Just between you and me, we are about to witness the first presidential election in American history that will be won by women.

Since I began writing about politics earlier this year, I’ve paid particular attention to pollings and research about the core supporters of Joseph Biden and Donald Trump.

Two findings have stood out and told us much of what we need to know about the presidential election.

Blue-collar white men are at the heart of Trump’s power and support, and they cannot and will not be swayed by anything he does.

Suburban and other women oppose Donald Trump to an unprecedented degree in American politics, and they say nothing will change their minds; they are committed to his defeat.

And there are an awful lot of them.

The more bizarre and divisive Trump’s behavior is, the more working-class white men love and support him. And the more a growing majority of women hate him.

Donald Trump woke up the stalled women’s revolution, and it is coming to get him.

We are now seeing the greatest gender gap in American history.

Supporting Trump (or not) has become a statement that far transcends the election – it tells us how disconnected from our society and form their own self-interest this group of unhappy Americans is.

They tell us they don’t care about our customs and traditions; they worship the Great Wrecking Ball they helped send to Washington. They want more blood, while most of us crave some peace.

Populist movements are often like that; they are so angry, they can’t see very far ahead. They very rarely last long; there are too many rich people waiting to stop them.

Working-class white women and suburban white women –  many once fervent supporters of Donald Trump – are turning against him in rapidly increasing numbers.

Women of color overwhelmingly oppose him.

I’m not one of the white working-class, but I do fear for the trolls online, the angry white men riding around the country in their caravans, big trucks, and boats, oblivious or indifferent to what is about to happen.

They are about to get screwed once again.

They fought to preserve slavery, they fought to halt the Civil Rights movement, they fought and suffered from the rise of the new global economy, they were sacrificed in Vietnam and Afghanistan,  they insist (along with Trump) that climate change is a hoax, even as their homes get burned and flooded, their jobs have fled overseas, they bore the brunt of the horrific opioid epidemic, and are once again on the losing side of history.

Losing does not seem to discourage or deter them.

Women say in startling numbers, and every new poll reinforces that they are offended by Trump’s lack of empathy, cruelty, dishonesty,  and increasingly erratic and divisive behavior.

The President’s response is to be more divisive, dishonest, and erratic.

So, men and women really are different. Women do have a softer, gentler idea of governing. That may be the hope of the world.

They can be plenty tough and are no longer ashamed to be.

I can hardly think of a more telling turn or one that speaks more directly to the future than this election, shaping up as a gender war, unprecedented in our history.

For years, activist women wondered who their suburban and rural sisters went along with and voted for men who abused and disrespected them. I don’t think they’ll have to wonder about that this year.

Almost certainly, the angry white men will lose this struggle as well as so many others. And they will continue to lose their place at the top of the country’s cultural and social structure.

That is our destiny, the march of history.

That is the story of this election. Even the bedwetters can see it coming.

If you love your history – I love mine –  I think of Pickett’s charge, one of the most poignant and significant moments of the civil war.

Pickett’s Charge was both the high and low watermark for the American male. An infantry assault ordered by Confederate General Robert E. Lee against General George Meade’s Union positions on July 3, 1863, the last day of Gettysburg’s Battle.

It was the bravest and most heartbreaking moment of the Civil War. And the most foolish and doomed.

Confederate General James Longstreet knew it was futile, but stirring and heroic, and the Southern war effort never fully recovered from it.

About 12,500 Confederate soldiers in nine brigades advanced towards the heavily fortified Union line over open fields for three-quarters of a mile under murderous Union artillery and rifle fire.

Some Confederate soldiers managed to breach the low stone wall that shielded the Union defenders.

Still, they could not maintain their hold and were repelled with over 50 percent casualties. That charge ended Lee’s campaign into the North and towards Washington.

Lee and his army never recovered from Pickett’s charge, and neither did the confederate cause.

Men are responsible for most of the violence in our world, but white men seem especially angry, violent, and aggrieved.

There are many reasons for this; one might be biology, another and perhaps the biggest one right now:  white men are being displaced as the dominant figures and forces in our culture, from Congress to the law to medicine and politics.

Those photos of the angry old white men in Congress are changing. As of 2018, 127 women hold seats in Congress, 23.7 percent of its 535 members.

The white men pushing back against this change are, in a way, like the statues they love so much. They are being pulled, pushed, and knocked off of their pedestals.

And they still think they can stop it. So does their leader.

Women mayors and governors are popping up everywhere, and it was telling to see white working-class men in their trucks defy women governors and mayors and try to intimidate them, often while carrying automatic weapons.

The women were not impressed, with them, or Trump himself.

These images reminded me of Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, when 3,000 white men attacked a church where Martin Luther King and the Freedom riders were hiding, tossing Molotov cocktails through the church’s windows and savagely beating any Blacks they could find on the streets.

And they reminded me of Pickett’s charge, the soldiers who marched up that hill into such punishing fire were marching for the very same cause.

Interviewed by scholars and journalists in later years, some of the men in these Birmingham repeatedly said that they couldn’t bear to see these”n—–s” claim that they were equal to them.

Political movements that are against things are never as powerful as movements that are for things.

Washington Post reporters interviewed scores of working-class white men at a Trump rally. This is what they found:

“Their connection with Trump is cultural and emotional as much as political, closely intertwined with their lives and identities,” said the Post story.

“His enemies are their enemies; his grievances are their grievances. They live by the rules he lives by that concept such as White male privilege, or structural racism and sexism are to be scoffed at, that the working class, Christians, and Trump supporters have been victimized, that it’s okay to be moved to tears by a love for the country and its president but that liberals are crybabies and snowflakes. They pride themselves on being self-made and see Trump, whose life has been nothing like their own, as a once-in-a-lifetime leader.”

