A26 SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2020
YTO THE EDITOR:
Re “A Disruptive Trump vs. a
Deliberate Biden in a Split-Screen
Duel” (news article, Oct. 16):
The Tale of Two Town Halls
revealed even in their briefest
snippets the worst of President
Trump and the best of Joe Biden.
For Mr. Trump, it was his state-
ment that “I’ll put it out there —
people can decide for themselves,”
when asked about his retweeting
of the bizarre conspiracy theory
that a Navy SEAL team was exe-
cuted in order to cover up the
faked death of Osama bin Laden.
That’s like saying it’s just fine for a
supermarket to put rancid food out
on the shelves and leave it up to
consumer preference as to
whether it’s bought.
For Mr. Biden, it was his overall
tone, which even a senior adviser
to the Trump campaign described
as like watching an episode of
“Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
But after almost four years of
living in the maelstrom of frenetic
craziness of the Trump presidency,
the American public is ready for a
leader who keeps up his guard
while allowing it to relax and lower
its shoulders.
CHUCK CUTOLO, WESTBURY, N.Y.TO THE EDITOR:
At the ABC News town hall with
Joe Biden Thursday night, a Penn-
sylvania voter asked a crucial if
often overlooked question: “Does
President Trump’s foreign policy
deserve some credit?” In a recent
public statement, about 200 inter-
national relations and foreign
policy scholars answered that very
question negatively, viewing his
foreign policy “largely as a failure.”
From the failed trade war with
China to the abdication of interna-tional leadership on the pandemic
and climate change, Trump admin-
istration policies have harmed the
United States and the world.
The scholars do not mince words
about the overall price we pay,
writing, “The result is greater
instability, insecurity and human
suffering.” Coming from colleges
and universities all over the coun-
try, they come to one simple con-
clusion: “We need new leader-
ship.”
JEREMY PRESSMAN
WEST HARTFORD, CONN.
The writer is an associate professor of
political science at the University of
Connecticut.TO THE EDITOR:
It really comes down to personal
style. President Trump is like this.
Joe Biden is like that. That’s how I
see this playing field.
I voted for Mr. Trump in 2016
because of the way he does things.
I happen to like his personal style
— all things considered. As for
lying? I expect everyoneto lie. So
that’s not something to which I
give any consideration when se-
lecting a leader.
I like Mr. Trump because he is
uncouth, unpredictable, uncontrol-
lable and maybe just a bit crazy. I
happen to like that in a leader. I
want a leader who can put coun-
tries like Russia and China on edge
and off-balance. I also want a
leader who can tell the press to
take a hike when it starts to look
more like a propaganda machine
than a news agency. Come to think
of it, I want a leader who can tell
everyone to go to hell.
But I don’t see anyone — anyone
— on the Democratic side who has
either the desire or even the ability
to confront the big, bad world on
its own terms. I actually see Demo-
crats as having slightly maso-
chistic tendencies. Pain and suffer-
ing seem to resonate with them...
just a bit too much for my liking.
ARTHUR SAGINIAN
SANTA CLARITA, CALIF.TO THE EDITOR:
Let us fly in the face of precedent
for the moment and take President
Trump at his word: He says again
that he knows virtually nothing
about QAnon.
May we then ask the president
why, considering all the times he
has been asked about QAnon and
its possible terrorist threat, he has
not yet asked someone who works
for him to explain to him what the
organization is?
GARY LEVINE, JERUSALEMTO THE EDITOR:
Savannah Guthrie told President
Trump that when he is retweeting
conspiracy theories he is not
“someone’s crazy uncle.” Accord-
ing to Mary Trump, he is.
MICHAEL GORMAN, CHICAGOThe Sharp Contrast at Two Town Halls
LETTERSTO THE EDITOR:
Re “‘We Are Staring Down the
Barrel of a Blue Tsunami’: Senator
Slams Trump” (news article, Oct.
16):
Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican
from Nebraska, has seen the light
after nearly four years. He is fi-
nally speaking out about how
destructive the Trump presidency
has been. But he is not taking
responsibility for the role that he
and other Trump sycophants have
played in creating our current and
future crises in health, finance and
the environment.
