marketing campaign from the opposite aspect.
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about the fitting’s obsession with Taylor Swift