BUCKS COUNTY, Pa. \u2014 More than a week after Kamala Harris\u2019s debut as the likely Democratic presidential nominee, the buzz around her candidacy is still fresh here in the collar counties surrounding Philadelphia. Though many voters acknowledged they know little about her or her ideas, they used words like \u201cexciting\u201d and \u201cenergizing\u201d to describe the political moment.<\/p>\n
But the politician everyone really wanted to talk about was Sen. JD Vance, with his selection as former president Donald Trump\u2019s running mate sparking a new chapter in the long-running conversation about Trump\u2019s views of women.<\/p>\n
Vance\u2019s comments from 2021 suggesting that Americans without children \u201cdon\u2019t really have a direct stake\u201d in the country\u2019s future went viral days ago. But unfortunately for Trump, the maelstrom surrounding his running mate is still stirring in this perennial battleground. In interviews with more than two dozen voters, it was clear that Vance\u2019s views have renewed unease about Trump\u2019s judgment, his past statements about women and his record on abortion. Almost universally, voters also said they were bracing for Trump to unleash personal attacks on Harris.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow that you\u2019ve got Kamala in there, you\u2019ve got a whole different ballgame,\u201d said Mike Dumin, a 68-year-old independent from Lansdale. \u201cHe is going to attack her in ways that are going to be distasteful to most normal people except his base. He can\u2019t help himself. He cannot stand the fact that it\u2019s a woman, especially a woman who is a minority who could beat him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dumin said that Vance\u2019s past comments suggest that the senator from Ohio \u201cwants obedient servants at home just having babies\u201d and that his public interactions with his wife, Usha, an accomplished lawyer who spoke at the recent Republican National Convention but has kept a low profile, should tell Americans everything they need to know: \u201cThat\u2019s what he pushes. That\u2019s who he is. And this is coming from a man,\u201d Dumin said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHigh heels and lipstick,\u201d interjected his wife, Susan Dumin, a 68-year-old retired florist. When Trump and Vance\u2019s positions on abortion enter the conversation, she said, \u201cWomen are terrified. We are 50 percent, and we are letting the other half decide our health care.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a strange stroke of political timing, America\u2019s reintroduction to Harris, now at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket, has coincided with the vetting of Vance. That has meant voters are revisiting the possibility of the first female president at the same time that Vance is drawing scrutiny of his views on traditional marriage, the role of women in the home and his opposition to abortion, including in the case of rape and incest.<\/p>\n
Cognizant of the negative reception that some of Vance\u2019s views have earned, Trump has defended his running mate even as members of his party second-guess his decision. In a recent interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, Trump said Vance \u201cloves family\u201d and went on to defend Americans who don\u2019t have children: \u201cI know so many people. They never met the right person,\u201d Trump said. \u201cThey\u2019re every bit as good as anybody else that has the most beautiful family.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked whether Vance would be ready to be president on day one during a Wednesday interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago, Trump noted that vice-presidential picks historically have had very little bearing on the outcome of presidential races.<\/p>\n
By including Harris \u2014 who has two stepchildren \u2014 in his 2021 description of ascendant Democrats as \u201ca bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable,\u201d Vance seems to have triggered anger not only among voters who support her, but also among swing voters, who suddenly feel inspired to defend her.<\/p>\n
\u201cTalking about why Kamala doesn\u2019t have any kids \u2014 that was very disrespectful,\u201d said Noris Lugo, a 53-year-old teacher from Montgomery Township, who noted that Vance would have no idea whether a woman has been unable to bear children or has made a choice not to. Before the sudden upheaval caused by President Biden\u2019s withdrawal from the race, Lugo was leaning toward voting for Trump because she believes he is good for the economy.<\/p>\n
Now, Lugo said, she is more heavily weighing how the former president \u201ctreats people\u201d and is concerned that Vance and Trump \u201chave the same behavior and thinking.\u201d Disrespect for women \u2014 \u201cthat\u2019s the one thing I don\u2019t tolerate,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Stephanie Crossier, a 32-year-old teacher from Doylestown, leans Republican and believes Democrats have gone too far to the left on abortion. But she has positive impressions of Harris thus far and said she is struggling as she evaluates whether someone with Trump\u2019s ethics should serve as commander in chief.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump has things on his record that shouldn\u2019t be there for a president. The legal run-ins,\u201d Crossier said, alluding to his recent conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records in a hush money trial, as well as his other pending criminal trials.<\/p>\n
