James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal (yes, that James Taranto) loves Scott Adams, the cartoonist who created Dilbert. That love is based on important values the two men share: a general contempt for women, the belief that women are not that smart and that women are mostly just a very annoying necessity which should have been created with an off-switch*. So it's natural that Taranto quotes Adams a lot.
Most recently he linked to Adams' brilliant explanation for why Trump was going to win not only the votes of most men** but also enough of those over-emotional and illogical women's votes (too bad about that female suffrage) to give him a good chance to be the new Lion King (president) of the United States.
10. Trump rolled out the “woman card” attack on Clinton. Expect lots of backlash and hollering about sexism. Also expect that 100% of the voting public knows that the “woman card” accusation is a persuasion death blow to Clinton’s campaign. And Trump is the only candidate alive who would dare say it out loud.
Trump’s “woman card” strategy is weapons-grade persuasion. It is a “high ground” maneuver with an “identity” angle. Either one of those approaches can be a kill shot. But together?
Holy sh*t.
I’ve not seen anything like it. The engineering is superb.
Trump will probably win with men for all the obvious reasons. But winning with women has until lately seemed impossible. So the “woman card” kill shot is aimed at women voters, not men. And what it does is flip the framing, as Trump likes to do.
Clinton framing: It is time for a woman president.
Trump framing: Gender is not a job qualification
I remind you that this is the year 2016. Trump’s message recognizes that gender should not be a hiring criteria. That’s the high ground. You can’t get higher.
Wow! That is sooo smart. I would never have been able to create such an engineering miracle, being a girl goddess.
Whatever. In this reality Hillary Clinton is still about a zillion times more qualified in actual political job experience and relevant knowledge than Donald Trump, who, I must admit, is a lot more experienced in bankrupting firms. So if we leave gender (and Trump's sexism) out of this altogether, Clinton remains the more qualified candidate.
Why did these two gentlemen find Trump's "woman card" trick so awe-inspiring? I have no idea, but if I had to make a guess it would be that they truly think female voters aren't that sharp. So it goes.
Where was I? Oh yes, more on Taranto's opinions:
Give Trump this: He is the one candidate you can count on to ignore feminist demands that he put Mrs. Clinton on a pedestal.
What rubbish! Trump would put her up a pedestal in a minute, if he could then look up her skirt.***
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* Want to learn more? Check out these two posts (1) and (2) on Scott Adams' views on women, or that lions-are-men-zebras-are-women post. This post has a bit more on James Taranto's views.
** Against Hillary Clinton. She is assumed to be the Democratic candidate. As Adams states, Trump is assumed to win enough men's votes "for all the obvious reasons." That could be code for something very mysterious, having to do with men being lions and women being zebras. Or he might just mean that white men tend to vote Republican.
I do love that lions-and-zebras story! It's wonderful, even in the present setting: Trump, the old lion with the bad mane, sets a trap at the watering hole (voting polls) for the almost equally old zebra, Clinton, to gobble her up.
*** The bit about "feminist demands" is also mostly rubbish. That is because the world of feminism is a dangerous jungle where boa constrictors hide behind every tree and where poisonous giant spiders glide down a vine and drill straight through insufficiently pure people's eyeballs, in order to lay eggs inside their cerebellums.
I made that last bit up, largely because a) manly men like Taranto always assume that feminists are like ladies in a church choir, all singing in harmony, but not really frightening at all, and b) because many feminists are not Clinton-supporters and c) because there really is no central Kremlin office which coordinates Feminist Demands. Rather the reverse, in fact.