Election 2024 is all about sex

Oh, my — this is a sexy presidential campaign.

The most memorable television ads of the 2024 presidential election have to be Donald Trump’s three spots about Vice President Kamala Harris advocating taxpayer-funded sex-change surgeries for California prisoners.

And the top most jaw-dropping comment by a candidate has to be Trump’s frat-boy delight in describing the naked Arnold Palmer.

Meanwhile, the top divide among voters is the gender gap. Women are strongly supporting Harris and men are strongly supporting Trump.

Tucker Carlson, the former cable TV host, told a Trump rally last week that America is like a naughty girl that needs to be spanked by daddy.

“You are getting a vigorous spanking because you’ve been a bad girl, and it has to be this way.” That led to shouts of “Daddy’s home,” when Trump came to the stage.

Carlson’s “spanking fantasy encapsulates everything [Trump’s heavily male base of supporters] love about [him,]” according to a columnist in the Guardian. “The paternalism, the toxic masculinity, the lust for violence and the thirst for revenge.”

That moment also fit with macho-sounding Trump telling an earlier Pennsylvania rally that women can ignore all the “problems our country has today,” because if elected to a second term he will “be your protector.”

The best evidence of Trump’s campaign focus on sexual issues is most apparent in spending one-third of its advertising budget in early October on the ads about gender-changing surgeries for people in jail, especially imprisoned illegal immigrants, which seem to air constantly during every football broadcast.

“Kamala is for they-them,” the narrator says. “President Trump is for you.”

“What they’re trying to say [to Republicans who are unsure about voting for Trump] is, ‘Hey, look, forget about these other things we disagree on…you agree with me on transgender rights,” Cameron Shelton, a professor at Claremont McKenna College, told CBS News.

The ads' prominence led Bret Baier, my colleague at Fox News, to ask Harris about her support for the sex-change surgeries for prisoners. She responded that she follows the law as written, and “it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed,” by allowing medical treatment for transgendered people in federal prison.

“I think, frankly, that ad from the Trump campaign is a little bit of like throwing stones when you’re living in a glass house,” she said. Harris scored points in that interview by pointing out Trump’s hypocrisy.

But clearly, the Trump camp believes that it can drown out its own hypocrisy by repeatedly airing ads that imply no transgender treatment took place with him as president, in contrast to her.

The prominence of the transgender ads also reveals that Trump’s strategists believe a culture war appeal is more effective than messaging about his stands on the economy, immigration or ending abortion rights nationally.

Transgender surgery “is the last thing on earth they want to talk about,” Chris La Civita said in an NBC interview. “So, we’ll talk about it for them.”

History tells us that at the presidential level, ads play a pivotal role.

In 1964, Lyndon Johnson’s infamous “Daisy” ad aired just once, portraying Barry Goldwater as a nuclear threat. It’s still remembered as one of the most effective political ads in history.

Another infamous ad was George H.W. Bush’s 1988 “Willie Horton” ad, which used racially charged imagery to portray his Democratic opponent, Michael Dukakis, as soft on crime.

Hillary Clinton’s 2008 primary ad featuring the "3 a.m. phone call" sought to portray the youthful Barack Obama as unprepared for the demands of leadership in a post-9/11 world, though it ultimately failed to sway voters.

Now, in the final stretch of the 2024 campaign, when resources are limited, the loudest political message of the cycle is about "taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners.”

Harris’ campaign is running far less memorable advertising that pushes a message her staff believe is a winner for her. Her top ad features testimony from former Trump Administration aides, including his former chief of staff, warning that Trump is unstable, growing more unhinged, and intent on punishing his political rivals.

Research by the Democrats determined that Republican testimonials against Trump will prove effective in winning votes for Harris, according to The Washington Post.

Harris’s camp has decided that “the Republican adviser attack on Trump’s unfitness for office” is a winner and a fit with advertising Harris as a candidate who stands for abortion rights and cares about middle-class families dealing with inflation, the high cost of groceries and housing.

“Raising the risk of a Trump second term is an important piece of business,” David Plouffe, a Harris strategist, told The Post. “It is not our only piece of business. But it is an important one.”

The Harris campaign is also running ads about Trump’s reluctance to offer disaster aid to areas of the country dominated by Democrats.

Harris’s camp also sees its advertising strategy enhanced by news stories about his former chief of staff saying Trump once praised Adolf Hitler and expressed admiration for Hitler’s generals.

The quiet part of the advertising battle is Trump’s total neglect of the voters’ number one issue: the economy. Unemployment is at historic lows. Inflation is cooling and the stock market continues to hit record highs.

Who knew it would come down to a battles of the sexes?

Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.