Rosemary O\u2019Connor, a 73-year-old former Amtrak employee from Bedminster, said she was relieved that the scrutiny of Vance has \u201crevitalized\u201d the conversation around Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople got immune to Trump; they just shrug him off,\u201d said O\u2019Connor, who changed her registration from Republican to Democrat after Trump was elected because she no longer felt the party reflected her values. With Vance, she said, \u201cwe\u2019re getting a new take on their views.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vance argues that the media has twisted his past statements. Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign\u2019s communications director, insisted that the former president is \u201cthrilled with the choice he made.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cKamala Harris is weak, failed, and dangerously liberal, and no amount of gaslighting from her or her campaign will erase her despicable record,\u201d Cheung said in a statement.<\/p>\n
But Trump has been complicating the GOP\u2019s effort to steer the conversation about Harris in a more substantive direction \u2014 to scrutiny of her record on immigration and policing, for example. During the NABJ interview, Trump questioned Harris\u2019s racial identity \u2014 asking whether she was Indian or Black before stating that she just recently \u201cbecame a Black person.\u201d Harris dismissed his false claims about her race as \u201cthe same old show,\u201d which she described as \u201cdivisiveness\u201d and \u201cdisrespect.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, impressions of Harris among swing voters here remain fluid. Voters often struggled to recall specific aspects of her record or her biography, creating an opportunity for both sides as they try to define her with millions of dollars of television ads. Trump and Harris are tied in Pennsylvania, according to The Washington Post\u2019s polling average. Harris led Trump by seven points among suburban voters in a head-to-head matchup in a Fox News poll last week. That is much narrower advantage than the double-digit lead that Biden held with suburban voters in the Fox poll in October 2020. Ultimately Biden won the state by only one point.<\/p>\n
Rachel Siegel, a 32-year-old aesthetician from Fountainville, said she didn\u2019t vote in 2020 because she was undecided between Biden and Trump. But she has found Harris\u2019s demeanor off-putting and described the economy during the past four years as \u201cabsolute garbage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Siegel and her mother, Sonia McAfee, 63, questioned whether Harris is strong enough for the role of president. McAfee said Trump \u201cscares\u201d her when it comes to international affairs, but she is leaning toward voting for him because she doesn\u2019t think Harris \u201cis what we need right now.\u201d The main criticism McAfee has heard about Harris is that she was not effective in curbing illegal immigration in her role as vice president. (Although Republicans have described Harris as the \u201cborder czar,\u201d she was tasked with a narrower role addressing the root causes of migration out of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras).<\/p>\n
\u201cYou feel like you have to look up everything in both parties, because everybody calls each other liars and ultimately you don\u2019t know the truth,\u201d said McAfee, a retired accountant. \u201cVPs sort of end up in the background, so I don\u2019t really know what she\u2019s capable of.\u201d<\/p>\n
McAfee said Vance has seemed \u201cknowledgeable\u201d but \u201cought to watch how he says things.\u201d Both women have been disappointed that much of the discussion around Harris\u2019s ascent has centered on race and gender.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like that people throw out the race card \u2014 that she\u2019d be the first Black woman [as president] \u2014 I don\u2019t care,\u201d McAfee said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to prove to me that you can do the job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scott Clement contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
BUCKS COUNTY, Pa. \u2014 More than a week after Kamala Harris\u2019s debut as the likely Democratic presidential nominee, the buzz around her candidacy is still fresh here in the collar counties surrounding Philadelphia. Though many voters acknowledged they know little about her or her ideas, they used words like \u201cexciting\u201d and \u201cenergizing\u201d to describe the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7248,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}