In this campaign season of extreme silliness, it’s impossible to say Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump made a fatal mistake by accusing Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton of playing “the woman’s card.”
Trump has made many normally politically self-destructive statements about Mexicans, immigrants, refugees, women, people with disabilities and others and continued to defy political gravity to soar in the polls and win primaries and caucuses. He is expected on Tuesday to beat challengers Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich in the Indiana primary.
That’s despite Kasich and Cruz teaming up to try to slow Trump’s roll into the July Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Cruz also hoped to resuscitate his campaign by picking Carly Fiorina, a former GOP presidential contender, as his running mate.
So far no luck on either front against Trump.
Trump can’t even do himself in with his many offensive statements and actions, although his campaign stops keep attracting more angry protesters than flies.
Last week after winning primaries in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, Trump turned his comments to Clinton: “She’s got nothing else going. Frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she’d get 5 percent of the vote.
“The only thing she’s got going is the woman’s card. And the beautiful thing is, women don’t like her.”
But Trump isn’t capturing women’s votes either.
If Trump surfaces out of the Republican convention as the GOP nominee and Clinton wins the Democratic National Convention’s nod over Sen. Bernie Sanders, the race for the White House in November will likely amount to which candidate Americans are able to tolerate over the other.
Depending on how things play out, Trump may have enabled Clinton to be less shy about promoting herself as the nation’s first woman commander in chief and leader of the free world. She certainly has the intellect and experience as a former senator from New York, secretary of state under President Barack Obama and first lady when Bill Clinton was president.
But Clinton also has championed women’s causes throughout her adult life, working for the Children’s Defense Fund and as first lady in the 1990s, going to Beijing during the United Nations Fourth World Congress on Women and famously saying in a Sept. 5, 1995, speech: “Human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights.”
She has not backed away from that stand one iota. But until now she hasn’t made it her trump card, either.
Clinton responded to Trump’s charge over her use of “the woman’s card,” saying in Philadelphia last week after her primary wins that “if fighting for women’s health care and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the ‘woman card,’ then deal me in.”
The Clinton’s campaign in a political martial arts move — using an opponent’s strength against him — has turned Trump’s slam into a Clinton money-maker. Her campaign now is offering “The Official Hillary for America Woman Card” to people who donate to Clinton’s campaign. People can give $3, $10, $25, $50, $100, $200 or $250.
Clinton’s boldly pink “Woman Card” is extremely affordable for men, women, girls or boys who want to see Clinton as the United States’ first woman president.
Only in America.
Lewis Diuguid is a columnist for the Kansas City Star. Readers may email him at ldiuguid@kcstar.com