Hard-core politics in the Senate
from the right has made negotia-
tion and compromise impossible.
The hypocrisy of the Supreme
Court hearings is the final blow. If
a blue tsunami occurs (and I hope
it does for the future of this coun-
try), Republicans like him have
only themselves to blame.
MARY FORSBERG
HIGHLAND PARK, N.J.The Complicit Republicans
TO THE EDITOR:
Re “Why I Speak Up for Black
Women,” by Megan Thee Stallion
(Op-Ed, Oct. 14):
I am an elderly Black grand-
mother in love with Megan Thee
Stallion’s artistry and politics.
Living the personal ispolitical.
To be young and unapologetic in
one’s radical Black womanhood
gives me hope for the next genera-
tions.
SAFIYA E. BANDELE, BROOKLYNMegan Thee Stallion, Icon
TO THE EDITOR:
Re “Trump Advisers’ Warnings on
Virus Fueled Sell-Off” (front page,
Oct. 15):
It seems that the president’s
advisers spent an awful lot of time
warning members of the financial
community and a conservative
think tank about the coronavirus.
Too bad they didn’t bother to tell
the American people or the hospi-
tals that would soon be under siege.DANIELE GERARD, NEW YORKMixed Messages on Virus
RECENTLY I HADthe chance to watch an
online focus group of seven women from
swing states who had voted for Donald
Trump in 2016 but who had become disaf-
fected with him. Convened by Sarah
Longwell, a founder of Republican Vot-
ers Against Trump, the session was in
some ways a deeply depressing experi-
ence.
Several of the women said that, be-
cause they don’t believe what they hear
from mainstream media, they have a
hard time distinguishing truth from
falsehood. One woman, in North Car-
olina, cited something she’d heard in a
Trump ad as a reason she’s unlikely to
vote for Joe Biden, and said she wished
Ben Carson would step into the race.
Another from the same state said she
was “scared” about the election because
she doesn’t trust Kamala Harris. A wom-
an from Florida had already voted for
Joe Biden, but a few of the others were
considering voting third party.
Yet their disgust with the president
was palpable. A well-spoken woman with
grown children from central Pennsylva-
nia appeared to have mentally rewritten
the history of the last election to justify
her vote. She’d opted for Trump, she said,
thinking that it would be “refreshing” to
have a president with a business back-
ground. In her recollection, it was only
after he won that he revealed his true
character.
“His Twitter, his comments, things
that he was recorded saying, his misogy-
ny — I was just, like, horrified and em-
barrassed,” she said. Looking back, she
didn’t think she knew about the “Access
Hollywood” tape before she voted: “I
certainly hope that I didn’t, because it
was a disgusting comment. I would think
that had I known that might have given
me pause.” She’s now torn between vot-
ing for Biden or for the Libertarian candi-
date, Jo Jorgensen.
I strongly suspect she’s remembering
wrong — the “Access Hollywood” story
would have been very hard to miss in Oc-
tober 2016. But it’s telling that she can no
longer quite imagine how she could have
supported Trump after hearing him
boast about his penchant for sexual as-
sault. It’s another tiny piece of evidence
that 2020 could be the year Trump’s mi-
sogyny finally catches up with him.
Four years ago, many of us were
counting on right-leaning women to de-
liver a decisive rebuke to Trump. Lots of
journalists, myself included, wrote about
the group Republican Women for Hillary.
After the appearance of the “Access
Hollywood” tape, female Republican
governors and members of Congress
were far more likely than their male
peers to withdraw their endorsements.
Katie Packer, deputy campaign manager
of Mitt Romney’s 2012 bid, imagined a
reckoning in her party after Trump’s
loss. “There’s going to have to be a de-
nunciation of this guy,” she told me then.
Needless to say, there wasn’t. Most
women did indeed vote for Hillary Clin-
ton, but Trump won either a plurality or
an outright majority of white women,enough to give him the presidency. There
turned out to be far less of a political pen-
alty for vulgar misogyny than some of us
realized.
