“They look at her and they say we can’t believe we got so lucky. They’re gonna walk all over her,” he said in an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham in July. “I don’t want to say as to why, but a lot of people understand it.”

But the “play thing” turned out to be Trump, who Harris emasculated and walked all over in a 90-minute debate, calling him unserious and easily manipulated by the strongmen he admires.

In contrast to his prior runs, Trump, a sexual predator, is largely a man alone, with few high-profile women surrogates. His wife, Melania, who played an aspirational role for men and some women, has largely been absent, hawking a coffee table book and her body. The former first lady couldn’t even be bothered to speak at his nominating convention. His daughter, Ivanka, is also not a factor, depriving him of the visuals of being the patriarch of a loving family, particularly of a successful daughter who spouts feminist platitudes about working women. Absent too is Kellyanne Conway, whose very presence also absolved Trump of his coarseness, softening him among some women voters.

The most notable surrogate might be Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who attacked Harris for not birthing children – Harris is a stepmother and part of a blended family like millions of other women.

(A question worth asking is whether Harris could have ascended to this level had she married and had kids in her 30s like many women, whose careers are often derailed as a result.)

The proximate cause of Trump’s latest and boldest and most sexist attempts to attract women voters is the matter of abortion rights, an issue which Trump has tried to treat like a mere legislative shift rather than a medical nightmare that has caused the deaths of at least two women, and likely many more.

“Women will be happy, healthy, confident and free,” Trump said at his rally. “You will no longer be thinking about abortion.”

That is Trump’s great hope. That abortion and the millions of people who value reproductive rights and equality and freedom won’t doom his third run for the White House.

For decades, there were stereotypes of how women leaders would behave on the job. Surely, they would be addled by estrogen and ovaries and given to fits of hysteria and whining, beset by Chicken Little fears and bouts of unbridled emotion and paranoia, and therefore, unfit to lead.

That is Donald Trump.

Nia-Malika Henderson is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former senior political reporter for CNN and the Washington Post, she has covered politics and campaigns for almost two decades.

Bloomberg