Since the election I’ve wondered why. I could understand if voters were misled about how Trump would help them economically and shake things up politically.

But was it more personal than that? Did they also have something against a woman as likeable as Kamala Harris? Yesterday I got an answer.

            I received a telephone call from an old friend from my high school in a little town in rural Southern Illinois. She called to wish me Happy Birthday. I thanked her.

Then she apologized for the election since she thought I would be unhappy with the outcome. I affirmed that I did.

She said she felt differently. She went on to say that she was glad she would not have to see the face of that “damned woman” again.

            I muttered something, not knowing what to say. She said she hoped she hadn’t offended me. “No, no,” I said, “speak your mind, it’s ok.”

            But afterwards I began to wonder about the vehemence of her comment. It was not that she disagreed with Vice President Harris’s positions, she hated her. She hated her so much she almost sputtered when she said so.

            Today I called back and after chatting amiably a bit, I asked my friend to do me a favor. “What is it about Kamala that makes you dislike her so intensely?” I asked.

            She hesitated a bit, and then again apologized. She said that I might not like what she was going to say. “It’s ok,” I said, “I just want to understand.”

            “Well,” she said, “here’s what I think. I want a President with high moral standards and honesty that we can look up to with pride.”

            “Right,” I said, hesitantly. Assuming she had voted for Trump, that seemed an odd reason not to favor Kamala.

            “And what makes you think Kamala would not have those standards?”

            “She’s a tramp,” she said. “She was sleeping with Willie Brown when he was married to someone else. Everyone knows it.”

            She was referring to a period decades ago before she became San Francisco District Attorney. It was an office to which she was elected in part because of the support of the popular California politician, Willie Brown.

            Brown had been separated from his wife for many years and had a steady string of girlfriends before he briefly dated Kalama, who was single. Their relationship after that appeared to be solely political.

            But this has not stopped the right-wing news media from harping on this affair and the marital status of Willie Brown at the time. No matter that Trump routinely cheated on each of his successive wives, including his dalliance with a pornstar when the current one was pregnant.

            But he was a guy. Women are supposed to live up to higher standards.

“Especially,” my friend said, “if they are to be the first woman elected President. They have to be the best.”

            But I was not satisfied with this answer. Somehow this did not seem to be a sufficient reason for the vehemence of her hatred of Kamala.

            “Besides,” she added, “she was only interested in getting the Black vote.”

            Now we seemed to be getting somewhere. I asked her why she thought that was the case.

            “She only mentioned her Black father,” she said, “and ignored her lovely Indian mother.”

            I was surprised at this since Kamala’s comments during the campaign seemed just the opposite. She frequently talked about her mother and seldom about her father, who was a distant figure in their separated family.

            My friend went on to compare her with J.D.Vance who was proud of his Indian wife, she said. “Kamala just wants the Black vote.”

            I did not argue with my friend. I felt there would be no point to it. Besides, in my years of interviewing militants involved in terrorism I learned to listen to them and not get into an argument.

My mission in talking with her was to gain some insight into why Kamala Harris lost, and especially why white women would turn against her. I think I got some answers.

My friend appeared to share the perception that the Democrat in this race had no interest in White people, especially White men. They seemed only to talk about minorities and women’s issues, so the perception went.

I mused on how Obama was seen differently. There was a large number of people, men especially, who voted for Obama and then turned around and voted for Trump.

But Obama was a guy, a real guy. He played basketball. He could have been any guy with whom a dude would get into a pick-up game in a vacant lot.

Kamala not so much. Her image was posing with her Black sorority sisters at Howard University.

Even women, including my friend from high school, could not identify with that. Kamala was not, she implied, the sort of person she would want her granddaughters to admire.

Her granddaughters, I presume, are White.