Vote For The Women

Keep the bad guys from laughing

Brett Kavanaugh is still laughing.

He is still laughing the same way he did the day Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testified that he and his drunken pal Mark Judge descended the stairs after assaulting her when she was 15.

The only way to keep bad guys like this from laughing is by voting more good women into elective office.

We can also stop some of the mocking laughter by voting locally against Congressman Lee Zeldin on November 6, even if his opponent is a man named Perry Gershon. Zeldin has been openly endorsed by Donald Trump, a flagrant and proud misogynist president who nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. The same Trump who was caught on that “Access Hollywood” tape boasting of sexual assault on women, 19 of whom have charged him with sexual assault or harassment even as he sits in the most powerful office in the world.

The same Trump who endorsed Roy Moore in his campaign for the U.S. Senate in Alabama even though Moore was credibly accused by multiple women of being a pedophile who had assaulted them when they were girls.

The same Donald Trump who boasted on “Howard Stern” that he used his power as the owner of beauty contests like Miss Universe and Miss Teen USA to barge into the locker rooms of women and girls as they were in various stages of undress.

Same Trump who agreed on air with Howard Stern that his own daughter Ivanka was a “piece of ass.”

Same Trump who wants to make America as “great” for white men as it was in the “Mad Men” age is the POTUS in the #MeToo age.

Same Trump who has now placed a second man accused of — what else? — sexual deviance on the United States Supreme Court.

Man, oh man, do we need more women in elected politics. And on the Supreme Court.

This is why the coming midterm elections on November 6 are a referendum on Donald Trump’s reactionary anti-women policies. Locally, Perry Gershon is running a race against the hard core, right wing Zeldin who wears his anti-women Trump endorsement like a badge of sexist honor.

In two more years, we can all join a women’s march to the polls to vote Trump out of the Oval Office.

Even if Trump is reelected in 2020 by the last gasp of the League of Frightened White Men, he will be gone in 2024 because of term limits.

But Trump’s Supreme Court picks are lifetime appointments, as ugly and enduring as his buildings.

If we are going to Make America Proud Again after this shameless Trump era, we need more women in elective office. Or at least men who respect women.

If anything proved that we need more women in elective office, it was September 27’s disgraceful United States Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.

Those 11 angry Republican men on the committee were such a fearless football squad of legislative bravery that they did not have the testicular fortitude to question a lone woman survivor of sexual assault named Dr. Christine Basely Ford.

Anyone open-minded person watching Dr. Ford’s heart-wrenching testimony last week could not have been anything but moved to the edge of tears as she spoke of Kavanaugh’s lasting echo of laughter during and after her attempted rape.

Then came Kavanaugh with his fake tears, phony frat boy tough guy demeanor, disrespecting female senators like a white-knuckling dry drunk.

It wasn’t a leap seeing Kavanaugh sloppy drunken at 17 treating a 15-year-old Ford with darker misogynist contempt. With his repeated endorsement of beer, Kavanaugh redefined the term “sober as a judge.”

And yet in the midst of the #MeToo movement, the 11 Republican men on the Senate Judiciary Committee were so determined to confirm arch conservative Kavanaugh — whom many fear will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade — that they would initially only allow the testimony of one of three women accusing him of sexual assault or harassment, refusing to reopen an FBI background investigation that all three women victims requested under threat of perjury. The Republican majority would not allow the testimony of any corroborating witnesses.

That is, until soon-to-retire Sen. Jeff Flake was confronted by two sexual assault survivors in an elevator, which persuaded him to reach into his heart and across the aisle to Sen. Chris Coons to ask the Senate to hit pause for a week so that the FBI could reopen the background investigation. This rare bipartisan moment was hailed by everyone. Until Sunday, when it was learned that White House Counsel Don McGahn — a close friend of Kavanaugh’s who touted his nomination — was playing puppet master, narrowing the scope of the FBI investigation to exclude the questioning of one Julie Swetnick, who claimed she witnessed Kavanaugh and his best friend Mark Judge present at a gang rape. The White House was also excluding the FBI from investigating Kavanaugh’s multiple and glaring cases of perjury in his Senate testimony.

If this White House interference with the FBI investigation continues, then this is a scam. This would not be a search for the truth. This would be a search for a brute.

Another male brute to a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, where he could sit with a dark cloud over his head until he mummifies in his black robes beside Clarence Thomas like two dirty old men in trench coats in a dirty Times Square movie theater.

With two men on the Supreme Court credibly accused of sexual depravity, the Blind Lady of Justice better get herself a pit bull service dog.

The only way to stop this twisted madness is to vote on November 6 for women candidates or for men like Perry Gershon with a progressive platform on women’s issues.

If the Democrats take back the House of Representatives, they can open further hearings on Judge Brett Kavanaugh and finally question the other accusers and witnesses the Republican controlled Senate Judiciary Committee refused to hear. Then the Congress can vote to bring articles of impeachment against Kavanaugh to have him removed from the Supreme Court.

Maybe then the echoes of Kavanaugh’s mocking laughter would begin to fade.

Vote for the women.

denishamill@gmail.com