Trump Grabbed White Women

The Clinton campaign in the end pinned its hope for a win on a gender gap. Hillary sculpted her ads around Trump's vulgarity and predatory sexual appetites. The gap appeared real enough. I embraced it and thought it would be enough to see the Clintons back into the White House. Early exit polls even backed it up.

But as Jeffrey St. Clair points out in his excellent "The Cataclysm: Notes on Election Day and the Politics of Hubris":

Hillary, who based much of her campaign strategy on decisively winning the women’s vote, lost among white women by a 10-point margin: 53-43. Think, for a moment, about that 53 percent number for Trump. It’s safe to say that Hillary ran the worst campaign since Al Gore. In fact, it was worse than Gore’s in almost every respect.

In a way, Hillary's strategy of winning Republican-leaning women was the only path available to her after the primary. She couldn't really don the mantle of Bernie, even though she tried it on now and then, because no one would believe her. She had to try to grab the soccer moms/megachurch moms by the pussy. It didn't work.