By Lori Perkins
I was depressed all week leading up to the midterm election, as newspapers and pundits predicted conservative wins that I just didn’t see around me, but I live in New York City, a blue bubble if ever there was one. Though I am not in love with Governor Kathy Hochel, I thought she was doing a good job – actually a better job than Cuomo at the end of his career, where he and New York City’s Mayor couldn’t even stand to be in the same room together. I know it’s important that the Mayor of New York and the Governor of the state be able to work together or all bets are off and MY city suffers.
I was shocked to start seeing predictions that Lee Zeldin, a no-nothing from nowhere Long Island was gaining enough ground on Hochel, NY’s first female governor, that some people were telling me she could lose, and over a perceived increase in “crime” (of course crime is up – we are in a recession and people are suffering everywhere). Were they kidding me? Or was I so blue-blind that I couldn’t see the water for the sky?
But it was happening all over. Fetterman in Pennsylvania was certainly the better candidate – a real legislator who lived in the state he was going to represent, as opposed to a TV doc who hadn’t shopped in a supermarket in decades. Or Hershel Walker, a brain-damaged man with no morals versus the incumbent, a pastor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s former church.
And no one seemed to be taking the loss of the right to abortion, which American women had had for over 40 years as an economic and civil rights issue, let alone THE defining issue of the midterm election. Women were just supposed to “get over it.” NEVER.
I kept on telling people that those under 40 and those who cared about people with uteruses were going to come out and vote in droves.
But I felt like I was screaming into the wind.
This election showed the so-called conservative wave failed to materialize because the people predicting it were all white men.
This election showed me that there are way too many white men in positions that are amplified in politics and media, and we keep on going back to the same ones over and over again for their opinions. That needs to change NOW.
I don’t really know how to do this, but I feel confident that part of the solution would entail having social media and news owned and operated by some people with uteruses and/or non-traditional perspectives. So, I hope someone is already talking to the likes of Melinda Gates and MacKenzie Bezos about this.