K THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALSATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2020 Y A
Election
The morning after Senator
Kamala Harris became the first
woman of color to take a debate
stage as a member of a major
party’s ticket, President Trump
disparaged her as “totally unlik-
able” and a “com-
munist.” Then,
twice, he called
her “this monster.”
His dehumanizing language
was an unusually explicit exam-
ple of the biased attitudes —
about how women should be-
have, how people of color should
behave and especially how wom-
en of color should behave — that
have pervaded commentary
regarding Ms. Harris.
There was the “conde-
scending” label, too, that unde-
cided voters applied to Ms. Har-
ris’s facial expressions as they
assessed the debate in a focus
group run by a Republican poll-
ster, Frank Luntz. There was the
member of the Trump cam-
paign’s advisory board who
called her an “insufferable lying
bitch.”
And there was the Fox News
commentator Tucker Carlson’s
depiction of her as a power-
hungry usurper of Joseph R.
Biden Jr.’s would-be presidency,
which played to a racist and
sexist trope.
These sorts of personal attacks
on Ms. Harris have been coming
since the day Mr. Biden chose
her as his running mate, when
conservative commentators
repeatedly mispronounced her
name and suggested she wasn’t
Black, and a top Google search
around that time was whether
she was born in the United
States.
She was, in California. But the
interest in that question — which
evoked the birtherism lie that
Mr. Trump weaponized against
former President Barack Obama
— spoke to how differently she
was being treated than the white
vice-presidential nominees who
came before her.
Her selection as Mr. Biden’s
running mate thrilled many
Americans who saw themselves
represented in a major presiden-
tial campaign for the first time. It
also unleashed a steady drip of
racism and sexism, underscoring
not only the double standards
women and people of color face,
but what happens when multiple
identities meet: a Black woman,
an Indian-American woman, a
woman whose parents were
immigrants.
Tropes and caricatures
One of the oldest racist tropes is
that of the “angry Black woman.”
It was popularized in the min-
strel-like sitcom “Amos ’n’ Andy,”
which included a character
named Sapphire who became
synonymous with the stereotype
of an “emasculating” Black wom-
an, said Nadia E. Brown, an
associate professor of political
science and African-American
studies at Purdue University.
“Angry,” “mean,” “aggressive,”
“disrespectful”: All of these
words, which Mr. Trump has
used to describe Ms. Harris, play
to this stereotype, which was
also used against Michelle
Obama. False suggestions that
Ms. Harris is scheming to run
the country in Mr. Biden’s stead
play to it, too.
“She’ll bulldoze her elderly,
sentimental boss,” Mr. Carlson,
the Fox News host, said Wednes-
day. “So tonight we’ll be airing
the vice-presidential debate, but
what we’ll actually be looking at
is Kamala Harris’s audition for
the presidency. That’s the office
she’s running for, no matter what
they tell you.”
The attacks on Ms. Harris as
“unlikable,” which Mr. Trump
pushed on Thursday, also play
into a double standard. Voters
are more likely to see likability
as mandatory for women than
for men, research shows, and
experts say Black women are
often judged even more harshly.
It is something of a tightrope:
Stereotypically feminine behav-
ior can lead voters to see women
running for office as more likable
but less of a leader, while ster-
eotypically masculine behavior
can make voters see them as
more of a leader but less likable.
This is “the classic double
bind,” said Amanda Clayton, a
political scientist at Vanderbilt
University. “Women can either
be seen as leaders or they can be
seen as feminine, and the two
don’t go together.”
These caricatures and double
standards have been accompa-
nied by sexualization, common
against women of all races but
especially those who are Black.
This is another racist trope, the
promiscuous, hypersexual “Jeze-
bel.”
After Mr. Biden chose Ms.
Harris, the right-wing radio host
Rush Limbaugh suggested false-
ly, quoting from a conservative
website, that she had “slept her
way up.” T-shirts with the slogan
“Joe and the Hoe” were briefly
available on Amazon. The mayor
of Luray, Va., called her “Aunt
Jemima,” a nod to yet another
stereotype, the “Mammy.”
