Ross Grayson

Voluntarily spearheading a national dialogue could give Biden a distinct advantage with female voters across party lines.

One of the most telling moments that personally stopped me in my tracks was when I had a short discussion with a middle of the road conservative. He chose to ignore the volumes of dysfunctional and illegal behavior of trump and his money grabbing cohorts, didn’t think that it was important that a man in the White House had crossed every moral line, that trump couldn’t speak in an intelligent manner and didn’t even bother to attend security meetings, alienated our allies and praised dictators. Instead, this guy said “it’s time for the tump-bashing to stop.” Images flooded into my head of all of the memes, posters, and comments made against the Obamas. From ropes in trees to blatant racist words to accusations (started by trump) of President Obama not being an American citizen. They were attacked at every turn and the worst they could come up with was that President Obama wore a tan suit (which many previous Presidents had done) and that he preferred Dijon mustard.

Republican Senators intend to take what they want. To get it, they will take it from the rest of us. As voices in the Senate chambers said over and over, “There is credible evidence of sexual abuse, we need a fuller investigation,” the Republican Senators on the committee as well as Kavanaugh himself grew reactive and full of rage. For abusers, the performance of rage is the card they always play, performed in the Senate chambers as indignation at what they would frame as an unfair process, but fueled by the same rage that I always saw in my abuser’s eyes, when I refused to lay down and take it.