2018–The Year Of The Women Taking Over American Government

Hillary Clinton may have lost the Electoral College to Donald Trump on the way to a massive popular vote margin of 2.85 million popular votes in 2016.

Now, two years later, it is clear that women have reacted against Donald Trump, and the Republican Party faces doom unless they repudiate his misogyny rapidly.

The gender gap in voting between men and women is dramatic, has widened, and will affect society in the short run and the long run.

There will be more women in the 116th Congress, with at least 122 women, and about 80 percent of them being Democrats.

States that never had a woman Senator will have them, including Tennessee, Arizona, and Nevada.

There are going to be more women of color, including more African American women, Latino women, Asian American women, Native American women, Muslim women, Hindu women, as well as gay women and younger women in Congress.

There will be nine or ten women governors, up from six, including in Michigan, Kansas, South Dakota, and if a miracle occurs in Georgia, Stacey Abrams, a race not yet decided.

And we are about to see the likelihood of four women Senators announcing for President in the coming months on the Democratic side—Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kamala Harris of California, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.

5 comments on “2018–The Year Of The Women Taking Over American Government

  1. Southern Liberal November 14, 2018 7:09 pm

    Totally second this:

    https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/11/14/democrats-should-leave-divisiveness-to-the-republicans/?fbclid=IwAR3w1Js03gbTHgrFj7uyd9nLG2nCGEsLmfBm-FzEGZKnEUOMQnrWFmzZVXg#.W-x_QP-QGaE.facebook

    The day I’ve been dreading is here. Now that the midterm elections are over (except for the late vote counts and recounts), we’ve arrived at that time in the electoral process when we get flooded with questions about what Democrats need to do with their successes and what kind of candidate will be most successful in the 2020 presidential race.

    There are two groups that do a particularly bad job of answering those questions. The first is major media outlets that insist of framing everything as an either/or situation based on a past narrative. We watched that one unfold during the 2018 Democratic primaries when every two weeks there was a different take on whether the results indicated that establishment (read: centrist, moderate) or insurgent (read: leftist, progressive) candidates were winning. It was all based on a myth that local elections were still caught up in the Sanders/Clinton primary.
    We’re now seeing the same narrative being forced onto the midterm results and 2020 prospects.

    The other group that is hard at work trying to convince us how to answer the question about where Democrats go from here is made up of pundits and political consultants who have traditionally taken a side in the either/or framework the media is so quick to embrace. They are using the results of the midterm elections to bolster the views they’ve always had in favor of moderation or boldness.

    Democrats need to develop a narrative that will take them into the 2020 campaign. But, that narrative should not rely on making a choice between centrism and progressivism, just as it should not be about mobilization vs. persuasion, urban vs. rural, or even, as we’re hearing today, Arizona and Georgia vs Iowa and Ohio. Those are the kinds of divisive frameworks that Republicans are trying to foist on the country. The essence of the Democratic response should be to reject them all in favor of unity—e pluribus unum—out of many one.

  2. D November 14, 2018 10:48 pm

    Over the last two decades numbering five election cycles—2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016—an average of 53 percent of the votes cast for U.S. president came from women. (Election 2000 was 52 percent. In 2004, it was 54 percent. The last three were each 53 percent.) So, I think—if anyone still wants to consider elected officials to be representing the people of the United States—there should be a lot more women in elected office. But, I would take that further. It should be above 50 percent.

  3. Ronald November 15, 2018 6:10 am

    I agree, D, but there is no way to enforce that, particularly in the Republican Party, but it is their death knell if they continue to be misogynous!

  4. Rational Lefty November 15, 2018 12:21 pm

    House Republicans chose their new leadership. GOP leadership is made up of: a California Republican, a Louisiana friend of white nationalists, a member of the Cheney clan, and a former hard partying hockey player who is a favorite of big monopolizing retail chains.

    https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/11/15/house-republicans-build-a-new-team/

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.