Welcome to the 2024 Democratic Party. Hard work, inclusivity, hope, practicality, safety, and joy are our calling cards.
Last week, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump gave what was advertised to be an economic policy speech in front of his country club, while standing next to a display of groceries.
I honed in right off on the giant jars of Folgers coffee.
My granny, who raised 9 kids and lived her last 20 years in a tiny, rent-controlled apartment, drank Folgers all her life because it was cheap. She used the empty cans to save bacon grease and scraps, so a Folger’s can or two was always on display in her kitchen, right next to the stove.
Does anyone believe Mr. Trump serves my granny’s Folgers at Bedminster or Mar a Lago — the fancy clubs where the GOP candidate for president lives behind golden gates and plays golf and hobnobs with wealthy members?
Other than his personal privilege and anger, what is he selling?
Everyone from his advisors to FOX news hosts (also his advisors) keep saying he needs to turn to things like rent and groceries and gasoline, but they have been saying this for years and he clearly does not have the discipline, or even the basic intelligence (it’s true), to do so.
Mr. Trump cannot pivot to economic policy because what he cares about, what he most enjoys, is running down smart, powerful women for applause, saying recently that he is entitled to attacking his opponent — Vice President Kamala Harris, whose name he repeatedly and purposefully mispronounces — personally and that he does not have any respect for her or her intelligence.
In a succession of social media posts, “Trump called Harris “low IQ,” “dumb,” and said she lacked the “mental capacity” to debate him…. “Does anyone notice that Kamala Harris doesn’t do Interviews? That’s because she’s really DUMB!”
On Aug. 18 he posted a music video that led with a photo of Harris and the words “I AM A MORON” in all caps. Halfway through, there is a photo of Harris with her husband while the singer sings, “She spent her whole damn life down on her knees to be commander in chief.”
When asked about her being on the cover of Time Magazine, he said, “She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live” … “It was a drawing, and actually, she looked very much like a great first lady, Melania […] She’s a beautiful woman, so we’ll leave it at that.”
We’ll leave it at at that?
He is talking about the current Vice President of the United States and his challenger to be president the United States.
Sit down, sir.
Sit the hell down.
His Time Magazine comments serve as a reminder of the Rolling Stone story about his ownership of a beauty pageant in which he bragged about barging into the dressing room while the women were changing. he declined to say whether he’d ever slept with a contestant. “It could be a conflict of interest. … But, you know, it’s the kind of thing you worry about later, you tend to think about the conflict a little bit later on,” Trump joked. A few beats later, he rethought his stance, joking that, as the pageant’s owner, it might be his “obligation” to sleep with the contestants.
Mr. Trump is the chosen leader of the Republican Party and its standard bearer, and he is also the cliche of the dirty old man that women dread getting stuck next to on a cross country flight.
All women know exactly who this man is. Arrogant and obnoxiously flirty; insists (against your multiple requests) on chatting nonstop and asking about your personal life as he leans into your space; offers you a TicTac or gum from his front trouser pocket; lets his leg fall open so he is ‘accidentally’ touching you; is convinced you are into him and hands you a business card even as you feel unsafe and can’t wait to get away from him.
Mr. Trump is the dirty old man we warn our daughters about, and young women know it.
A few days ago, pollster Frank Luntz said, “I’m trying to do a focus group tonight with undecided voters under the age of 27 for a major news outlet. And I can’t recruit young women to this because they don’t exist as undecided voters.”
Here is some advice.
Making a speech about grocery prices in front of your country club, where you live like a king and rub toes with the jet-set, is knuckle-headed. Stop bullshitting the American people. We know he has never been grocery shopping or loved a woman who saved grease in a Folgers can.
Repeatedly saying your female opponent is too pretty or too dumb or got to where she is while “down on her knees” is offensive to all women, no matter our age or political party.
Donald Trump is nothing. He is a country club cad; a filthy, dirty old man; a fraud, a liar, an abuser, and a felon.
He has wasted 8 years of our time.
Eight. Years.
We have hard work to do and joyful lives to live. Let’s get to it.
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