How Do You Fight Trump in 2024? With Fear, Humor and Optimism—All At Once

On Tuesday, a Women’s Caucus meeting was held in a side room at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The speakers were well-intentioned and boasted impressive resumés, but the event had poor attendance. The audio was just a little off. The podiums were too tall for the speakers and ill-placed so that those seated on one side of the table couldn’t see the audience on the other. (“Women, we’re gonna have to redesign podiums!” one of the attendees said at one point.) The logistical complications and the limitations they imposed on the women chairing the event imparted a distinct sense of spatial irony.

Much of the talk centered on excitement for Kamala Harris, smashing the glass ceiling, remembering how far we’ve come, making sure women contribute to the campaign and turn up to vote. But there were moments of urgency. Veronica Escobar, the representative from Texas, opened her speech with: “Hello Democrats! Are we excited?!” to whoops and cheers, but almost immediately pivoted.

“I come from the state of Texas, which is basically the front lines of Trump’s Project [2025] and I can tell you it’s a state where Republicans are eager to take more of our rights than they have already,” Escobar said. “We’re number one in infant mortality rates, a state where women are second-class citizens. This is the GOP and the MAGA vision — their dark vision for women in America.” 

The burden on the speakers at a women-focused event during the 2024 election is something of a double bind: Bring the enthusiasm for the potentially historic event of the U.S. finally naming a woman president —but also paint a dystopian vision of an America without reproductive freedom, perhaps even with bans on contraception and IVF, and the resultant consequences. 

On the one hand we have a woman — a woman of Black and Asian descent — leading the country away from gerontocracy and fetishistic tradwifery and toxic masculinity, all in the name of joyful childless cat ladies, at a party with streamers and balloons. On the other, we have a newly-emboldened far-right wing of the Republican Party, which has resisted outlawing child marriage federally because of the risk that it might encourage teenagers to terminate their pregnancies. 

A similar balancing act was attempted at a panel chaired by Veep star Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Wednesday night, when she questioned the women governors of the Democratic Party — Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs, Kansas Governor Laura Kelly, Maine Governor Janet Mills, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Oregon Governor Tina Kotek — about the exciting possibility of a female president. And then, in almost the same breath, she talked about the horrifying possibility of a rollback of women’s civil rights.

Women At the RNC

Compare this with the women-focused events at the RNC, which were—how shall we put it—a little less nuanced. At the Republican convention in mid-July, an event sponsored by Microsoft—titled “How AI Affects Women, Democracy and Elections”— blithely added an aside about sexism into grave warnings about election-stealing. The next day, a Republican Women’s Lunch with Sarah Huckabee Sanders, directly followed the closed-door event, “A Republican Approach to a Dangerous World.” Later that evening, at a brewery in Milwaukee, “Red, White & Brew: Toast Women Who Make Our Country Great” was a breezy event about female heroes. There was little aside from that, unless you count book signings by Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kari Lake. 

More important for women, yet not labeled as such, was Monday’s daylong event, “Fighting for America’s Future,” sponsored by the Heritage Foundation. The foundation is a far-right think tank that co-authored the 900-page ultra-conservative roadmap Project 2025, which has at its core the reversal of reproductive rights for women. While Republican voters wearing Trump paraphernalia toasted another four years of The Donald, the Heritage Foundation had quietly taken over a room in Milwaukee from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. They did not explicitly speak about women’s freedoms. They didn’t need to.

Back in mid-July, the atmosphere at the RNC was electric. Clean, clipped millennial men cut from the same cloth as JD Vance strode around with the air of individuals about to take power. Enthusiasts from Trump’s rock concert-like rally tours wore cowboy hats and American flags and bought bobbleheads, golden sneakers and vegan barbecue (a surprising RNC hit) from the assorted stalls outside. 

At the time—with Biden still atop the ticket—the vibes at the DNC were expected to be markedly different. It was going to be a convention for a dying party, one about to cede the White House to Donald Trump—again.

Michelle Obama knew that. That’s why she opened her speech on Tuesday night with an admission about losing the hope she once had for the future of America. “To be honest, I'm realizing that until recently, I have mourned the dimming of that hope,” she said. “Maybe you've experienced the same feelings: a deep pit in my stomach, a palpable sense of dread about the future.”

Are We Having Fun Yet?

Then, all of a sudden, everything changed. Kamala Harris, the veep who nobody had even liked that much, got a slew of coconut tree memes and a do-over. The DNC turned into a party. Doug Emhoff was caught on camera dancing to boomer pop music. Everyone’s talking about how much they love Tim Walz. A Gen Z-focused event with the tongue-in-cheek title “Hotties for Harris,” featuring teenagers in Brat-themed merchandise dancing among bemused reporters and politicos, took place at the convention campus on Tuesday night. There were “Fuck Project 2025” condoms available to take. At the meeting of the Women’s Caucus on the same day, the 10-year-old DJ Lily Jade came onstage to say she thinks of the Democrats backing Harris as “girl bosses.”

Briefly, it felt like a corner had been turned. And yet, and yet. A world of “girl bosses” presupposes that the bosses in general are male. Michelle Obama spoke as the wife of a former president. Hillary Clinton did the same. And though Clinton is an astoundingly accomplished women in her own right, she is also categorically not the person who the public chose to lead the country 2016. (Well, assuming you’re not looking at the popular vote, anyway.) Like Ivanka Trump during her father’s presidency (now notably absent from the campaign trail) or Kimberly Guilfoyle or Kai Trump waxing lyrical about her “normal grandpa,” these women took the stage because of the men in their lives. And Tim Walz—beloved unifier Tim Walz, introduced by an entire football team at the DNC on Wednesday night just to solidify that he is 2024’s Ted Lasso—is there because he’s the necessary straight white male candidate to Kamala Harris’s “risky” biracial female candidate.

So to be, or not to be—optimistic that is. 

As Kamala Harris wraps up the convention, polling tells us Gen Z is enthusiastic—with more now poised to vote. It also tells us that JD Vance trails Tim Walz as a running-mate, and that Walz’s plain-talking dismissal of misogyny as “weird” is sticking to Vance like a bad toupee in a humid room. But what those running-mate picks also tell us is that Harris and Trump know one section of the population could decide this election: white, working-class men. Trump is losing ground among this demographic, but he remains popular. Walz is now engaging in a battle for their souls.

Meanwhile, the women governors of the Democratic Party, the Nancy Pelosi-style strategists, the centrist Amy Klobuchars and the left-leaning AOCs, are forced to band together behind Kamala Harris with the distinct realization: They must court the people they fear. If they can’t convince white, working-class men to give them a chance, then that same section of the populace might take away their fundamental rights.

They mustn’t let their smiles waver.

Holly Baxter is the author of CLICKBAIT, and an executive editor at The Independent. She is based in New York City.