South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem made two big predictions ahead of the presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris this week.
Neither of her guesses were accurate, political and gender studies experts said.
For Harris, Noem said she expected the vice president to pull out the “woman card” — that she’ll rely on her female identity either as a form of leverage against Trump — or present what she called “a victim mentality” if her opponent criticized her. Trump, on the other hand, would be disciplined, Noem said.
In fact, Noem, once considered in the running as a potential vice president candidate for Trump, told interviewers this on at least three separate occasions, based on clips pulled from her own social media.
“She’s going to play the woman card, and she’s going to try to be a victim and act like [Trump is] being a bully, and we shouldn’t let her get away with it,” Noem told a Fox News reporter before the debate.
But after the brush-up between the two candidates, the sentiment from South Dakota’s political scholars was close to the opposite of what the governor and other Trump allies have tried to portray. Instead, the former president did lose his cool at times, while Harris’ gender was hardly referenced and certainly not one of the “gimmicks” Noem thought the Democratic candidate would utilize.
Harris didn’t use the historic nature of potential presidency as a talking point, and Trump didn’t bully her for it
In fact, Harris’ identity as a woman of color was hardly a part of the conversation, said Julia Hellwege, an associate professor with the University of South Dakota.
“Even if you were considered that [‘playing the woman card’] were a thing, if you will, and that’s a functioning strategy with voters, that is not something that Kamala Harris did,” Hellwege told the Argus Leader on Wednesday. “She did not really use any appeals to gender or to her identity as a way to encourage voters.”
Hellwege, who is the distinguished professor and director of USD’s Allene R. Chiesman Center for Democracy and an academic whose research encompasses legislative and gender politics, thought Harris’ self-portrayal during the debate walked a more moderate line than one that’s liberal or Democratic.
“Her background in law really puts her in more moderate positions,” Hellwege said of Harris, who served as California’s Attorney General from 2011 and 2017 and San Francisco’s district attorney before that. “I think there … have been been, maybe, missed hopes on the side of Democrats and sort of appeals to extremism [by Republicans]. They shouldn’t be so surprised, because she is a moderate candidate who has much more background in the sort of law and order.”
For comparison, Hellwege looked at how modern politicians have used appeals to identity to encourage voters. In the Democratic party, acknowledging the social factors that tie groups of people together and positively highlighting diversity is how those on the left sometimes make such appeals, Hellwege said.
“We do see from some of our other members of Congress, women of color, other women who point out how their gender … highlights their candidacy,” Hellwege said.
Hellwege chalked a tally for Harris’ mainstream-moderate portrayal, as Harris didn’t make the fact she is a Black and South Asian woman a talking point.
“[Harris] could have stood there and said, like, ‘I am a woman, and I am a woman of color and that is important because X-Y-Z reasons.’ What she said wouldn’t necessarily have it wrong, but she did not take that approach,” Helwege said. “She said we acknowledge that race and gender exists, and we should all still get along and move forward.”
That doesn’t mean voters will disregard the historic nature of her candidacy, Hellwege said. Party and policy is usually considered first and foremost by the public, the USD professor added, but a candidate’s race and gender do play a role in shaping an elected official’s legislative or executive attitudes.
“It might influence voters in terms of candidates with similar partisan, ideological qualities,” Hellwege said.
Merits can also form the basis of one’s political identity. But Republican lawmakers often take a “genderless” or “color-blind” approach in pedestaling these qualities, Hellwege said.
In terms of race, Trump tried to lean toward the same stance in the presidential debate, Hellwege hinted. The Republican candidate, who promoted the movement questioning former president Barack Obama’s birthplace for years and most recently falsely suggested Harris was trying to mislead voters about her race, responded to a “bigger-picture question” from ABC News’ David Muir: “You recently said of Vice President Harris, ‘I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black’ … Why do you believe it’s appropriate to weigh in on the racial identity of your opponent?”
Trump responded, simply: “I don’t. And I don’t care. I don’t care what she is. You make a big deal out of something. I couldn’t care less. Whatever she wants to be is OK with me.”
Harris excoriated Trump all the same: She pointed to the full-page ads he placed in New York newspapers, urging the state to reinstitute the death penalty after the arrest of the wrongfully-convicted and now-exonerated Central Park Five.
But Northern State University Professor of Government Jon Schaff made the argument in a Tuesday phone interview with the Argus Leader, “there was no good way” to navigate what he called “landmines” placed by the moderators.
“The question on race is not much different than [asking], ‘Mr. Trump, tell us, why are you a racist?,'” Schaff said. “I mean, that was all it was — a setup.”
For some Republicans, looking past race and gender is about seeing candidates for their merits
Another observation Hellwege makes is that when Republican politicians lean into certain identities, they tend to “strategically dismiss [other] identity claims.” Conservative appeals often take the form of individualism-based arguments, such as focusing first on their professional qualifications.