“These are distinctly misogy-
noir tactics,” Dr. Brown said,
referring to the combination of
racism and sexism that Black
women face. “We would not see
these stereotypes or these kind
of threats used against her if she
were not a Black woman.”
The lawyer and civil rightsactivist Kimberlé Crenshaw
introduced the term “intersec-
tionality” three decades ago to
describe how various identities
can overlap to produce discrimi-
nation more complex than just,
for instance, racism plus sexism.
Experts said Ms. Harris’s experi-
ence was a prime example.
Several activists and political
scientists said they believed such
attacks would backfire given
voters’ increased awareness of
double standards. But Professor
Crenshaw, who teaches at Co-
lumbia Law School and the Uni-
versity of California, Los Ange-
les, said it was not necessarily
that simple, because part of what
makes intersectional bias so
powerful is that prejudice against
one identity can persist in com-
munities of another identity.
She said she worried that
“women may not vote against
the rampant sexism because of
race, and people of color may not
vote against the racist and xeno-
phobic dimensions of the Trump
assault because of anti-Black
racism within Indian communi-
ties and misogyny within Black
communities.”Identity policing
Within hours of Ms. Harris’s
selection, the conservative talk-
radio host Mark Levin went on a
diatribe about descriptions of her
as “the first African-American
woman” on a major presidential
ticket.
“Kamala Harris is not an Afri-
can-American,” he said. “She is
Indian and Jamaican. Jamaica’s
part of the Caribbean. India is
out there near China. I only point
that out because if you dare raise
that, you’re attacked, but the
truth is she’s not, and so I just
wanted to make that clear.”
There is nuanced debate
within Black communities about
what it means to be African-
American versus Black. But it is
common, including among Black
people, to use the two inter-
changeably.
Comments like Mr. Levin’s are
sometimes referred to as identity
policing. Among other things, it
suggests that Ms. Harris is not
who she says she is or that she
cannot have multiple identities,
as millions of Americans do.“She’s going to be tasked with
managing those perceptions of
her identity,” Danielle Casarez
Lemi, a fellow at Southern Meth-
odist University’s John G. Tower
Center for Political Studies who
focuses on race and representa-
tion, said after Ms. Harris was
nominated. “And that’s time that
could be spent on the ground,
building relationships with peo-
ple and formulating policies.”
Identity policing is related to
broader patterns of “othering,” or
casting a person as “not one of
us.”
The most brazen example for
Ms. Harris was the revival of the
“birther” lie: A conservative law
professor made a discredited
argument in Newsweek in Au-
gust that being born in California
might not make Ms. Harris a
natural-born citizen if her par-
ents were not citizens, and Mr.
Trump suggested falsely that
this notion might be valid.
On Wednesday, denying that
sexism or racism played any role
in criticism of Ms. Harris, Mr.
Carlson said on Fox, “More
likely, voters don’t like Kamala
Harris because she is a transpar-
ent fraud, from her phony in-
flected accent to her synthetic
bio to her featherweight work
history.” (Ms. Harris has been
the district attorney of San Fran-
cisco, the attorney general of
California and a United States
senator.)
Mr. Trump began calling her
“phony” over the summer. This is
one of his favorite adjectives for
nonhuman opponents like the
Russia investigation and the
Emoluments Clause of the Con-
stitution. But when used against
a person, and especially a wom-
an of color, experts say it has a
harmful subtext.
“A word like ‘phony,’ neutral on
its face, when leveled against a
woman of color takes on a very
culturally loaded meaning,” said
Tina Tchen, chief executive of
Time’s Up, which is part of the
“We Have Her Back” coalition of
groups formed to call out double
standards related to Ms. Harris.
It speaks, Ms. Tchen said, “to
this deeply held, internalized
sense that we have in our culture
that she’s a phony because she
doesn’t belong here.”Facing a ‘Double Bind’ of Racism and Sexism
By MAGGIE ASTORJennie Coughlin contributed re-
porting.
