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Our Opinion: Ensure your vote counts; push for election reforms in Pennsylvania

<p>WASHINGTON &#8212; She has no stamina. She shouts. She&#8217;s got nothing going for her but being a woman.</p><p>Donald Trump, after toying with gender politics off and on during the campaign, is all in on a mission to undercut Hillary Clinton&#8217;s credentials by syncing up his say-anything campaign strategy with his alpha-male persona.</p><p>The same Republican presidential candidate who mocked &#8220;little&#8221; Marco Rubio, dismissed &#8220;low-energy&#8221; Jeb Bush and promises to &#8220;cherish&#8221; and &#8220;protect&#8221; women as president is dismissing the former senator, secretary of state and first lady as little more than a token female who&#8217;s playing the &#8220;woman&#8217;s card.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;Frankly, all I&#8217;m doing is stating the obvious,&#8221; Trump insisted, when pressed about whether his latest Clinton take-downs were sexist. &#8220;Without the woman&#8217;s card, Hillary would not even be a viable person to run for city council.&#8221;</p><p>That message may resonate with one subset of the electorate and touch off outrage with another. But for many other voters, Trump&#8217;s line of attack is simply baffling when America is trying to deal with far more complex matters of gender, such as gay marriage and transgender rights.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a very simplistic notion of gender,&#8221; said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. She said Trump is &#8220;putting out there a notion of masculinity&#8221; that fits with popular images of the presidency. &#8220;He is playing the gender card but not connecting it to policy, instead connecting it to his own macho image and his bravado.&#8221;</p><p>Trump&#8217;s messages about women represent a tangle of views, said Stanley Renshon, a political psychologist at the City University of New York.</p><p>There&#8217;s the Trump who has no qualms about advancing women within his business enterprises, the Trump who disparages women just because &#8220;I can say whatever comes to mind,&#8221; and the retrograde Trump who never outgrew an adolescent fixation with desirable and beautiful women, Renshon said.</p><p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think he knows how to talk about them in a modern sensibility way,&#8221; said Renshon, adding that the billionaire businessman is not used to having his utterances corrected by anyone.</p><p>Trump rival Ted Cruz says the GOP front-runner&#8217;s attacks on Clinton are unsurprising.</p><p>&#8220;Donald Trump has a real problem with strong women,&#8221; Cruz said. &#8220;It&#8217;s one of the reasons he can&#8217;t win a general election.&#8221;</p><p>Trump&#8217;s issues with women in the campaign extend well beyond Clinton.</p><p>He has mocked the face of onetime GOP rival Carly Fiorina, who&#8217;s now Cruz&#8217;s running mate. He&#8217;s retweeted an unflattering image of Heidi Cruz, the Texas senator&#8217;s wife, juxtaposed with a glamorous photo of his wife, Melania. He engaged in a long-running dispute with Megyn Kelly of Fox News in which he dismissed her as a &#8220;lightweight&#8221; and &#8220;bimbo,&#8221; and described her at one point as having &#8220;blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.&#8221;</p><p>He was just as unfiltered in his thoughts about women and their appearances before entering politics. In 1996, Trump reportedly described a Miss Universe who had gained weight as &#8220;an eating machine.&#8221; He described Rosie O&#8217;Donnell as &#8220;my nice fat little Rosie&#8221; in a 2006 spat. In 2012, he tweeted that Huffington Post editor Arianna Huffington was &#8220;unattractive both inside and out.&#8221;</p><p>None of this has seemed to bother Trump&#8217;s loyal followers in the GOP primaries. But it could be a different matter in the general election, when Republican candidates typically suffer from a gender gap. In every presidential election since 1980, a greater proportion of women than men preferred the Democratic candidate.</p><p>&#8220;The challenge for Republican candidates has been trying to make some inroads into that women&#8217;s vote,&#8221; Walsh said. &#8220;And it&#8217;s hard to imagine that Donald Trump, as of right now, is well positioned to be the Republican candidate to make those inroads, given the things that he&#8217;s said.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks in Evansville, Ind. After toying with gender politics off and on during the campaign, Donald Trump is all in on a mission to undercut Hillary Clinton&#8217;s credentials by syncing up his say-anything campaign strategy with his alpha-male persona. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/web1_110076975-66371b6ea2b44163a91cc8499f17256c.jpg</photo0><caption0>Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks in Evansville, Ind. After toying with gender politics off and on during the campaign, Donald Trump is all in on a mission to undercut Hillary Clinton&#8217;s credentials by syncing up his say-anything campaign strategy with his alpha-male persona. </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/web1_110076975-c8505183e5d843d99aac01e45fd059e6.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a recent rally. In recent days, Republican front-runner Donald Trump has said the only thing Clinton has going for her is that she is a woman. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/web1_110076975-c8505183e5d843d99aac01e45fd059e6.jpg</photo1><caption1>Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a recent rally. In recent days, Republican front-runner Donald Trump has said the only thing Clinton has going for her is that she is a woman. </caption1><photoCredit1></photoCredit1></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Nancy Benac</p><p>Associated Press</p></bylineMeta></div>

Trump, Clinton angle for advantage in politics of gender