Pantsuit Nation?
A memory from seven years ago is a reminder of dashed hopes. Can we come back from the brink of fascism?
I didn’t own a white pantsuit, but as a New Yorker I naturally had a black one, so that’s what I wore when I cast my vote for Hillary Clinton in November of 2016. I remember how giddy I felt that morning that the day would end with the election of our first woman President!
We all know how that went.
And now polls are suggesting that more people may be favoring Trump than Biden in next year’s presidential election, which simply boggles my mind. I have plenty of critiques of how the Biden Administration is handling the issue on which I have focused my career — immigration policy — but overall he is taking the country in the right direction, including reducing inflation, creating jobs, investing in infrastructure, seeking to break up corporate monopolies, and more. Why is that fact not trickling down to the voters who will benefit the most from his policies?
But the results of some of yesterday’s local elections give me hope. Ohio voters enshrined the right to abortion in their state constitution. Virginia Democrats now control both chambers of the state legislature. I worry about Robert F. Kennedy’s candidacy splitting the vote, but I harbor the vague hope that he’ll take more votes away from Trump than from Biden. And maybe yesterday’s results demonstrate that people are waking up before the United States slides into an inexorable Christian nationalist Handmaid’s Tale.
The only poll that really matters will take place on November 5, 2024. Let’s hope people see through Trump’s lies and keep a Democrat in office. Otherwise I truly fear for the future of our country.
You said it all succinctly and beautifully