No Honey We Don’t Got It…
As the child of a female politician you learn a lot about misogyny and patriarchy. There are obviously misogynistic things that happen such as the media questioning how your mom can hold down a high-powered job and be a good a mother at the same time. Then there are the more subtle things such as people automatically assuming you don’t have strong examples of female leadership unless they explicitly know your mother’s job title. Many of my mom’s stories, particularly of her the early years of her career are interlaced with more than a touch of patriarchal nonsense. Stories extended from humorous to frustrating to downright stories belittling. On the more humorous end, the Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives was gravely concerned that as the first pregnant serving State Legislator—my mom—would give birth on the floor because as we all know women are known to spontaneously give birth in whatever room they are in. It was this very same pregnant State Representative who was a catalyst for getting a women’s room near the House floor. I guess when the very pregnant House Appropriations Committee Member waddled off to go to the bathroom every 20 minutes holding up proceedings to trek to the bathroom you finally realize bathroom inequity is a thing.
There is one story that stands out in my mind as an infuriating instance of patriarchal dismissiveness of female intelligence and political savviness. In 1994 my mother was a co-President of the National Council of State Legislators (NCSL), a non-partisan body that represented 7,000 state legislators across the nation. My mom ascended to NCSL leadership as the 1995 Republican Revolution began its march to overtake the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate in the November election. As a five-year-old her new position didn’t change my life much besides getting a very nice suite in Milwaukee when we went there for the NCSL conference and hearing a lot about national state politics at the dinner table.
In 2010 after 2010 the Red Wave swept State Legislators my mom retold me a story as a representation of a deeply engrained flaw in the Democratic Party.
As the story goes during an event my mom spoke to then President Bill Clinton about the decline in Democrats in the State Legislators nationwide. She saw Democrats slowly bleeding seats and progressively losing control of states as they focused almost exclusively on the national arena. As Democrats turned away from building from the ground up, Republicans poured money into state races, opened field offices and began strategizing political takeovers with community leaders. My mother saw the writing on the wall and told the leader of the Democratic Party. Can you guess what his response was? A dismissive pat on the head accompanied by the condescending words “don’t worry honey we’ve got this.” The President of the United States pat the President of the NCSL on the head, like she was a confused child.
We didn’t have a handle on State Legislatures then, and we still don’t have a handle on it now 24 years later. State Legislators continue to trend red and the 2020 redistricting could be just as problematic as the 2000 was, precluding a few states that have laws allowing governors to veto suspicious redistricting.
I have grown up watching repeated patterns of national party leadership disregarding community leaders through the insidious mantra “don’t worry honey we got it.” Turning a blind eye to people actually doing the work and ambling in like a drunk donkey telling community leaders what their strategy for victory should look like rather than listening and deeply engaging. The false hubris of “don’t worry honey we got it” reared its head in 2016 when Clinton did not touch foot in the Rust Belt but expected to climb the blue wall on Obama’s heals. But it is not simply the obvious failures of an ineffective campaign in electoral rich states to win a game in a rigged system. It is the toxic mantra that creates legislation such as the 1994 Crime Bill then turns around come election time and expects Black and brown people disproportionately hurt by the bill to say, “don’t worry honey we got it,” we will save your party. We will continue to vote to uphold the Party and democracy while getting nothing in return.
As I reflect on this story I wonder— if President Clinton thought it appropriate to pat a white woman on the head what would his response have been to a Black woman, Latinx Nimby person, a Native American trans woman? Would he have just straight up laugh in their face or turned his back?
The fact that the sitting President pat a national Democratic leader on the head is enraging. The fact that the Democratic Party has replicated that pattern for over two decades is maddening. That in 2010, nearly two decades later, we once again overlooked the states and saw red seeping into every corner. At times it feels like a perpetual cycle of looking past people, through people, over people and then being surprised by the results.
Maybe this year we can turn towards the states, look towards leaders such as Stacey Abrams, can stop patting women on the god damn head. Can reflect on the fact that no, honey we don’t in fact got it. We have to do some real soul searching to root out the white supremacist patriarchal pathologies that have allowed us to believe that “don’t worry honey we got it” is even an option. We have to acknowledge that white America is the heartbeat of Trumpism and white people cannot continue to expect others to save democracy while keeping our feet on their necks.
As we bask in the glory of the historic Biden-Harris win we must acknowledge that the 2020 election was not a referendum on President Trump and his racist, incompetent, xenophobic, misogynistic leadership. Over 71 million people saw that Trump was a monster and chose him anyways. A grotesque percentage of white Americans showed us that they will always place the false god of white supremacy above all else. The only reason we have not fallen into totalitarian fascism is because once again Black and brown people in underserved urban centers led by women such as Stacey Abrams have marched to the polls to save America from itself.
Stacey Abrams, Lucha AZ, Black clergy in Detroit, Black Votes Matter and many others have resoundingly proved the importance of protecting and mobilizing voters on the state level this election. They have given us a clear example that things happen from the bottom up rather than top down. That states matter. State leadership matters. Protecting voting rights in states matters. Listening to local leaders and organizations matters. The cycle of the false mantra of “don’t worry honey I got it” that has been perpetuated in the Democratic party predominantly by white men and women has got to stop. We can’t show up to a fight with Republicans where they pull out every illegal and underhanded trick in the book just saying, “don’t worry honey, I got this.”
We have to start paying attention to the states.