The problem for the increasingly threatened working-class white men in America is that Trump really is a once-in-a-lifetime leader. Mike Pence couldn’t come close to replacing him; he is far too restrained and polite.

There has never been a President like Trump, and judging from Joseph Biden’s growing popularity, there won’t be one for long, or another to come any time soon.

The working-class white men’s real battle is not against immigrants or arrogant women or immigrant rapists or Black mobs; their real struggle is against a system that has abandoned them and offers them few opportunities for dignity, respect, or meaningful work.

Their real enemies are the politicians that lied to them, the economists that doomed them, the CEO’s that rape their communities. One day they may come to see their true allies are the Blacks and immigrants they see as taking what is theirs.

They have a lot more in common with them than with Trump or any single friend of his. And that would be a hell of a coalition.

One of Trump’s great triumphs has been to convince this group of citizens that he is their champion; he is their Ceasar, and Emperor of Defiance and Vengeance, their finger in everybody’s eye.

His Presidency is predicated on the idea of defying and damaging what he and the white men call the “elites,” the politically correct, snot noses, and weaklings who have been putting them down for decades now.

It is an ideology of grievance, not leadership. The working-class white men are drinking it up; it is their daily opioid.

Other than Trump, they have no leader, and without him, they won’t have much of a movement either.

Trump is a movement exploiter, not a movement builder, and the rest of the country might not feel obliged to offer much relief to this battered but important group of Americans.

Martin Luther King built a vast and well organized and trained movement to wage his struggle for equality. And it worked.

Today, the respected FiveThirtyEight reports that out of 100 polling tabulations, Biden is today given an 83 out of 100 chance of winning the November election. Trump was given a 17 out of 100 chance of victory.

And that tells us that the working-class white men are heading for more despair.

These men – many of whom have genuine complaints about what elites have done to them – don’t know it yet, but Trump was an awful spokesman for them.

Unlike A. Phillip Randolph, or John Lewis, or Dr. King or any number of civil rights icons,  feminists, or leaders (Black Lives Matter sure comes to mind), Trump has not built any permanent or lasting structure for them.

Who will join them in their struggle when he is gone? How many bridges have they built, or burned?

Those MAGA hats won’t do much to scare the billionaires who have decided they are no longer needed in the new economy. Revenge tastes good for a while, but it is not a lasting answer to complex social problems.

When Trump is gone, there will be no one who can draw the media as he could, bully and torture the media, or fuel the sense of grievance and racism that he does so well.

Increasingly, the white nationalist and other extremist groups that have co-opted this movement and sprung from it are being seen as threats that need to be addressed.

When federal authorities have been given the green light to target “extremist” groups, they swiftly and brutally do it. Ask generations of radicals, anarchists, KKK covens, Communists, and socialists.

The image of white men racing around in their big trucks and huge flags waving assault rifles is not smart for any movement that needs to move public opinion or lobby for valid goals and complaints.

There are not enough of them, they are not powerful enough, and they are not organized enough. And they have no alienated just about every other social group in the country.

Trump has foolishly fueled the women’s revolution and given it purpose and fierce motivation. In Black Lives Matter, he has helped create the largest social movement in American history.

Trump this week reminds me of men and dogs on steroids; he is grandiose, delusional, and self-destructive. FiveThirtyEight found that Biden’s polling numbers went up, not down, after the debate.

And that was before Trump did his very poorly and clumsily and recklessly produced show from the Walter Reed Hospital and then the White House.

Trump’s fakeness is wearing even loyal supporters down. Joseph Biden knows he is an old and not very dynamic man. But he doesn’t present himself in any other way; he accepts who he is.

Trump seems to hate who he is. He is forever trying to be some else. It was exciting for a while; now, it is just boring and tiresome.

I would have thought an experienced TV producer who sees the presidency as one continuing reality show would have done better, but looking at him, I think all those doctors are right: he is not well, in the body or the head.

Pickett’s Charge was a profound moment in the history and evolution of our country. The Confederate generals, full of glory and hubris (sound familiar), lost touch with reality or discipline and thought boldness and delusion would alter the war’s truth.

The charge up that hill could never have succeeded, something that was obvious to every soldier and officer at the battle.

The angry working-class white men are making the same mistake as General Longstreet, in their own contemporary way.  A new Fox News poll found Biden winning the election with 51 percent of female voters, while Trump getting 39 percent.

And how can I not think of Trump, our own General Longstreet, convinced he could puff himself up like a great balloon and blow reality away while his soldiers cheer and wave their flags?

Men are now almost equally divided between the two candidates. College-educated white men overwhelmingly support Biden.

That is the biggest gender gap in American history, according to data compiled by the Center for the American Woman and Politics at Rutger’s University.

It’s ironic on many levels that an older white man is leading this gender revolution. Biden doesn’t work as a radical socialist, enabling many moderate and independent voters to support him.

Many women say it isn’t really him they are voting for; they are voting against Trump, who has almost knowingly offended them in every possible way.

Trump is not really a movement. It is a demagogue. He is the diesel fuel that powers those big trucks and expensive flags. And this week, he is coming apart at the seams.  He reminds me of a meteor burning up in the atmosphere.

The politics of desperation are exciting and even frightening. But they can’t and won’t work in a national presidential election in America, not twice in a row.

The working-class white men are heading once more for another tragic defeat. They are so caught up in grievance and contempt that, like their leader, they are hard to love, and they can’t really see past the end of their noses; a loyal Army charging up the hill to face certain defeat and the sad consequences.