Trump Tries To Appeal To 'Housewives' And White Suburbs, But His Views Seem Outdated

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/26/895228366/trumps-trying-to-appeal-to-real-housewives-and-white-suburbs-but-they-re-declini


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And it's especially bad among suburban women. In the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, 66% of suburban women disapproved of the job President Trump is doing overall, and 58% said they "strongly" disapprove.

That is stunning, considering suburban women have been a particular focus of Republicans in the last 20 years, dubbed everything from "soccer moms" to "security moms" to "Walmart moms."

Whatever you call them, they're not in Trump's corner — and the consequences have been massive for Republicans. They have been unable to pass any major legislative items since Democrats wrested control of the House in 2018. Democrats were able to do so because of their surprising strength in right-leaning suburban districts.


An aerial view of Rancho Palos Verdes, a suburb of Los Angeles.
Daniel Slim/AFP via Getty Images
Trump needs them back, and he's trying to use fear to do it. Amid COVID-19 spikes, Trump is trying to change the subject, running an ad called "Abolished." It makes the case that "You won't be safe in Joe Biden's America," because police departments would be defunded — even though Biden has said he's not in favor of defunding the police.

And Trump seems to be trying to make his case with an anachronistic racial appeal to a declining audience.

Trump has claimed that if his Democratic opponent were elected president, "our suburbs" would be destroyed. In recent weeks, he specifically called out a 2015 Obama-era fair-housing initiative that requires local governments to address historic patterns of racial desegregation.

"Your home will go down in value, and crime rates will rapidly rise," Trump said. "People have worked all their lives to get into a community, and now they're going to watch it go to hell. Not going to happen, not while I'm here."

But the suburbs have grown more diverse since the mid-20th century, when they were overwhelmingly white. The suburbs saw an explosion of growth then, as "white flight" from cities took hold.

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That kind of appeal, pitting whites against Blacks and Latinos, is outdated, Republican pollster Christine Matthews told NPR's Tamara Keith.

"He thinks it's basically the planned development of Levittown in the 1960s as opposed to today's suburbs, which are multiracial, diverse and highly educated," Matthews said.

Trump's view of women's role in — or out of — the home is also antiquated. At his Tulsa, Okla., rally last month, he made up a story for effect that seems to have been a predecessor for the "Abolished" ad now running. He warned of what would happen, in his view, if police were "defunded."

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But the percentage of mothers who stay at home has declined significantly from the 1960s, when they were about half of all mothers.

Today they're about a quarter, according to Pew:

1967: 49%
2016 (latest data): 27%