The pink resistance is reflected in the historic number of women running for office. “More than 500 women announced runs for Congress and governorships in 2018 — a record number,” CBS News reports. And with those female candidates, we have seen an influx of female donors, a new group of political power players.
The irony is striking: At a time that President Trump and his most devoted fans — evangelicals — have abandoned any pretense that character and public morality matter, it is progressive women who have insisted that honesty, decency, respect and kindness count most of all.
Trump argues that mocking Christine Blasey Ford was necessary to win the confirmation fight; Trump’s female critics reply that Republicans’ treatment of Ford and female assault survivors was beyond the pale, and disqualifying for those who want to hold office.
Republicans insist that Trump’s words do not matter — only tax cuts, judges and deregulation; women leading the pink resistance declare that Trump’s ignorance, bigotry and cruelty render him unfit for office and make the country weaker and meaner. Republicans have become entirely transactional; they now elevate winning at any cost. By contrast, the pink resistance is in large part about reestablishing moral and political guardrails and retaining social gains that transformed women’s lives in the late 20th century.
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) has written another book — his writing production vastly exceeds his legislative output — arguing that we’re lonely, disconnected from one another and therefore eager to gain a sense of belonging in partisan tribes. He’s apparently unaware of the growing movement that is building community among anti-Trump resisters. The Post reports:
“What began with meetings at diners and public libraries has matured into a sprawling array of overlapping groups, some intensely local and operating on shoestring budgets and others well-financed and professional.
National networks with names such as Indivisible, Action Together and Together We Will serve as organizing umbrellas for thousands of far-flung, self-directed activists. New national organizations including Swing Left, Sister District and Flippable have more-centralized operations targeting specific races. Still other efforts, such as Mobilize, are little more than new technology platforms that allow activists to connect to campaigns online. All told, this loosely woven framework has added up to a potentially potent force, new on the political left, with a singular goal of winning elections.”
That might come as news to Sasse, but these women are creating ties that are likely to extend beyond the next election. Their shared outrage and determination to prevent the loss of decades of political and social progress for women — rather than ideological conformity — characterize their movement and provide a level of emotional intensity rarely seen in issue-based movements.
Republicans, soaked in their male grievance mentality, remain largely oblivious to the potential for a shift in politics from tribal rigidity to public morality, from one based on bluster and bullying to one that elevates public virtue, something Republicans used to believe in. (“As a movement, the Trump resistance appeared more quickly and grew larger than the tea party did after Obama took office, said Theda Skocpol, a sociologist at Harvard who has studied both. ‘They are not demanding purity,’ she said of the new uprising. ‘They are going to revitalize the roots of the Democratic Party and they are going to feminize it, but they are not going to turn into Bernie Sanders.'”)
I suspect that 2018 will be the first election, but certainly not the last, in which brigades of women, spurred by righteous anger, play a role far weightier than their numbers would suggest. With any luck, they might force a reexamination of our political culture and rhetoric. We could use, in the words of President George H.W. Bush, a kinder, gentler nation.
