CounterPunch | Even if Democrats take back the House and the Senate, women Resisters
who fall the Dems’ co-option game hoping for “equal pay” and “equal
rights” will be sorely disappointed. Not because Trump will get in the
way — because Democrats won’t fight for anything substantial.
Consider the Democrat most Women’s Marchers probably voted for. Like
the rest of her fellow Democrats, Hillary Clinton (a multimillionaire)
supported raising the minimum wage to a pitiful $12 per hour. (If it had
merely kept up with inflation, it would be $23 per hour now. Given
increases in worker productivity, it ought to be at least $25 per hour.)
Nearly two-thirds of minimum-wage earners are women.
Clinton gets better-a-century-late-than-never cred for endorsing the
long-stalled Equal Rights Amendment. But Democrats controlled the White
House, House and Senate as recently as 2010 — and never mentioned it.
Even on the signature identity-politics issue of abortion rights,
Democrats have long deployed a form of psychological terrorism against
women. Unless you vote for us, they’ve been telling women, some
Republican president might appoint a Supreme Court justice who might
cast the deciding vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Women and their partners shouldn’t have to rely on a wobbly
45-year-old court decision. Why don’t Democrats ever propose a bill
legalizing abortion nationwide? Considering that 58% of voters,
including many Republicans, support abortion rights, and that Democrats
could characterize Congressional opponents as misogynists in attack ads,
it’s entirely possible that an abortion-rights law could pass Congress.
They certainly could have tried under Obama. But they didn’t. Because
Democrats don’t care about people. Democrats care about electing and
collecting campaign donations for Democrats.
There is no reason — zero, none, nada — to believe that the
Democratic Party’s half-century-old refusal to lift a finger to help the
disenfranchised will change if and when they win back Congress. Which
makes the squandering of the anti-Trump historical moment so tragic.
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