Lara Putnam and Theda Skocpol have a piece in Democracy about the anti-Trump forces being led in suburbs by white college-educated women:
[…] Nancy Reynolds, the retired librarian, worked throughout the fall of 2017 with a tight network of women (their partnership forged on a chartered bus to the January 2017 Women’s March) to coordinate phone canvassing and door-knocking across Hampton Township. They elected three Democrats to a five-person township council that had been all-Republican as long as anyone could remember. As Reynolds tried to explain to a party strategist aggrieved that the party’s online calling tools went unused, “My friends won’t make calls for you. They’ll make calls for me.” In this exchange, as in many others we have witnessed, we’ve seen to what extent the ones needing education in political organizing are actually the nominal political professionals. The “amateurs” already get it.
The whole thing is worth reading, but I want to add in my experience in the suburb where I live. Last fall, we elected the first two Democrats to serve on the town board in quite a while, one of whom was the first person of color to serve in the history of the town. The other night, I went to a meeting of the group principally responsible for getting those two elected. The leadership was almost all college-educated women ranging in age from around 30 to probably 60 or 70. They were goddam impressive. It was a specifically non-partisan event by an avowed non-partisan group, but it just so happens that Democrats are more in line with the goals of the group than Republicans. I met a candidate for another local office, and he gestured to a group of women and said “they are my campaign staff”. He said they had it all figured out – who to call, what to do. He was just taking orders.
These women are a juggernaut. Republicans have done a decent job running this town over the years, and the Democratic committee in town was almost inactive, even though Democrats have an advantage in registration. No more – having an “R” after your name here is now toxic. If, as the two authors of this piece argue, the experience in my town is replicated in many other suburbs, we are looking at a real change.
(via Kevin Drum)
White Suburban College Educated Women Quietly Changing PoliticsPost + Comments (104)