Four years later, it’s hard not to feel an
unnerving sense of déjà vu. Once again,
the polls show a potentially historic gen-
der gap in the presidential election.
Journalists are reporting on all the
women Trump has turned off. Last I
checked, FiveThirtyEight gave Trump a
13 percent chance of victory, almost ex-
actly the same odds he had three weeks
before the election in 2016. For America
to survive as a liberal democracy, this
time has to be different. Is it?
Longwell, who has conducted around
50 focus groups over the last three years,
most of them with women, believes it is.
“I have seen these people moving away
in real time,” she says of the participants’
relationship to Trump. And “it dropped
off a cliff right around Covid, plus eco-
nomic downturn, plus George Floyd.”
As Longwell tells it, there were some
Trump voters who turned on him almost
immediately after the election, but many
others who continued to support him de-
spite disliking him personally. “They
said he was a narcissist, said he was a
bully, but they also don’t like Democrats,don’t like the media, don’t trust anything,
and they were hanging in,” she said.
Then Trump’s incompetence came
home. “Once the pandemic hit, once
there were personal consequences for
their lives, there was an absolute shift in
how people talked about Donald Trump,”
said Longwell.
She started hearing “a ton of pain” in
the focus groups. Cancer survivors with
suppressed immune systems feared
leaving the house because people in their
community wouldn’t wear masks. “Or
they’ve got young kids that aren’t in
school, or somebody in their family is fur-
loughed, or they couldn’t go see their
parent who died,” she said.
Women’s job losses due to Covid have
been enormously disproportionate; in
September alone, around 617,000 women
16 and over left the work force, nearly
eight times the number of men. They’ve
borne the brunt of closed schools. The
Pandemic Parenting Study, which is
tracking over 100 Indiana mothers, has
found growing marital strife over child
care.
“Mothers blame themselves for these
conflicts and feel responsible for reduc-
ing them, including by leaving the work
force, beginning use of antidepressants,
or ignoring their own concerns about
Covid-19,” said a recent paper drawing on
the study’s data. None of this can be sep-
arated from the collapse in women’s sup-
port for Trump.
If Trump loses, it won’t be just because
enough women recognize him as a de-
ranged bigot. It will because he blighted
too many of their lives.
In the focus group, a Wisconsin wom-
an introduced herself as a full-time
mother who, “on top of being at home,”
now has to be a full-time teacher. One of
her kids is gravely ill, and people who
refuse to wear masks infuriate her. “It
drives me nuts, people who don’t do it
just because they don’t want to,” she said.
She tries to avoid almost all political
news, and doesn’t trust what she does
come across. Where she lives, she said,
she hasn’t seen a single Biden sign, and
she knows very little about the former
vice president. But she’s planning to vote
for him. If women defeat Trump next
month, it will be because of everything
he’s done to defeat them first. 0MICHELLE GOLDBERG
Trump’s Misogyny Might Finally Do Him In
If women defeat Trump, it
will be because of all he’s
done to defeat them.
DAMON WINTER/THE NEW YORK TIMESLESS THAN 20 DAYS.It has been a long,
hard road to this election. I see fearful
faces, those of tormented migrants at the
Mexican border, and hate-filled faces,
those of the white nationalists in Char-
lottesville chanting, “Jews will not re-
place us.”
Donald Trump has been all about the
fear of replacement, or as it’s sometimes
called, “the great replacement.” His has
been the stand — I am tempted to say the
last stand — of whites against nonwhites.
Of America-first nationalists against
migrants; of straight people against
L.G.B.T.Q. people; of the gunned-up
against the unarmed. Of Trump against
all those he believes would replacethe
likes of him.
All means have been used — lies, bru-
tality, incitement. But fear has been
Trump’s main weapon. Fear, which de-
pends on pitting one group against an-
other, is the currency of the Trump presi-
dency. It is therefore no surprise that the
America that is about to vote is probably
more fractured than at any time since the
Vietnam War.
