![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
more politics thoughts
Nov. 9th, 2020 04:32 pmIn my lifetime, I've now seen:
* gay marriage legalized nationally across the entire United States of America (and also Canada, before that)
* a Black US president
* a female US vice president (a Black and Indian-American woman, at that)
When I was a kid, they told us the last two of those would happen someday, and I believed it in the vague way that I thought we might someday have humans on Mars, but it seemed pretty distant and vague. When I first started paying attention to LGBTQ+ rights, the first one seemed impossible.
And yet.
I'm thinking too about how every US presidential election since 2008, aside from Obama's reelection in 2012 where I don't even remember who Romney's running mate was (but I know it was a guy), has had at least one woman on the ticket for one of the major parties. Palin, Clinton, now Harris. And this year's Democratic primary had several women in it. It seems like we're at a tipping point where, just like when all of a sudden there was a point where state after state was passing marriage equality, we might start having women nominated all the time now. Then they'll start winning. Then it will be normal to have either a man or a woman leading the US, the way it's not shocking anymore to have a female senator or congressperson.
(Canada, it's time to catch up on female party leaders please!)
And Oklahoma (!!) has elected the first nonbinary state legislator in the US in Mauree Turner, and former Biden staffer Sarah McBride has just been elected to the state senate in Delaware, bringing the number of trans people at state legislature level to five. State senate is what Obama was doing before he got elected to the senate at national level. We're going to hear more from these folks, I think.
And in four years NASA plans to send the first woman to the moon.
2020's been A Year. But even now good things are happening.
* gay marriage legalized nationally across the entire United States of America (and also Canada, before that)
* a Black US president
* a female US vice president (a Black and Indian-American woman, at that)
When I was a kid, they told us the last two of those would happen someday, and I believed it in the vague way that I thought we might someday have humans on Mars, but it seemed pretty distant and vague. When I first started paying attention to LGBTQ+ rights, the first one seemed impossible.
And yet.
I'm thinking too about how every US presidential election since 2008, aside from Obama's reelection in 2012 where I don't even remember who Romney's running mate was (but I know it was a guy), has had at least one woman on the ticket for one of the major parties. Palin, Clinton, now Harris. And this year's Democratic primary had several women in it. It seems like we're at a tipping point where, just like when all of a sudden there was a point where state after state was passing marriage equality, we might start having women nominated all the time now. Then they'll start winning. Then it will be normal to have either a man or a woman leading the US, the way it's not shocking anymore to have a female senator or congressperson.
(Canada, it's time to catch up on female party leaders please!)
And Oklahoma (!!) has elected the first nonbinary state legislator in the US in Mauree Turner, and former Biden staffer Sarah McBride has just been elected to the state senate in Delaware, bringing the number of trans people at state legislature level to five. State senate is what Obama was doing before he got elected to the senate at national level. We're going to hear more from these folks, I think.
And in four years NASA plans to send the first woman to the moon.
2020's been A Year. But even now good things are happening.
