2 out of 3 white women in Alabama will protect unborn but not born children
Last night, Democrat Doug Jones defeated accused serial pedophile Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate special election.
It's beginning to look a lot like Resistance, eeeeeeverywhere you go...
(^^^I stole that from Twitter. Twitter was like Disneyland on New Year's Eve last night.)
So the disturbing thing about Jones' win is that 65% of white women voted for Roy Moore.
The Washington Post reported on Nov. 16 that "eight women have come forward to describe questionable behavior or to allege sexual assault by Roy Moore, Republican candidate for the Senate in Alabama." Multiple women are claiming Moore tried, aggressively and often, to have sex with them when they were 14 years old.
Fourteen-year-olds are children, so we're clear.
Supporters of Moore tore themselves--and the very fabric of their so-called "family values" party--into pieces defending him.
"God forgives him and so do I," they said. (I suppose God also forgives Bill Clinton for infidelity and lying under oath so that impeachment was unnecessary? I suppose God forgives the entire LGBTQ community for existing so we can stop discriminating against them? I could keep going...) "The women are being paid by Democrats to say this," they said. (Yeah. If I wanted to tip the scales in favor of Democrats winning a Senate seat, I'd go to a state where the scales are a little more loose. I would not go to Alabama.) "I don't believe the women," they said. (Unless it was Doug Jones who was being accused?) "I don't believe the women because women lie/these women are lying because they had bad reputations back then/because if it was true they would have come forward back then" etc etc etc insert every victim-blaming cliche you can possibly remember from the last million or so times this has happened. This is textbook rape culture.
Sarcasm alert! You gotta hand it to the Alabamans who were open and honest: "I don't want to give up a seat in the Senate" and "Doug Jones supports abortion so I can't vote for him." These people don't necessarily disbelieve the women. They just don't care what happened to them, what Moore did to them, and they want him elected anyway. Because "family values" and probably racism (via support of the white supremacist GOP and White House) and abortion.
Two thirds of white women in Alabama care more about protecting unborn children than children who have been born. That's my take on this. WashPo also reported:
“Abortion is a galvanizing issue in Alabama,” said Matt Barber, general counsel of Christian Civil Rights Watch, a conservative legal group, and a former dean at Liberty University. “President Obama said the social issues were so ’90s, but in flyover country, the desire not to be complicit in abortion homicide remains one of the top concerns.”
So Moore lost--does that mean abortion is not the single-issue powerhouse that it once was? Maybe. Again, WashPo: "...according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll in late November...41 percent of voters thought a candidate’s views on health care were most important, followed by moral conduct at 26 percent. Abortion trailed well behind at 14 percent."
Why did white women vote for Moore, then? Why did my demographic make this a nauseatingly close Senate race?
My guess, at the risk of over-simplifying things, is that being anti-choice might no longer be enough of a Republican vote-getter to hand an easy victory to a known sexual predator, but it's still enough to make for a nail-biter on election night.
And for what? Because the children are so precious? Jones alleged that Moore doesn't support renewing CHIP, which ensures 150,000 children from low-income families in Alabama.
What will you do, white women Moore voters, for the children in Alabama who have actually been born?
And last but by no means least: thank you, Black women. Ninety-seven percent of you--nearly a fifth of the voting population of Alabama--voted for Jones. Once again, you are social justice warriors and heroes of the resistance. I pledge to do my part to vote for your candidates and causes, amplify your voices, and continue to educate myself on systemic oppression and other ways to save the world so you don't have to keep doing it all by yourselves.
it's incredibly interesting to see the stats on how all those votes played out across the demographics. i honestly didn't have much faith that Alabama would choose correctly when i went to bed. i woke up pleasantly surprised by the election result.
I found out right before bed and it was hard to sleep afterward!
This was definitely welcome news overall, but depressing both that it was so close and that the bar for good news has been set so low that "pedophile predator still walking free but not in the senate" qualifies.
Or how about "serial sexual assaulter elected POTUS"?
I definitely have mixed feelings about this. Of course, I am elated that Jones was elected! But I am disgusted at my fellow white women who are okay with a pedophile in the United States Senate and I feel frustrated that the bar continues to be so low.
I firmly believe that Democrats need to come out of the gate swinging against white supremacy, climate denial, misogyny, and all the other regressive tactics of the current administration when it comes to the 2018 and beyond elections. No more meeting in the middle. The middle has been moved too far to the right. Medicare for all! Student loan forgiveness! Tax the shit out of the 1%! Banish the electoral college and enact measures to make voting easier for minorities! Equal pay for women! I think attempts to swing the pendulum back to the far left, even while knowing we won't get all those things, will energize the progressive and younger voting bases enough to win where we need to win and take the country back. Or I'm just pipe-dreaming in the glow of Jones' win....
I was listening to MPR on my way to work this morning and they were Tom Perez. He really hit the nail on the head when he said the DNC should do a better job getting people behind the actual issues they care about, rather than the person representing them.
I'm all for compromise, that's what the U.S. Constitution was founded on and I don't think it's a dirty word, but I think you're right. The middle is too far to the right, it needs to be closer to the actual middle. I think getting people out of Congress who are in the pockets of "corporate people" would be a HUGE step in the right direction.
*were interviewing.
Right, the compromising should not be with what we ask for, but what we get. Compromising can take place in Congress, when our representatives have reasonable and people-mandated pieces of legislation to debate. Right now there is no debate, only oligarchy.
Exactly :'(
Also, they don't think he's a pedophile. They think women are liars. Women not believing each other. That's the issue we need to address. Because if all women found our common ground, WOW would we be a force.
"And last but by no means least: thank you, Black women. Ninety-seven percent of you--nearly a fifth of the voting population of Alabama--voted for Jones. Once again, you are social justice warriors and heroes of the resistance. I pledge to do my part to vote for your candidates and causes, amplify your voices, and continue to educate myself on systemic oppression and other ways to save the world so you don't have to keep doing it all by yourselves." Thank you for recognizing this, for being one of the ones who GETS it, and for pledging to do your part. <3
Amen to this. #blacklivesmatter
<3
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