Trump has, for many years, not done well with and for women and with issues women care about. Today, Trump is only the third president in U.S. history to be disgraced by impeachment, significantly because of — guess whom — women.
No need to go into the long, sordid list of offenses and attacks against women perpetrated by this man.
Just the most recent one will illustrate and suffice.
Part of Trump “having a good time” at a Michigan rally — while Congress was impeaching him –- was an attack he launched on the widow of David Dingell Jr., the longest-ever serving member of Congress in our Republic’s history. That is, in addition to desecrating the memory of Dingell himself, a World War II veteran now resting at Arlington National Cemetery.
A vicious attack to which Mrs. Dingell, now a Michigan U.S. Representative, dignifiedly responded:
My husband earned all his accolades after a lifetime of service. I’m preparing for the first holiday season without the man I love. You brought me down in a way you can never imagine and your hurtful words just made my healing much harder.
(A tone-deaf, inured White House reflexively defended Trump’s suggestion that Dingell may be in hell as just a Trump counter-punch.)
So, let’s review the recent history of these “badass women” who would dare to help impeach a president.
In the November 2018 midterm elections, women broke all kinds or records as more than 90 women were elected or reelected to serve in the House of Representatives, making for more than 100 women to serve in the House (of them, 43 women of color and at least three L.G.B.T.Q.) and making up almost one quarter of the chamber’s voting membership, the highest percentage in U.S. history and the vast majority of them Democrats.
But those women achieved other historic firsts:
• Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib became the first Muslim women elected to Congress.
• Debra Haaland and Sharice Davids became the first Native American women elected to Congress. Davids is also a lesbian.
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat from New York, became the youngest woman elected to Congress at age 29.
• Ayanna Pressley became the first African-American woman to represent Massachusetts in Congress.
• Sylvia Garcia and Veronica Escobar became the first two Latinas elected to Congress from Texas.
No wonder, thus, that 2018 has been variously called the “Year of the Badass Women,” “The Year of the Woman,” and some simply calling it “The Trump Effect,” attributing it squarely to Trump’s rise in power and his and the “Republican Party’s attacks on women, including efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, undermine women’s legal and reproductive rights and slash essential health benefits.”
And the “Trump effect’ came back to bite the holder of that meme in the you-know-what, as last night woman after woman cast her vote to impeach their nemesis and , in many ways, their harasser-in-chief.
At MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Mika Brzezinski recalled the women who came to office in the midterm elections and voted to impeach Trump.
Brzezinski pointed out the following brave women, many of them from deep in “Trump Country”:
Jennifer Wexton (VA); Angie Craig (MN); Kendra S. Horn (OK); Chrissy Houlahan (PA) – U.S. Air Force veteran, daughter of Holocaust survivors; Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ);
Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (FL), immigrant from Ecuador; Katie Porter (CA), “single working mom…three kids”; Mary Gay Scanlon (PA); Donna E. Shalala (FL); Mikie Sherrill (NJ), Naval Academy graduate…a decade of flying helicopters in the Navy; Elissa Slotkin (M), former CIA analyst; Abby Finkenauer and Cynthia AxneI (IA); Haley M. Stevens (MI); Lauren Ashley Underwood (ILL), first woman of color, first millennial to represent her community in Congress and youngest African American woman to serve in the House; Xochitl Torres Small (NM); Susan Wild (PA); Abigail Spanberger (VA), former federal law enforcement agent and former CIA officer; Lucy Kay McBath (GA).
My respect and kudos to these women who have broken many barriers, who made history two years ago and who, once more, are helping shape history by impeaching the 45th president.
Watch and listen to Mika Brzezinski here.
