Trump's Race To The Bottom, Con't

Trump continues to play the "scary other people" card because it works, and while I expect Democrats will continue to win the women vote overall, white women will continue to vote Republican because what they want most is Daddy Trump protecting them.

Standing in an airplane hangar in the mid-autumn chill awaiting the arrival of President Trump, Joan Philpott said she was angry and scared. Only Mr. Trump, she said, can solve the problems she worries most about.

“He wants to protect this country, and he wants to keep it safe, and he wants to keep it free of invaders and the caravan and everything else that’s going on,” said Ms. Philpott, 69, a retired respiratory therapist.

Ms. Philpott was one of thousands of women who braved a drizzle for hours to have the chance to cheer Mr. Trump at a rally here on Thursday. While political strategists and public opinion experts agree that Mr. Trump’s greatest electoral weakness is among female voters, here in Columbia and places like it, the president enjoys a herolike status among women who say he is fighting to preserve a way of life threatened by an increasingly liberal Democratic Party.

“He understands why we’re angry,” Ms. Philpott said, “and he wants to fix it.”

As Republican candidates battle to keep their congressional majorities in the midterm elections on Tuesday, Mr. Trump is crisscrossing the country to deliver a closing argument meant to acknowledge — and in many cases stoke — women’s anxieties. At rally after rally, he has said that women “want security,” warning of encroaching immigrants, rising crime and a looming economic downturn if Democrats gain power.

Some of Mr. Trump’s female backers initially supported him only reluctantly or do so now in spite of reservations about his bawdy language and erratic behavior. But they shared in his victory after the bitter and partisan battle over the confirmation of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. And many believe the president when he reminds them during each of his hourlong pep rallies that the world they know — largely Christian, conservative and white — is at stake on Tuesday.

“Honestly, I’m nervous about it,” Amy Kremer, a Tea Party activist and the co-founder of the Women for Trump PAC, said of the election, which is widely viewed as a referendum on Mr. Trump. “I’ve never seen this energy and momentum for a midterm, but also the polls weren’t correct in 2016.”

Ms. Kremer said she and the other women in her Atlanta-area social circle “love” Mr. Trump, adding, “We like when somebody promises to do something and they follow through on it.”

But that warmth toward the president is decidedly a minority view among women around the country, and Republican officials fret privately that Mr. Trump’s harder-edged messages will alienate the women the party needs to preserve vital seats.

There are two theories, one, enough white women will vote for the Republicans in order for the GOP to keep the House and make Senate gains, or two, enough non-white voters will show up to counteract this group and the Democrats take back the House and maybe, just maybe, the Senate.

But let's not pretend we don't know what Trump is selling here when he says that women want "security" to a group of white, Christian women in a state like Montana that's 90% white.  White women put Trump in the White House, and he's counting on them to keep the GOP in total power on Tuesday.  "Only I can keep you safe" is what abusers and fascists tell people.

It's the last play he's got, and in a midterm electorate that will most likely be 40% white women, it's the most effective play Trump has.