I currently live in Seattle, which sits in a county where 73.9% of voters chose Clinton. My former city of San Francisco leaned even more blue at 85.3%. My Facebook news feed has been full of shock and disappointment since election night. I’ve been sitting on this draft for weeks as I tried to find the right words. How could this happen? I don’t personally think this means we are regressing, racist or sexist. I think those are easy answers. Scapegoats. I fully believe some portion of the population is and always has represented those viewpoints and this election, particularly, gave voice to certain elements that have been quiet on a national scale lately. Those aren’t the reason though and putting the blame on them diminishes our chances of moving forward in a productive manner. The reason this happened is that democracy is working as intended. Over the past year I’ve
I just finished reading some great points in this Salon article about sexism and how it has changed/improved but not disappeared and how that relates to the Clinton campaign. It bothers me that this is the key conversation about Hillary though. Her campaign is doing a great job owning the discussion, knowing that most people don’t want to be sexist & using it as a sort of shame tactic – ‘if I don’t vote for her they say it means I’m sexist, so I guess I’ll vote for her.’ The fact is, millennials don’t support her because they don’t trust her – that is what they keep telling everyone. She is viewed as the least trustworthy of all of the candidates – including Trump. It isn’t surprising. She is involved in (as of my last count) four federal investigations and won’t answer important questions about connections to large institutions that