During a campaign stop in Rochester, Pennsylvania, over the weekend, Vice President Kamala Harris lobbed a volley in her war on Donald Trump’s hypermasculine ways, criticizing the “perversion” and “coward”-like behavior undergirding the bravado.
It was a nice reversal of the usual gendered rhetoric.
Trump’s attacks on Harris have dripped with misogyny and general creepiness since she emerged as the Democratic nominee. He’s repeatedly insulted her intelligence; lately, he’s resorted to commenting about her physical appearance as well. Meanwhile, the campaign and allies in conservative media have tried to broaden his appeal with male voters while deploying some rather juvenile tactics.
Trump’s increasingly hypermasculine persona arguably gives Democrats an opening.
But Trump’s increasingly hypermasculine persona — a toxic mixture of Al Bundy from "Married ... With Children" and Biff Tannen from “Back to the Future” — arguably gives Democrats an opening.
Even when President Joe Biden was still running, Democrats made concerted efforts to attack Trump’s performative masculinity and bullying behavior to discourage men from following in his path. And the Harris-Walz ticket has afforded Democrats more opportunity to attack toxic MAGA masculinity, with an uncowed woman leading the ticket and her running mate offering a comparatively kinder, more compassionate depiction of masculinity than is being offered by Trump and his followers.
And Harris launched a pointed attack of her own on Sunday, contrasting how her campaign perceives strength with how … others … do.
She said:
This campaign is about a recognition that, frankly, over the last several years, there’s been a perversion that has taken place, I think, which is to suggest that the measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you beat down — when what we know is the real and true measure of a leader is based on who you lift up. That’s what we see as strength. We know what strength looks like. That’s what strength looks like. Anybody who’s about beating down other people is a coward. This is what strength looks like.
Harris didn’t need to mention Trump by name for viewers to know who she was referencing. The sentiment here — that bullies are cowardly and weak at heart — aligns with comments Tim Walz made about the MAGA movement when he was being considered as Harris’ potential running mate.
I’m on the record with my belief that these kinds of attacks on Trumpy hypermasculinity are likely to be valuable for Democrats. Trump and his movement portray strength as the key to manhood. And we know one of his key metrics for strength is one’s ability to vanquish or humiliate his political foes. The fact a campaign led by a Black woman is taking him to task for this “perverse” idea seems likely to goad him into more misogynistic outbursts, which don’t appear to be helping him.
And simultaneously, in attacking Trump’s bullying behavior, the Harris-Walz campaign can do lasting good by arguing — to all Americans, but certainly, the men who need it most — that true power is about aiding others, not trampling on them.