Conservatives have unleashed a steady stream of racist and sexist tropes against Kamala Harris.RUTH FREMSON/THE NEW YORK TIMESNEWS
ANALYSIS You know the story well: Not a
single public poll in 2016 showed
Donald J. Trump beating Hillary
Clinton in Wisconsin, and fore-
casters suggested he had almost
no shot. FiveThirtyEight gave
him less than a one-in-six chance
of winning the state.
But after the votes were
counted, with turnout down in
key Democratic areas, Mr.
Trump eked out a victory by
fewer than 30,000 votes.
This year, again, virtually
every poll has shown the Demo-
crat, Joseph R. Biden Jr., with at
least a slight edge over Mr.
Trump. A New York Times/Siena
College survey last month gave
Mr. Biden a five-percentage-
point advantage among likely
voters. Polls taken since then by
CNN and NBC News/Marist
College have each given Mr.
Biden an outright, 10-point lead.
And with the coronavirus now
raging in Wisconsin, particularly
in the politically competitive
northeastern region, Mr. Trump
faces an uphill battle toward
repeating his victory from four
years ago.
“Certainly, with the sharp rise
in cases here, it’s on the agenda
for voters,” said Charles Frank-
lin, a political scientist who runs
the Marquette Law School poll,
which is seen as the definitive
political survey in the state. “His
handling of Covid does appear to
be having a bigger effect on
people’s vote than either the
economy or his handling of the
protests.”
Marquette has released a
Wisconsin poll each month since
June, and in every one Mr. Biden
has held a single-digit lead
among likely voters that was
within the margin of error. This
reflects the steadiness of a race
in which Wisconsinites largely
know where they stand: Roughly
four in five voters have consis-
tently expressed a strong opinion
of Mr. Trump’s leadership,
whether positive or negative,
according to Marquette’s data.
But if there are any small
signs of momentum, it appears to
be breaking Mr. Biden’s way. His
48 percent approval rating in the
poll released this week was his
best in a Marquette survey all
year, capping a 14-point rise
since February. Mr. Trump,
meanwhile, was seen positively
by 42 percent of Wisconsin vot-
ers, leaving his net favorability
rating more than 10 points in the
red, where it has languished
since June.
Concern about the pandemic
has ticked upward recently. More
than six in 10 Wisconsin voters in
the Marquette poll described
themselves as at least fairly
worried — including 27 percent
who said they were very wor-
ried, up from 21 percent last
month. Fully 50 percent of Wis-
consin voters said they did not
expect the virus to be under
control for at least another year,
running counter to Mr. Trump’s
insistence that it is already being
handled effectively.
And that’s not the only issue
where he’s hurting. While Mr.
Trump has made Wisconsin a
focal point of his “law and order”
messaging, particularly after
protests broke out over the police
shooting of Jacob Blake in Ke-
nosha, Wis., 54 percent of Wis-
consin voters said in the Mar-
quette survey that they disap-
proved of how he had handled
this year’s unrest. Just 37 per-
cent approved.Republicans’ rise among white
men without college degrees
Since the rise of the Tea Party
movement a decade ago, white
men without college degrees in
Wisconsin have shifted toward
the Republican Party in large
numbers — a development that
predated Mr. Trump’s rise, but
that he certainly accelerated. Dr.
Franklin cited Marquette num-
bers showing that in 2012, non-
college-educated white men in
Wisconsin were just five points
more likely to be Republicans
than Democrats. By this year, the
difference had grown to 23
points.
Dr. Franklin said that former
Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican,
had introduced a newly working-
class political lexicon in the early
2010s, when he waged an attack
on public-sector unions.
“Walker didn’t spend as much
time emphasizing pro-business
messages in a way that you
would’ve heard previous genera-
tions of Republicans saying,
‘What’s good for business is good
for the state,’ ” Dr. Franklin said.
“Walker was saying: ‘They’re
hard-working taxpayers whoneed their money, and these
unions are taking money from
them.’ ”
But as much as Republicans’
appeals have resonated with
many working-class white men,
there has not been commensu-
rate movement among women
without college degrees. And
while Democrats haven’t notched
big gains in their vote share
among any particular group,
they have avoided losing ground
among demographics that are
growing more quickly — such as
college graduates, Latinos and
voters in cities.
