By Lyn Jensen, Carson Reporter
On Jan. 20, 2017, Donald Trump became president, Republicans dominated Con- gress and the outlook on any progress for women looked bleak.
Republicans had been waging political war on women’s rights for more than a quarter of a century. Now they appeared able to pass and enforce any anti-women legislation they pleased, at least until the 2018 elections.
Women wasted no time mounting opposition. On Jan. 21, millions of women — and others — took to the streets to peacefully and legally demand women’s rights. A protest that started as a social media post by some disappointed Hillary Clinton supporters morphed into a global action. Mobs of protestors thronged to great American metropolitan areas including Washington, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, as well as red-state capitals like Little Rock, Ark., and small towns like Chelan, Wash.
Some criticized the marches as having no practical effect, but organizing and networking continued. One of the outgrowths of the women’s march was a women’s convention, hosted Oct. 27-28 in Detroit. It attracted about 4,000 women, many of whom wanted to learn more about political campaigning.
The website for Emily’s List, a fundraising group for pro-choice Democratic women, currently reports that about 22,000 women have signed up to run for office in 2018, many thousands more than in previous years. Many of those Democratic women are planning to challenge Republicans for red-state seats.
In the Republican-controlled Congress, women figured prominently in a months-long battle over Obamacare, as Republicans repeatedly attacked it and Democrats defended it. Many ordinary women lobbied to keep it, especially because it covers birth control. Republicans were even criticized for not including any of their women senators in a working group to draft a new healthcare bill — compared to only scattered criticism for excluding Democrats or ethnic minorities.
At an Obamacare show down on the Senate floor in July, when both parties mustered every vote they could, Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii joined her fellow Democrats despite suffering from cancer. If three Republicans broke from their party, Obamacare would survive. Two GOP women senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins, Maine, did, along with John McCain of Arizona.
The fate of Obamacare remains unsettled because Republicans, who never seem to understand what “no” means nullified the individual mandate in their tax bill at the end of 2017.
The strength of women’s political empowerment was abundantly demonstrated in several states’ off-year elections in November: Democrats turned Virginia, New Jersey, Washington and even Oklahoma a little bluer. In December, Alabama joined the list.
“The nation’s leading voter turnout experts said the [November races were] marked by women voting in historically high numbers and overall voter turnout exceeding expectations in non-presidential years,” said Steven Rosenfeld on Alter-net.
On Keith Olbermann’s video-blog The Resistance, he noted about half of November’s election results could be seen as morality plays. In Oklahoma a young lesbian Democrat won in a district chock full of Trump supporters. In Virginia a Democrat, who identified as transgender, defeated a Republican who campaigned on keeping public restrooms safe from transgender intruders. A man whose fiancee was shot and killed beat a pro-NRA Republican.
As 2017 concluded, Time magazine chose some women it labelled “silence breakers” for its Dec. 10 Person of the Year cover. Some were famous (singer Taylor Swift, actress Ashley Judd), others less known (engineer Susan Fowler, farmworker Isabel Pascual, lobbyist Adama Iwu, and an anonymous woman only partly seen). Together they represented what Time characterized as the #metoo movement, from a Twitter hashtag where thousands of women (and men) had recently begun sharing experiences of sexual harassment.
The decade-old movement burst into the media spotlight on Oct. 5, when the New York Times broke the story that powerful Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein had a history of sexual harassment. Judd, Rosanna Arquette, Lupita Nyong’o, Daryl Hannah, Angelina Jolie, Rose McGowan and Gwyneth Paltrow were among the dozens of actresses and other working women who reported incidents with Weinstein. In the backlash he was run out of Hollywood.
The fallout turned into a mighty stream that’s still cascading, as public accusations which a short time ago might have been scorned, mocked, or simply pushed aside are suddenly being taken seriously. The lasting effect on America’s political landscape is uncertain as the 2018 election season looms.
So far, the outrage has only resulted in the downfall of two major politicians—both Democrats. Sen. Al Franken resigned after several women accused him of kissing them without their consent years ago. Rep. John Conyers, a civil-rights icon who presided over Nixon’s downfall, resigned after his history of settling sexual harassment complaints was revealed. Both men were dependable votes for women’s rights, but their party told them they had to go.
At the same time Republicans — the party and its voters — appeared to care little about credible allegations of outright sexual abuse, including complaints about Trump, Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore lost to Democrat Doug Jones, party because of women’s votes. Moore’s defeat may or may not be an indication of a new need for both parties to take sexual harassment and other women’s issues seriously. Election season 2018 will tell whether voters will continue to allow Republicans to make war on women. The Trump presidency has put women at a historic crossroads.