Bracing for MAGA's backlash: The strategy behind secret Kamala Harris voters is safety

When it comes to political bait, it was the tastiest sort: a cheeky ad run by Vote Common Good, and voiced by Julia Roberts, reminding women that they don't have to tell their husbands if they vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. 

It followed a Lincoln Project ad based on the same premise, though with a more somber tone. 

Whatever the intention behind these ads, they set off a major tantrum in the GOP, which confirmed that feminists have been right all along: the MAGA movement is about controlling women. Fox News host Jesse Watters, who cheated on his first wife with his current wife, compared a wife refusing to vote for Donald Trump to having an affair. Former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is married to his third wife after cheating on his second, called the ad "sick" and evidence of moral "decay." Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA obsessed about this, claiming Harris could only win by "the largest mass conspiracy of spousal lying in political history" and suggested wives who vote for Harris are "stealing money." Trump himself, of course, got caught up in the MAGA outrage about wives who exercise their own judgment. 

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In an election that may have the largest gender gap in history, these ads couldn't have done a better job of making their point than drawing this reaction. Trump is out there talking about how he'll "protect" women "whether the women like it or not," making the threat underlying the chivalrous pose all the more undeniable. Now all these MAGA pundits are saying the quiet parts out loud, that the goal is to dominate women, even to the point of controlling women's votes. The MAGA tantrum could very well backfire, making women more determined to vote for Harris and prove their independence. Unsurprisingly, then, progressives are widely sharing the stories about angry MAGA dudes ranting about disobedient wives, amused that the misogynists are giving the game away. 

As with many stupid things we hear from MAGA leaders, however, what's darkly funny can also be dangerous. That's especially true with this fit over wives voting against their husband's wishes. These Republican leaders are sending an unmistakable final message to men: Women have no right to think for themselves. By acting as if it's a given that women should vote how their husbands tell them, these leaders are normalizing the attitudes that lead to domestic abuse. 

Decades of research show there's a direct link between beliefs in male dominance over women and domestic violence. Common sense tells us why: when men feel entitled to control their wives or girlfriends, they also tend to feel it's okay to use violence to keep their power over women. The National Domestic Violence Hotline's list of red flags for abuse literally includes "[p]reventing you from making your own decisions."

But even if a man doesn't resort to hitting a woman, bullying a wife or girlfriend into voting for Trump is a form of emotional abuse. It's a way of denying a woman her full human rights and relegating her to second-class status. This was amply illustrated when one Trump voter on Twitter declared, "That’s why I make my wife do a mail-in ballot so I can make sure she votes for Trump, she’s not gonna vote behind my back." As many folks pointed out in the community notes that overwhelmed his tweet, "This is called voter intimidation," and can be a crime.

It's terrible under any circumstances, but it's especially on the nose to force a woman to vote for Trump, a man whose violence against women is well-documented, including by his own bragging about it on the "Access Hollywood" tape. Last year, a civil jury in New York found Trump liable for sexually assaulting journalist E. Jean Carroll. In court documents after the decision, federal Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote, "Trump 'raped' her as many people commonly understand the word 'rape.'" Forcing women to back a man like that reinforces the ugly message that women don't count as people and the abuse of women is acceptable to maintain male dominance. 

Whether Trump wins or loses, it's worrisome that his near decade of running for president has unleashed an army of male talking heads who openly promote the idea that women are meant to be dominated by men. Media Matters reported Monday, for instance, that Royce White — the Republican challenger to Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. — told listeners on a podcast that it "would probably not be a good idea" to marry a college-educated woman. The podcast host, Jesse Lee Peterson, opposes women having the right to vote and said, during the interview, "educated women do not make for good wives and mothers."

White claimed, falsely, that educated women are likelier to divorce their husbands. In reality, college-educated women are less likely to get divorced than women without college degrees. But it's also true that it's easier for women to leave unhappy marriages if they have the means to achieve financial independence. White's comment illustrates how the MAGA movement is becoming more open about the view that marriage isn't about love and companionship, but control. As Tatyana Tandanpolie wrote Monday for Salon, there's increasing chatter within the MAGA movement about ending no-fault divorce laws. Joanna Grossman, a professor of family law at SMU Dedman School of Law in Texas, told Salon that the goal is to trap women in marriages that are often with controlling and abusive men. 

The ads that kicked off this MAGA hysteria about voting wives may take a joking tone, but as Rebecca Solnit at the Guardian wrote, in another light, it feels like "a hostage video." That's because it's rooted in this larger and growing right-wing discourse that explicitly treats women like they're male property, instead of people. It's a threat to women's safety on many levels. Men are hearing signals that treat it as normal — expected, even — to bully and abuse their wives. And it's being used to justify policy moves that make it harder for women to leave dangerous relationships. It isn't just the abstract notion of democracy that is on the line this election. This is also about women's basic right to self-determination, inside the voting booth and out.