WOMEN AND THE MARCH TO THE MIDTERMS

For the first time in U.S. history, a woman was on her way to becoming President of the United States. Her opponent’s view of women was revealed to the world in the now famous Access Hollywood Pussy-Grabbing tape.

Hilary turned out to be more unpopular than almost anyone would have predicted. Still, she was eminently qualified to hold the office and she was running against a famous misogynist.

Women would help her make history.

Even women who did not love Hillary would surely support her over the detestable alternative.

Wouldn’t women turnout for Hillary the way Blacks turned out for Obama? And, wouldn’t Blacks and Hispanics turnout for Hilary because the misogynist was also a proud racist?

Well it began with this: according to the United States Election Project, 46.9% of eligible voters did not vote in the 2016 presidential election. I am sure they had their reasons – some understandable and others inexcusable.

I watched an interview before the election. A college student, eligible to vote, announced that he would not be exercising that right and that he was actively advising other students to do the same. His reason: There is no difference between the candidates. They are both products of a rigged, corrupt system. To vote would only help validate that system.

Overall turnout among women was only 1% higher than in the 2012 election. How many women who sat out the 2016 election did so because they also believed that there was no real difference between Clinton and Trump?

Without a doubt, if any one group of voters would carry Hillary over the finish line it would be college-educated white women. After all, Hilary was being held to a higher standard than her male counterparts, and those who were leading the charge against her, beginning well before she won her party’s nomination, were white male, Benghazi-breathing Republicans.

The image of grandstanding Republican men skewering Madam Secretary of State should have been a sharp poke to the inner Feminist of all women who had an inner Feminist.

So when you hear that only 51% of white women college graduates cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton, while 45% voted for Trump, you begin to get at the heart of the problem. Winning this group was supposed to be a slam dunk.

What about white non-college educated women? Surely we could expect 51% support for the first woman president. Wouldn’t they want their daughters to grow up knowing that one day they too could be President of the United States?

Well, that group went for Trump 62% to 34% -- an absolute thrashing. The education gap among white women is a huge part of this story.

Remember when the Republican Party was going to become a big tent party? That was when they thought they would lose the presidency and Congress, and that their future beyond the 2016 election looked bleak.

Well black women obviously figured out that the tent expansion project was designed to accommodate mostly white men. College educated black women voted for Hilary 91% to 6%. Non-college educated black women voted for her 95% to 3%. No education gap here!

College educated Hispanic women voted for Hilary 65% to 28%, and non-college educated Hispanic women 70% to 20%. 

I have a funny feeling that between arresting and deporting hardworking, law abiding fathers in front of their horrified children, continuing to refer to Mexicans as murderers and rapists, separating babies from their mothers at the border, abandoning Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, and referring to shithole countries, Hispanic women are now more unified when it comes to choosing the more hospitable tent.

The Woman’s March on Washington stole the thunder from Trump’s inauguration – not just in Washington D.C., but all over the nation and the world. Crowd counting is an inexact science, but best estimates place the attendance at over 4 million marchers in at least 653 U.S. cities and towns, making it probably the largest one-day protest in U.S. history.

As the marches played out, in multiple cities, viewed on split screens, commentators said again and again that though the march was impressive, it would amount to very little unless it produced practical, ongoing results. Would it? For most of us, that question will be answered by the midterm elections.

The marchers were multi-racial and multi-generational. They marched for their own causes – health care, social justice, gun control, the environment, immigration, women’s rights, gay rights, civil rights – all things targeted by the Trump agenda.

The organizers had successfully formed a broad big tent coalition, but did they create a movement?

And should any of this reassure us that Democrats will retake the House in the midterms?

Here is what reassures me:

So far, state primaries have produced 73 female nominees in 67 districts. 63 are Democrats and 10 are Republicans. As more state primaries take place, more Democratic women will be added to this list.

At this point in 2016, only 41 women had been nominated in those same states.  At this point in 2014, the total was 36 women.

Where did these women candidates come from? The majority of them had never before run for office.

Do you think they might have looked at the 4 million marchers and said to themselves:

This is different! If I run, with a positive message, I will have a constituency of energized voters waiting for me!

I am sure of it.