Wednesday, April 17, 2019

Kavanaugh Fallout, 2020, and Converting Rightwing Women

Irin Carmon has a piece at The Cut about the findings from a recent PeeryUndem report on public opinions about Brett Kavanaugh.

From the report, some of the key findings were that 57% of voters believe Kavanaugh lied under oath about his teenage years, 49% view him unfavorably, and only one-third believe he would be impartial in cases involving sexual harassment or assault. In addition, 16% more voters believe Christine Blasey Ford than believe Kavanaugh.  73% of voters do not want the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, and 74% believe Kavanaugh would vote to do so.

Interestingly, fewer people view Kavanaugh favorably or believe him compared to when his confirmation hearings ended.

The researchers speculated, "For many voters, we think the Kavanaugh hearings and confirmation likely activated and reinforced feelings around power and powerlessness," citing a drastic jump in the percentage of voters who believe men have more positions of power in society than women (65% in 2016 versus 87% in 2018).

At the same time, as Carmon notes in her piece, Republican men have largely regressed and now have more hostile sexist beliefs than even just two years ago. Just 45% of Republican men now view sexism as a problem, compared to 63% in 2017. Republican women, however, appear to have become less sexist, as society's sexism has become more obvious. 66% believe sexism is a problem, for instance.

These findings are interesting as they speak to both the feminist resurgence and backlash we're in right now. As the report notes, "the Kavanaugh and Ford events had negative and positive implications for the #MeToo movement." On the one hand, the hearings seem to have enhanced Republican men's sexism, but it has awakened many Republican women's concerns about gender-based justice and power disparities.

So, where do we go from here?

For one, it's likely that the confirmation of Kavanaugh has further eroded public's opinion, and thus legitimacy, of the Supreme Court. The researchers note that this theory is an open question at the moment, as Gallup has yet to update its polling data.

The obvious next step might be to apply this analysis to the 2020 elections, where white male Democratic candidates are currently polling better than any of the female candidates (and men of color). What are the messages there?

Well, it's early, for starters.

But two, Republican women can potentially be reached and converted. Probably much more so than Republican men. But, are any of the current "frontrunners" (scare quotes because it's early) capable of doing so?

In 1983, Andrea Dworkin wrote a book about rightwing women, noting that the primary failure of the male-dominated left to mobilize rightwing women was its failure to offer rightwing women a sufficiently-better alternative to what they were getting from their collaboration with men on the right. We can argue whether rightwing women were correct in their perception, or whether such women are just stupid bigoted dupes, but that many rightwing women do hold the perception that the left is hostile to women are the facts on the ground that the male-dominated left has never effectively grappled with. Although, just from my experience, many people on the left can't even handle arguing with progressive feminists without resorting to misogyny, so rightwing women don't really stand a chance.

I know the powers-that-be have been fetishizing the courting of working class white male (read: Republican male) votes since the 2016 election, but there seems to be much more potential opportunities to convert Republican women, as a result of #MeToo, and not just for the presidency, but for Congressional elections too.

Key ways to do so likely include candidates demonstrating that they take sexual harassment and assault seriously, speaking coherently about reproductive rights, and being cognizant of gender-based power differentials in society and politics.

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