“The great replacement” is a phrase
generally attributed to a French writer,
Renaud Camus, who said: “The great re-
placement is very simple. You have one
people, and in the space of a generation,
you have a different people.”
That, of course, is a good definition of
America.
Of its vitality, its churn, its reinvention,
its essential openness. The America that
Trump would deny. He wants to freeze a
white America. Some strange blend of
Norman Rockwell and “Mad Men,” in an
imaginary United States strutting across
a world pliant to its will. Behind “Amer-
ica first” lurks a very un-American
credo.
Change can be frightening, which is
what the great replacement conspiracy
theory hinges on. Camus warns gro-
tesquely of a “genocide by substitution,”
the replacement of a white French and
European order by Muslim hordes in a
plot orchestrated by cosmopolitan elites.
In Trump’s case, read a white American
order replaced by brown Mexican rap-
ists and Black pillagers.
France is worried about Muslims from
North Africa. Germans were once so
worried about Jews replacing them that
they killed six million of them. In a world
of mass migration, fear rages: Some idea
of the nation will be diluted or lost!
America is particularly susceptible to
fear today because the world has
changed in unsettling ways. Power has
migrated eastward to Asia. America’s re-cent wars have been unwon. By midcen-
tury, non-Hispanic whites will constitute
less than 50 percent of the population.
It is frightening to see an industry dis-
appear, like coal in Kentucky. Trump un-
derstood that he could be the voice of
that fear. He would build a wall to keep
those brown people out!
He is an impostor. He puffs out his
chest, Mussolini-style, but he is a bone-spur coward. A narrow ramp makes his
limbs tremble. He is good at getting the
blood up. He is good at undoing. He is not
good at getting anything constructive
done.
Less than 20 days.
America will decide whether to opt for
the future or burrow self-destructively
into some warped fantasy of the past. It
will decide whether to reinvent itself
again or turn mean and further inward.
As Edward R. Murrow remarked, “We
cannot defend freedom abroad by de-serting it at home.”
That was in 1954, at the height of Mc-
Carthyism. For Senator Joseph McCar-
thy, the danger to the Republic came
from Communist infiltration of American
life. The real danger came from his ob-
sessions. From the purges and blacklists
that branded countless Americans as un-
American.
Murrow, a great journalist, stood up to
McCarthy.
Donald Trump does business the Mc-
Carthy way. He deals in specters: immi-
grants, and Muslims, and brown people,
and Black people, and L.G.B.T.Q. people.
As with McCarthy, however, the real
danger comes from Trump’s obsessions,
not from these imagined enemies.
American freedom is in decline. The
freedom to think, because thought de-
pends on truth. The freedom to dissent,
because Trump believes he has “the
right to do whatever I want as presi-
dent.” The freedom to breathe, because
Trumpism — its nepotism, its cozying to
dictators, its incessant volume— is suffo-
cating.
The freedom inextricable from the
American idea that I, a naturalized
American, hold sacred with an unreason-
able ardor.
No, we cannot defend freedom abroadby deserting it at home. We can only de-
fend those who trample human dignity
and human rights. As Trump has done
with cavalier abandon.
Is it unreasonable to see renewal in a
77-year-old man, Joe Biden? No. We live
in the real world, where the perfect can-
not be the enemy of the good. Indecency
demands the restoration of decency.
That’s ground zero of this election. The
choice was starkly evident in the tele-
vised town hall events Thursday as
Trump spouted wild far-right conspiracy
theories while Biden had the self-depre-
cating honesty to say that if he lost, it
could suggest he’s “a lousy candidate.”
Biden is not a lousy candidate; he is a
good man, a brave man. I doff my hat to
any parent who survives with such dig-
nity the loss of two of his four children.
Of McCarthy, Murrow observed: “He
didn’t create this situation of fear; he
merely exploited it — and rather suc-
cessfully. Cassius was right. ‘The fault,
dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in
ourselves.’ ”
The fault is in ourselves. Time for
Americans to look in the mirror — and
realize their America is irreplaceable if it
is lost. 0ROGER COHEN
A Last Stand for White America
A choice between a true
renewal and a warped
fantasy of the past.