Barbara Kay: Harris doesn’t hate low-status men, she just doesn’t see them

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With ten days to go and 25 million votes already cast, the US election is too close to call. Gender, with a nearly 25-point gap between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris supporters, is the leading factor in this impasse. Trump’s large male base is as solid as ever. The Democrats’ traditional male base, not so much. Harris still has educated LGBTQ men screwed up. But there has been a meaningful shift toward Trump among young black men.

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The desperation to win them back leads to blunders and not goals. In a scolding lecture, former President Barack Obama effectively accused black men of misogyny, suggesting that some “brothers” had warmed to Trump’s ability to “put women down.” Harris proposed an “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men,” which would offer black small business owners forgivable business loans of $20,000; it was criticized as likely unconstitutional and soon backed down. And a patronizing dating game-style ad managed to offend both black men and stereotypical women: the message candidly conveyed was that a black man’s sexual appeal depends on supporting Harris.

Women who lack the financial or social support of male figures in their lives – disproportionately black women – form a solid Democratic constituency at 72 to 24 percent. Political scientist David Samuels calls them ‘Brides of the State (BOTS)’. In contrast, married American women support Republicans by 50 to 45 percent. Samuels writes: “Without BOTS’ overwhelming support for the Democrats, in other words, America would be a Republican country with a solid majority, with Trump winning a likely electoral landslide.”

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So Harris could use some untraditional support from the heterosexual, white, working-class male voters that Trump appeals to. But familiarity with low-status men – black or white – is not her strong point. Her gender comfort zone is a milieu populated by highly educated progressive men, including her husband, Doug Emhoff, and running mate Tim Walz, who delight in showing excessive respect for Harris.

In a telling anecdote, Emhoff recounted Kamala’s dismay after Biden’s abdication, when she couldn’t reach him (he was at a spinning class at the gym, phone in the car). When informed of her frustration, he said, laughing, to a podcast host, “I just ran into the car and there was my phone, literally, like – you could feel the steam…” “I’m calling Kamala. .. and it was a… conversation of a minute or less, starting with, “Where the hell were you?”… And basically, “Let’s get going.” And I did that.”

Once posted to One dissenter said, “If she were a man, you would love this story. Your misogyny is visible.” She’s wrong. If the same words a male presidential candidate said to his wife were made public, he would be pilloried as a toxic Neanderthal. But no smart political woman would even think of sharing them, especially if the man has a history of workplace anger issues, an albatross that Harris can’t shake but is never challenged to defend.

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An illustration of Harris’s appalling ignorance of ordinary men emerged from a Harris-endorsed “real men” ad designed to attract undecided male voters. It featured six actors, because no real man would ever say his parodic nonsense like, “I’m a man. I’m a man. I’m a man, man …”; “I’m man enough to lift 500 people to death and braid the shit out of my daughter’s hair”; “Do you think I’m afraid of rebuilding a carburetor?” I eat carburetors for breakfast”; and of course: “A woman wants to be president? Well, I hope she has the courage to look me in the eye and accept my full support.’

This spectacularly unconvincing ad ever competes with Bud Lite’s hilariously off-brand trans-centric 2023 ad for market betrayal. As Nellie Bowles of The Free Press noted of the former, “This is not an ad for anyone who has ever met, let alone interacted with, a straight man.”

For those who paid early attention to her as a future national leader, Harris’ disregard for the rights and concerns of ordinary men was on full display during Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings in 2018. I remember one pivotal moment in particular from her questioning. With women’s unfettered abortion rights in mind (when are they ever not?), and a sign of preemptive triumph in what she deemed an irrefutable question, Harris asked Kavanaugh, “Can you think of laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?”

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Harris was lucky. Kavanaugh was nervous and did not give his answer. Had he been properly informed, Kavanaugh’s response might have been, “Well, yes, Senator Harris, I can do that. Every 18-year-old male U.S. citizen must register for the draft, regardless of whether he has ever considered military service, and is liable for drafting in the event of an emergency. No American woman has that obligation. Forced military service for men, with all its attendant risks to life and limb, has been the norm throughout human history.”

Unfortunately, the beleaguered judge missed his golden opportunity to nail Harris and expose her as what I call an “accidental misandrist.” Harris doesn’t hate low-status men. As her stupid ads and her question to Kavanaugh demonstrate, she just doesn’t “see” them. And they know it.

National Post

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X: @BarbaraRKay

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