In the Presidential Election of 2016, I was a full-blown Hillary Clinton supporter. Not so much because she was a woman, though I was excited by the prospect of having our first female President, but more because I respected her intelligence and her wealth of political experience. As much as I agreed with everything Bernie Sanders stood for, I felt that his progressive policies were like asking for the moon. He would never be able to accomplish his agenda on Capitol Hill. No, Clinton was the more reasonable one who would work within the existing culture of Washington. She was no Progressive and she may have been a bit too cozy with Wall Street, but I had been content with Obama’s presidency and I thought a Hillary Clinton presidency would be much the same. The status quo was good enough for me.
It goes without saying how shocked I was when Donald Trump won the election, and how horrified I have been watching his Administration wreak havoc on our democracy ever since. I have spent a lot of time thinking about how we got here, how this happened.
This exploration has brought me to the realization that while I was living the American Dream, The American Dream had become unattainable for more and more people and had cast its shadow side over our country. My comfortable lifestyle contributed to a complacency on my part, an unwillingness to see just how deep the river of discontent was running in our country, and how our government had failed an increasing number of Americans. I had not been paying close enough attention to the growing inequality and the injustices suffered by so many.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the American Dream needs to be redefined. Instead of emphasizing the pursuit of individual happiness, it would be better to strive for a collective happiness, a sense of responsibility not just for ourselves and our families, but for our fellow countrymen and women, and humanity as a whole. I believe it is time for our politics to reflect these values.
Another deeply troubling trend that this presidency has brought forth and exacerbated is the deepening divide in our country along partisan, racial, cultural, and gender lines. This was on full display recently during the Blasey-Ford/Kavanaugh hearings. Watching the spectacle, I felt despair, heartbreak and rage.
One of the most telling moments for me was when the Republican majority of the Senate Judicial Committee, all white males, pushed aside the female prosecutor they had brought in to ask questions on their behalf, and then began one by one to angrily rant about how unfair their nominee to the Supreme Court was being treated in the hearing, a nominee who was so obviously one of the white male privileged elite. In his own opening statement, Judge Kavanaugh called the hearing a revengeful partisan plot out to destroy his life and his character. Never mind that on the other side you had a very credible woman who claimed that a heavily intoxicated Mr. Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her while they were both in high school. Apparently, the sense that she was telling the truth was not enough to keep the Republican Senators from claiming that this hearing was simply a partisan sham and an outrage. Where Christine Blasey-Ford was measured and composed during her earlier statement and the questioning that followed, Brett Kavanaugh and the Republicans on the committee appeared unhinged in righteous male anger, a common practice by men to intimidate others from challenging them, especially females.
I do not think this visual played well. They may have accomplished their goal of throwing red meat to their base, but I think that base is a last dying gasp of white male privilege in this country. I do believe it will be answered now by the female rage that has been growing since the election of Donald Trump and has been given permission to be expressed more and more by the #MeToo Movement.
Even before this hearing, and the subsequent female rage it let loose, the floodgates for women running for office had been opened. A self-described “pussy grabber” had been elected to the White House, making it clear to women that elections have consequences and women cannot afford to leave politics to someone else. People turned out in record numbers for the Women’s March after Trump’s inauguration and Emily’s List heard from 36,000 women interested in running for office, versus the less than 300 over the prior two years. Democratic women automatically qualify as anti-Trump and more than Sanders-style liberalism or centrist positions, it is the drive to elect women that has been defining the 2018 Democratic primaries.
I have made the deliberate decision to throw aside the status quo and to support the more progressive candidates from now on, and I’m pleased to see that many of these progressive candidates are women. I’m looking for candidates who are in pursuit of policies that will stop this widening gap between the wealthy and the poor, stop the continuing practice of destroying our planet in pursuit of profit, stop the dismantling of safety nets that help protect the poorest and most vulnerable among us, stop the chipping away at the availability of a good public education, and support affordable health care for all Americans. If this means I am reaching for the moon, so be it. It is time for me to join this fight. If we don’t ask for what we really want, it will never happen. We must rise up and demand it, and I believe women are ready to step up and do just that.
Nancy Erika Smith, the lawyer who represented Gretchen Carlson in her sexual harassment lawsuit against Roger Ailes of Fox News, put it this way: “The limits are about actual real power. Unless women really do take power in the legislature, in courts, in corporate suites, in every aspect of life, unless we demand and take our share, nothing will ever, ever change. They are not going to give it to us. We have to take it.”
While women are running for office in record numbers, women must also VOTE in record numbers. If we do, then we will see the Blue Wave, and that wave will be, as Donna Brazile says, “…wearing lipstick and heels.”
And when that Blue Wave happens, and when things get better for some, it will be imperative that we stay engaged, that we remember our rage, that we keep howling at that moon, that we keep fighting. It’s going to be a long fight, and it is not going to be an easy one. There are a lot of folks who have a lot invested in the status quo, especially the privileged white male power structure. They are going to do everything they can to keep that power, so we must be prepared for a long slog.
And if I am tempted to put down my sword for justice and accept the status quo again, before there is justice for all, I hope I will remember how we ended up with Donald Trump for President.
“What you’re angry about now – injustice -will still exist, even if you yourself are not experiencing it, or are tempted to stop thinking about how you experience it, and how you contribute to it. Others are still experiencing it, and are still mad; some of them are mad at you. Don’t forget them, don’t write off their anger. Stay mad for them, alongside them, let them lead you in anger.”
–Rebecca Traister, Author of “Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger”
