Why Americans picked a felon and misogynist over a woman

"While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fuelled this campaign." The fight for a woman's right to choose. The fight to protect children from gun violence. I'm also going to assume she was also going to try to protect the public service which was devastated during Trump's last presidency. If you want convincing, read Michael Lewis's The Fifth Risk (yeah, that book about FTX guy was awful but TFR is not). I can't imagine things will be any better this time.

This is a woman who revered - who reveres - democratic institutions, who promised to follow the rules, not work against them. That's not Trump's style, not his demeanour. He makes his own rules without decency or dignity.

In the dying days of the election campaign, the New York Times reported on Trump's behaviour at his final rally in Michigan. He said of former speaker Nancy Pelosi: "Evil. She's an evil, sick, crazy ..." Then he pulled faces and started to say one clear word associated with his hatred of women: "Bi-". According to the NYT, he then "held up a finger dramatically, feigning that he'd caught himself".

"It starts with a B, but I won't say it ... I want to say it." Then, "As the crowd roared even louder, some of the attendees began to supply the word he'd barely omitted, shouting, 'Bitch!."

Pelosi, of course, was not even his opponent. It was Kamala Harris, a woman he had personally derided for the entirety of her campaign.

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Years back now, a bunch of US academics analysed the way Trump supporters vilified Hillary Clinton as a bitch. But they went further, they developed the concept of "bitch-whistling," which frames but not names women as bitches. Pretty much what Trump did during his entire campaign to any woman with any power at all. Let's take him at face value when he says: "I don't want to be nice."

I am so puzzled by voters in the US and when I say voters, I mean women. There were clearly women who voted for Donald Trump, a man who disrespects women on a daily basis. A man whom a Manhattan federal jury found sexually abused journalist E. Jean Carroll and who was awarded $US5 million for battery and defamation. Stormy Daniels. A man who gloried when Roe v Wade was overturned and who set the scene for that to be made possible with appointments to the Supreme Court which would make your hair fall out. A man who encourages violence against women. For whom abusive language is a way of life.

It's not that the voters elected a Republican. That was always going to be a possibility. Voters don't love incumbents. It's that the voters elected this particular Republican, one with a hideous track record with women. And, as the Brookings Institution's Ezra K. Zilkha chair and senior fellow in Governance Studies William A Galston writes: "If the exit polls turn out to be accurate, Trump made strides among Latinos and African Americans, especially men." Harris couldn't combat that but her campaign didn't even manage to get women to vote. Galston again: "Women's share of the total vote rose only marginally from its level in 2020, and Harris' share of the women who voted did not increase from Biden's 2020 levels."

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I called Mona Lena Krook, distinguished professor of political science at Rutgers University. Krook has been a lifelong researcher of women and politics. She firmly discards the argument, brought by a number of political analysts, that Americans voted based on cost-of-living issues.

"It's not economics, whatever they say in the media; this is gaslighting to hide or justify the sexism, racism, homophobia, etc ... people support Trump not because he's going to help them, but because they're excited about who he's going to hurt. [It's a] social and cultural explanation, not an economic one."

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If that's true then American voters are truly the worst. The Centre for American Women in Politics, a research centre also based at Rutgers, put out a statement not long after the results became clear - devastating but clear. It said that Harris's candidacy exemplified what its research revealed about women's advantages as candidates and officeholders - excellent fundraisers, connection with voters and the unique perspective on overlooked issues.

"Unfortunately, this contest also exemplified research on the obstacles women face when running for office, chief among them the unequal expectations placed upon women, and women of colour in particular, who run for office."

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I'd pick a childless cat lady over a 78-year-old felon and raging misogynist any day of the week. Remember this was the guy who brought us those infamous words when he spoke about his connections with women: "They let you do it. You can do anything. Grab 'em by the pussy." Clearly, in the next iteration of campaigning, all our pussies need to have sharpened teeth.

In the US, women still hold fewer than a third of all political seats at every level of office. We are doing much better here and the more there are of us, the less likely we will have to put up with the behaviour of men like Trump, men aligned with Trump.

Harris did not succeed this time and I doubt she could ever be the nominee again but she did get one thing right. In her concession speech, she said: "Sometimes the fight takes a while."