Noem’s pre-debate comments, too, lend themselves to this idea, as does her campaign for South Dakota’s office of the governor.
After beating Democrat challenger Billie Sutton in 2018, Noem, the first female governor of the state, acknowledged the historic moment in her 2019 gubernatorial inaugural address. Her win coincided with the 100th anniversary of woman’s suffrage in South Dakota, and she said in the post-election speech she wanted her achievement to send a message “to our state’s girls and young women, but also to boys and young men as well.”
“I offered up my experience and my vision to the people of South Dakota to earn their vote. I did not campaign on my gender. It wasn’t an issue, either way, in my mind. I grew up in a family where there no boy chores or girl chores. There were just things that needed to get done. And this sentiment is not new,” Noem remarked in her 2019 speech. “I want to be a governor for the next generation.”
It’s this qualitative strength-of-character focus that Noem extolls even today.
“We need the strongest person to be president of the United States. We need someone who has a clear head and knows who they are and has clearly told the American people what they’re going to do, and Kamala hasn’t done that,” Noem told Fox News Digital Tuesday night.
This shouldn’t be looked at as a strike against Republicans, Hellwege explained.
“When Kristi Noem talks about ‘the woman card,’ things like that, and when Trump dismissed race and gender, you know, this isn’t necessarily bad what Republicans are doing,” Hellwege said. “I think it’s more of a lofty goal that gender and race shouldn’t matter and that, you know, we need to see beyond those differences and such.”
Trump and Harris would both push gendered platforms to their constituencies
One gender-related issue came up debate night in the form of reproductive rights — specifically, abortion access.
Harris and Trump gave more or less party-aligned responses to questions from moderator Linsey Davis. The former president touted his record on the repeal of Roe v. Wade through the Supreme Court with affirming opinions from three Trump-appointees — Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Trump also demonized the Democratic stance on abortion by falsely claiming that states like Virginia, as well as Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, would allow the “execution” of babies “after birth.”
Trump also meant to point this critique at former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam — though he incorrectly referred to him as “the previous governor of West Virginia” at first — about comments Northam made in 2019 during an interview with a local radio station.
Northam was speaking to a hypothetical third trimester abortion scenario in which a baby is born with severe deformities and would be unlikely to survive. This was in response to an interviewer’s question about whether he would support a 2019 bill brought by Virginia House Del. Kathy Tran that would have loosened the state’s restrictions on abortion later in pregnancy, including the third trimester. Northam never said the baby would be “executed,” as Trump put it, but that the infant would be made comfortable and a discussion between the mother and physicians would ensue.
Harris, on the other hand, said she would support the reinstatement of Roe v. Wade. She lobbed the trigger laws that took effect at Trump’s feet, calling them “Trump abortion bans,” while also claiming her opponent would support a national abortion ban.
“A survivor of a crime, a violation to their body, does not have the right to make a decision about what happens to their body next. That is immoral,” Harris said. ” I think the American people believe that certain freedoms, in particular the freedom to make decisions about one’s own body, should not be made by the government.”
Trump responded he would not be in favor of a such a ban, though he did not say “yes” or “no” to Davis’ question of whether he would veto the measure if it came across his desk.
But as much as this topic of debate is inextricably tied to gender, Hellwege said neither Harris nor Trump explicitly inserted themselves into the issue.
“Neither one of them really on [Tuesday’s] debate stage, at least, took the approach of gender and race does matter, and it’s important in a positive way, not that we should look past it, but here are all of the, you know positive attributes we could have from diversity,” Hellwege said. “Neither one of the parties, neither one of the candidates at all took that approach to identity.”
With as much focus as there is on Harris’ historic candidacy, it would be a mistake to ignore how Trump’s male identity played into his political persona, said Evren Wiltse, a doctor and professor of political science at South Dakota State University.
When Trump managed to see through the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Wiltse said he delivered on a “very gendered” policy. It may have rung conservatives’ bell, Wiltse noted, but it was a strong position on a gendered issue. It also came through with the affirmative vote of Amy Coney Barrett, a female justice appointed by Trump himself.
Whether it’s keeping or reversing Roe v. Wade, “they both impact women, and Trump made a very strong case that he delivered to his constituency on gender-based topics, which is the Supreme Court” decision, Wiltse said.
“That is, again, a very gendered policy,” Wiltse said. “Just not the direction maybe you want or somebody else wants, or the Democrats want. But still, it’s a gendered policy … swinging the conservative way.”
And that’s not to say a similar “man card” hasn’t come up this presidential cycle — it’s just more subtle, Hellwege said.
“It was certainly more apparent at the last debate with the golf competition, you know, the need to compete. One of the things about men is the sort of ability to dismiss gender,” Hellwege said. “Women do not necessarily have the ability to dismiss gender in the same way that men do.”
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Publish date : 2024-09-15 00:02:00
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