In 1972, the Congress passed the proposed Equal Rights Amendment for women overwhelmingly in both houses, and Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter supported it wholeheartedly over the next decade.
At the same time, Ronald Reagan opposed it, and it finally failed of passage by a shortage of three states in 1982, only gaining 35 of the 38 states required for ratification of an amendment!
90 years ago on July 21, 1923, Alice Paul first proposed the ERA, and it is time to take action on final ratification, with Democrats needing to support the end of the time limitation on the amendment.
So far, Democratic leaders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, and also Elizabeth Warren, have not agreed to cosponsor such a change in the amendment process, but they need to.
The question is whether three more states can be convinced to ratify the ERA, if the time limitation is eliminated, since almost all of them are Southern states.
But the hope is that Illinois, Virginia and Nevada might be the states, but no certainty of course, but there is the old saying, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”! The fact that these three states were “Blue” in 2008 and 2012 give hope, and hope springs eternal!