'The US President can be a felon, predator and serial liar – but can't be a woman'

America has a woman problem, says Ros Wynne-Jones, and it's that sexism and misogyny that kept Kamala Harris out of the White House and landed the world with Donald Trump

The Democrats’ eve-of-election plea came from Modern Family star Ed O’Neill : “It’s time to be a man. Vote for a woman.”

Whatever else ails the United States, America has a woman problem. With Trump’s resurrection, the “grab ’em by the p***y” boys finally triumphed over the “childless cat ladies”.

The Democrats spent the final days of the campaign desperately trying to appeal to men to think of the women in their lives. While the Republicans effortlessly capitalised by just letting Trump be Trump – a brand soaked in machismo and misogyny.

Time and again I heard it in Pennsylvania about Kamala Harris: “She’s not strong enough.” “She doesn’t have what it takes.” “She can’t stand up to Putin.”

Never mind that Putin is a friend of Trump, who sent him personal covid tests during the pandemic. What they meant was: “She’s a woman.” “She’s a Black woman.”

Harris’s supporters were in tears and stunned by the result as they waited in vain for her to address them at her alma mater, Howard University in Washington. For months we heard this historic election was “on a knife-edge”, which was true unless you broke things down by gender. A late New York Times poll had Trump leading with male voters by 14% and Harris with women by 12%.

For each man who told me Harris was too weak, a woman said she was ready to vote Harris – including staunch Republicans.

A woman in a wealthy enclave of Chester County told me that despite registering to vote in the Republican primary, she “could not vote for that man” in the Presidential election. But she looked grim when she said her husband had agreed to vote Democrat too, and we both knew she didn’t believe him.

Voters always tell you they are voting on the economy. But voting is an emotional act – and this was a gender election. The second time in eight years that America has failed to elect a woman.

In 2020, after “Nasty Woman” Hillary Clinton ’s failed bid, Time Magazine wrote: “When a woman runs for President of the United States, it’s like she wraps herself in a giant roll of clear Scotch tape: everything sticks to her.” But an American President can be a convicted felon, a sexual predator and a serial liar – as long as he is also a man.

Meanwhile, Trump’s entirely false accusation that Harris had only “become a Black person” late in her political career, also seemed to have resonated with voters I spoke to in a tough part of Philly known as Strawberry Mansion.

“She’s not Black,” a Black woman shouted at me, when I asked about a Black woman President. “She only became goddamn Black when she was running for election. She’s Indian.”

When I asked about Harris’s father Donald, who was born in Brown’s Town, Jamaica, she said she had never heard of him. But she had read about Harris’s Indian-born mother, Shyamala Gopalan, on the internet.

Not Black enough for Strawberry Mansion, and too Black, as someone told me, for rural Chester County... no wonder Harris struggled to deliver the votes she needed in Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile in both parts of the state, the abortion debate was playing out. Winning Chester County relied on turning out the Latino vote among rural farm workers – no longer a “safe” constituency for Democrats. Not just because more settled Mexican-American communities are conservative on wider immigration, but abortion was an issue too.

It is not just abortion Trump and his vice president JD Vance have in their sights. It is a range of services, including IVF.

Trump has pledged to fight “side-by-side” with opponents of IVF, while Vance likes to insult couples struggling with fertility and voted against legislation to protect IVF access.

In one of the campaign’s most emotional speeches, former first lady Michelle Obama told a rally in Kalamazoo, Michigan, that since “ Donald Trump ’s justices” overturned Roe v Wade to allow states to restrict or ban abortions, infant mortality in the US has risen.

She said: “One woman spent 22 days in jail on murder charges after she miscarried in her bathroom.” She chillingly outlined what the effect of a second Donald Trump presidency would be.

“We are seeing doctors unsure if they can treat ectopic pregnancies, doctors being told that they can’t treat a woman until she becomes so close to death that only a ‘life of the mother’ exception will allow them to act.

“Your daughter could be the one too terrified to call the doctor if she’s bleeding during an unexpected pregnancy … Your niece could be the one miscarrying in her bathtub after the hospital turned her away.” Trump’s response was to threaten the former First Lady.

At a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, he asked supporters whether he was “allowed to hit her now” after claiming that the former First Lady had “hit me”.

As pollster John Curtice said, abortion and immigration tap into a division between social liberals and social conservatives – the axis on which the US election was played out. He said: “According to the national exit poll, no less than 90% of those Americans who believe abortion should be illegal voted Trump.”

In the last presidential election, the reassuring leadership of practising Catholic Joe Biden helped shore up the Catholic vote.

This time I met voters who felt he had been disrespected as an elder by his own party.

Curtice highlights a “notable 12-point swing towards Trump among Latino voters, a movement that may in part reflect the fact that over two in five identify as Catholic”.

Trump’s final rally in Pennsylvania ended in a hail of misogynist insults. He called a former House speaker Nancy Pelosi a ‘Bi….’ letting the crowd scream the word ‘bitch’ for him. And he agreed with an audience member that putting Mike Tyson 'in the ring with Kamala' would "be interesting".

As women wake up frightened across America, Trump and Vance must be proud boys indeed.

And America feels further than ever away from electing its first “Madam President”.

As one-time Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren once said: “You know that is the trap question for every woman. If you say, ‘Yeah, there was sexism in this race,’ everyone says ‘whiner’.

“And if you say, ‘No, there was no sexism,’ about a bazillion women think, ‘What planet do you live on?’”