Charles Cook joins his staff at the Cook Political Report in suggesting that the signs are all pointing towards a blue wave in the 2018 midterms. He also suggests that there is nothing on the horizon right now that would alter that direction in the coming year.
Behind the data about presidential unfavorability and generic ballots are the people who are mobilizing that wave. In a story we’re hearing from many locations these days, Paul Schwartzman tells us about what happened in the traditionally Republican county of Chesterfield, Virginia.
For the first time since 1961, Chesterfield County backed a Democrat for governor — and the driving forces in this Richmond suburb included women who defiantly trumpeted a political label their party has ducked for decades…
Until Gov.-elect Ralph Northam (D) won Chesterfield County three weeks ago, the stretch of suburban and rural communities southwest of Richmond had been considered reliably Republican.
Yet voters infuriated by Trump, many of them women and Hispanics who have migrated to the county in recent years, are redefining Chesterfield and alarming Virginia Republicans who have depended on the area to make up for the support the party lacks in urban areas.
The “women who defiantly trumpeted a political label their party has ducked for decades” refers to a group named, “Liberal Women of Chesterfield Country.” Schartzmann tells the somewhat colorful story of how they got started.
On the night Trump won the presidency, Kim Drew Wright became so infuriated that she took a Sharpie and, on poster board, compared the Republican mogul to a slang word for the male sex organ, and added: “And so are you if you voted for him.”
She then duct-taped it over the “Hillary for President” sign in her front yard, and was pleased when a few neighbors emailed to thank her for sharing their sentiments (she took it down the next day, afraid that kids on school buses would see her invective). A week later, Wright posted on the Clinton-inspired website “Pantsuit Nation” an open invitation to women to meet at a local tavern to share their angst over Trump.
Ninety people showed up.
LWCC now has 3,000 followers on Facebook, with 13 neighborhood chapters that knocked on 50,000 doors prior to the election.
All of that reminds me of a story Obama used to tell about the lady that got him “fired up and ready to go.”
He always ended that story by making the same point.
It shows you what one voice can do. One voice can change a room. And if a voice can change a room, it can change a city. And if it can change a city, it can change a state. And if it can change a state, it can change a nation. And if it can change a nation, it can change the world.
Kim Drew Wright helped change Chesterfield County and the state of Virginia. She’s not done yet.
“Are we done?” Kim Drew Wright asked members of the organization that she and her allies christened the Liberal Women of Chesterfield County after President Trump’s election last year.
“Noooooo!” the women shouted back.
The more I read of these kinds of stories, the more I’m convinced that women like Kim Drew Wright are going to change this country.
