Bottom Lines
IT LOOKED LIKE A SMILE, BUT LESLIE MCPHERSON was baring her teeth. She stayed silent as the four other women talked across the corner table at Panera Bread near Marietta, Ga., making excuses for Donald Trump. The sexual allegations against him, said one, were just a political ploy to distract from revelations about Hillary Clinton published by WikiLeaks. If someone followed me around with a tape recorder, who knows what you’d hear? said another. Why did his accusers wait so long to come forward? asked a third. He was such a big celebrity, how do we know they didn’t want it?
This, McPherson could not take. The smile dropped, the teeth parted. “There has to be a very clear distinction,” she said forcefully, her voice an octave lower than the others, “between somebody playing around with somebody that wants to, and something that is totally unwarranted.” Adultery is one thing; assault is another. The table went quiet for a second, the air prickled. And the women switched to a topic they all could agree on: Hillary Clinton, the baby killer.
McPherson wears a leather jacket and an air of practical skepticism. An antiabortion evangelical Christian who sits on the city council in Villa Rica, Ga., she has always voted Republican. Until now. “I cannot step over that line,” she said. “I am not that desperate.” She’ll be voting for a third-party candidate this year.
This hesitation could provide an ironic final twist to a campaign that has been fought largely outside the bounds of normal rhetorical restraint. The same Donald Trump who has encouraged violence at rallies, cast immigrants as “rapists” and mused, “I love war” has been forced in the final weeks to drop his longtime habit of crossing boundaries of sexual propriety, including his past boasts about grabbing women’s genitals and kissing them against their will. And yet for all the plot twists in this endless drama, all the explosive episodes regarding race, religion and ethnicity, Trump’s behavior toward women could decide it all. Election 2016 is, among other things, a national referendum on the treatment of women. And it’s Donald Trump,