In Democratic strongholds like
Milwaukee and Madison, the
state’s two biggest munici-
palities, the margins actually
improved slightly for Democrats
between the 2012 and 2016 presi-
dential elections. Dane County,
which includes Madison, is the
state’s fastest-growing county,
and is probably the No. 1 area
where Democrats will be looking
to run up the score.The virus hits the gridiron
Green Bay, a heavily blue-collar
city in the northeastern part of
the state, has been in the news
recently as the coronavirus has
surged. The Packers, the town’s
beloved N.F.L. team, announced
this week that for the time being
no fans would be allowed to
attend games at Lambeau Field.
Data released by the N.F.L. Play-
ers Association at the end of last
month showed that Green Bay
had a higher rate of infection
than any other team’s market.
For Mr. Trump, all of this puts
an unwelcome focus on the co-
ronavirus in the most politically
volatile region of the state.
“Green Bay, Appleton and
other cities in that region have
moved pretty noticeably in a
Democratic direction since 2010,”
Dr. Franklin said. “The surround-
ing counties in the region,
though, have stayed very Repub-
lican, and to the north and west
of Green Bay have become even
more Republican than before. So
the result is, the whole region is
still pretty competitive.”
Brown County, which includes
Green Bay, broke for Mr. Trump
by nine points in 2016, but with
Mr. Biden turning back Mr.
Trump’s advantage among sub-
urbanites and building his sup-
port among the urban Democrat-
ic base, it could be up for grabs
this year.Turnout helps Democrats — and
perhaps pollsters
Over all, Wisconsin’s population
is almost evenly split between
Democrats and Republicans, but
there’s still a slight Democratic
tilt to the electorate, especially
when voter engagement is high,
since Democrats tend to do bet-
ter among demographics with
lower turnout.
And this year, signs are point-
ing to what could be historically
high participation. Seventy-five
percent of registered voters said
they were certain to cast a ballot,
according to the latest Marquette
poll, compared with 71 percent on
the eve of the 2016 election. And
official statistics on requests for
absentee ballots suggest that if
anything, voters are even more
engaged than they’re telling
pollsters.
“In our data, about 33 percent
say they’re going to vote absen-
tee by mail — but election offi-
cials have already sent out 1.
million ballots,” Dr. Franklin said,
referring to ballots mailed to
voters who have expressly re-
quested them. “That would give
us about 36 percent of the total
registered voters, so that would
be a littleoverwhat we have in
our polling data, though not out
of line with it.”
State estimates suggest that
Wisconsinites could cast upward
of 3.1 million ballots this year, for
the first time in history.
A high-turnout election would
most likely lift Democrats — but
it could help pollsters too. In
2016, a late break toward Mr.
Trump, combined with unexpect-
edly low participation among
Democratic voters, threw the
state to him.
Unlike some researchers in
other states, Marquette’s team in
2016 made sure to weight its data
by education levels, and it did
not significantly underestimate
Mr. Trump’s strength among
white voters without degrees.
But what did surprise Dr. Frank-
lin that year was Mr. Trump’s
success in the suburbs, which he
won by 16 points, according to
Wisconsin exit polls.
This year, however, Mr. Biden’s
lead over Mr. Trump among
suburbanites has been steady
and strong: Marist’s most recent
poll of Wisconsin put him up by
12 points in the suburbs — and
on handling the coronavirus,
suburban voters chose Mr. Biden
over the president by 22 points.POLL WATCHSpotlight Wisconsin:
Angry Packers Fans
And a Surging Virus
By GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOA weekly look at polling data and
survey research on the candidates,
voters and issues that will shape
the 2020 election.Joseph R. Biden Jr. said Friday
that Democrats needed to “win
overwhelmingly” in November to
stop any “phony challenges”
about the integrity of the election
from President Trump, as the sec-
ond debate between the two can-
didates, scheduled for next week,
was formally canceled, according
to two people familiar with the de-
bate commission’s decision.
“We can’t just win,” Mr. Biden
told Latino leaders in Las Vegas,
accusing Mr. Trump of deploying
scare tactics to sow doubt and con-
fusion about the results. “We have
to win overwhelmingly.”
