It is very clear how Trump is using a race strategy in this election.

What is less discussed is his gender strategy.

He's trying to swing some percentage of Latinos and black men to join white men; and he's also trying to hold/swing certain white Xian women to vote w/men.
I've seen some analysis of the small shifts in support among some men of color (not a lot of them, but higher percentages than in 2016).

But the real prize is playing off the ideal of wifely submission in evangelical circles - and getting white Xian women strongly on board.
ACB is a perfect example of the Proverbs 31 wife, the ideal of many white evangelical women.

You don't even have to say that. They just know.
A long term strategy of evangelical "kingdom building" is to get smart, successful women into leadership in politics, academia, business (but never the pulpit) using the rhetoric of feminism.

But they also are perfect wives & mothers, who submit to male authorities.
Not necessarily in public (they will publicly resist male authorities whom they consider unbiblical). But they also rarely go against what their husbands believe or how their husbands vote.
Again, the strategy is a public, even feisty, feminism.

And the private reality in family and church is very, very different.
You might ask how I know this.

Because this was my life for about a decade in 1980s and early 1990s.

I was, in a word, "recruited" by right-wing evangelical types to help them "take over" the Episcopal church. They weren't shy or secretive about the strategy.
I did get out - but it wasn't easy.

Because once you go down this path - forming professional associations and personal friendships, usually married to someone who thinks this way - it is very, very difficult to change.
Trump doesn't know all this, of course.

But plenty of religious people who have been working toward power in government know it.
And if you are one of the women who has been there and has gotten out, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

To you, sisters and resisters: You are the essence of courage. Don't despair now. We've still work to do.
Anyway, ACB is a clear deployment of this strategy. Right down to her nomination acceptance speech yesterday.
(And do I have stories.)
You can follow @dianabutlerbass.
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