Milbank: Women are poised to strike back at President Trump

Even as women marched Saturday, senators were marching into the office of Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who led the successful effort to douse the latest conflagration Trump set. Collins, and fellow Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the women who thwarted the president on Obamacare, were also at the core of the group defusing an immigration showdown Trump had fanned with an ad accusing Democrats of being complicit in murder.

In elections and polls, meanwhile, a gender chasm has opened. In Virginia’s gubernatorial race, Democrat Ralph Northam won women by 22 points, larger even than Hillary Clinton’s 17-point margin in the commonwealth. Northam won 48 percent of white women, up from Clinton’s 41 percent. In the Alabama Senate race, Democrat Doug Jones beat Roy Moore by 16 points among women and came close to Moore among white college-educated women.

Gravity is catching up

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds Democrats with a 57 percent to 31 percent advantage among women going into November’s midterm elections, twice the advantage Clinton had in 2016. Likewise, December’s Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that women favored Democratic control of Congress by 20 points — 32 points among college-educated women.

In a sense, gravity is catching up with Trump after “Access Hollywood,” Roy Moore, talk of women “bleeding,” and a #MeToo movement that has reached everywhere but the male-dominated White House — complete with a male-dominated Cabinet that is working with a male-dominated Republican congressional leadership.

Particularly striking is that attitudes of women toward Trump have little to do with the economy or conventional “women’s issues.” Rather, the antipathy comes from a perception that he’s dangerous and unstable.

In the Post-ABC poll, there were relatively small gender gaps on immigration, race and the Russia probe. But there were huge gaps on Trump’s mental stability (39 percent of women think him stable vs. 57 percent of men) and whether Trump can be trusted with nukes (only 30 percent of women think so, compared with 46 percent of men). Forty-two percent of women are very concerned Trump will launch an unjustified nuclear attack, compared with just 22 percent of men.

This is consistent with what FiveThirtyEight observed this week: Women disapprove of Trump more than men do, regardless of party or race. Why? A combination of Trump’s nuclear threats, the instability he has set off at home, and his behavior toward women have left many anxious, angry and activated.

Years ago, in a long line of misogynistic comments, Trump proclaimed that criticism doesn’t matter, “as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.”

It’s entirely fitting that this man has sparked a mass movement of women poised to deliver a kick to his.