Later, in a speech in Las Vegas,
delivered while wearing a mask
before a drive-in audience, Mr. Bi-
den lashed out at Mr. Trump for
his behavior since he tested pos-
itive for the virus a week ago.
“His reckless personal conduct
since his diagnosis, the destabiliz-
ing effect it’s having on our gov-
ernment, is unconscionable,” Mr.
Biden said. “The longer Donald
Trump is president, the more
reckless he gets.”
Mr. Biden’s supporters honked
in approval from their cars.
Mr. Trump has rejected any-
thing but an in-person format for
the next debate, which had been
scheduled for Thursday in Miami.
But a chairman of the Commission
on Presidential Debates, Frank J.
Fahrenkopf Jr., said on Friday that
the Cleveland Clinic, which is ad-
vising on health protocol, believed
a remote format was safest given
Mr. Trump’s illness and the uncer-
tainty about his health.
“Our crew, our cameramen, our
lighting people, were very, very
upset,” Mr. Fahrenkopf said in an
interview with the Fox News Ra-
dio host Brian Kilmeade about the
last debate. “They were onstage
with the president in Cleveland.
He wasn’t wearing a mask.
They’re upset, they’re concerned
about their families.”
Pressed if the commission
would reconsider an in-person de-
bate, Mr. Fahrenkopf said, “At this
point and time, there is no evi-
dence whatsoever whether or not
the president tested negative.” He
added that the commission could
have difficulty finding voters
“who aren’t afraid” to share a
stage with Mr. Trump at a town-
hall-style event.
“We decided we’re going to do
what’s safe,” he said.
The final debate is now sched-
uled for Oct. 22, at Belmont Uni-
versity in Nashville, with Kristen
Welker of NBC News previously
announced as the moderator. The
Biden campaign has said it will
participate in that debate regard-
less of the format, although the
Democrat’s aides would prefer a
town-hall-style event. The Trump
campaign is also onboard with the
date.
With Mr. Trump recuperating
from the coronavirus at the WhiteHouse, Mr. Biden was wrapping
up a two-day Western swing in the
midst of his most travel-heavy
week of the general election, with
appearances in Florida, Arizona,
Pennsylvania and Nevada.
The Biden campaign also
pressed its advantage on the air-
waves, surpassing the $500 mil-
lion mark in paid digital and tele-
vision ads this year, compared
with $438 million for the Trump
campaign, according to data from
Advertising Analytics. Mr. Biden
has tens of millions of dollars
more in advertising booked than
the president in the coming weeks
in the key battleground states, as
well.
On Friday, Biden campaign offi-
cials rolled out seven new political
ads, including one that is narrated
by the actor Samuel L. Jackson
and is aimed at mobilizing Black
voters, and a rare ad designed to
mobilize Asian-American voters.
Ahead in the polls, Mr. Biden
has accused Mr. Trump of raisingdoubts about the election’s legiti-
macy because he is losing. “He
tried to continue to convince ev-
erybody there’s ways they can
play with the vote and undermine
the vote,” Mr. Biden said in Las Ve-
gas. “They can’t. If we show up,
we win.”
Mr. Biden’s remarks came just
as Mr. Trump issued a Twitter mis-
sive about vote-counting and po-
tential errors, highlighting that
Franklin County in Ohio had sent
voters nearly 50,000 incorrect ab-
sentee ballots. “A Rigged Elec-
tion!!!” Mr. Trump wrote. County
officials promised to send cor-
rected ballots within 72 hours.
Mr. Trump, who has not held a
public event since he tested pos-
itive for the coronavirus and was
hospitalized for three days last
week, appears to be itching to re-
turn to the campaign trail and is
now planning his first in-person
event on Saturday on the South
Lawn of the White House, with
hundreds of attendees.Second Debate Is Canceled
As Biden Courts Nevada
By SHANE GOLDMACHER
and MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUMIn the swing state of Nevada on Friday, Joseph R. Biden Jr. said a
decisive win would be necessary to fend off “phony challenges.”HILARY SWIFT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESAnnie Karni and Nick Corasaniti
contributed reporting.