Furies
By
Leonard Zwelling
“Attention must be paid.”
That’s from Arthur Miller’s The Death of a Salesman, but perhaps it has started to be the watchword of the new Congress with over 100 female members. They will not go unheard this time.
As Maureen Dowd in The NY Times, (January 19) points out, led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) (D-NY), the women of the House went stalking Mitch McConnell to get him to take a vote in the Senate about opening the government during the shutdown. They didn’t catch the crafty Mitch, but they were hot on his trail. These women, Dowd calls them The Furies after the three women of Greek mythology who avenged the wrongs done by men, will be heard and the cameras love them, especially AOC.
This may well be the natural culmination of the MeToo# moment that started in 2017 and has only gained steam since then. Men have had it easy compared to women and the women have had enough of it. Who can blame them?
But perhaps it is not the young women who are really leading the way. Nancy Pelosi has, much to my surprise, shown a unique talent for getting under the skin of Agent Orange and she is driving him crazy. Do you think she really cares that Trump took away her military air transportation to Brussels and Afghanistan? Nah. She’s been there before. It is he who finally took his first trip to the front lines to visit the troops not the Speaker. She is outfoxing him at every turn and she will not bend to fund his wall. I am not sure that I agree with her on this as it is really caused pain to many Americans who worked without paychecks or were furloughed with neither work nor money, but the Dems simply don’t think the wall is a good idea and will not relent. I would have thought a three-year DACA deal would have been enough to get the Dems to give Trump his stupid toy, but it appears that this is not the case. Women can be just as stubborn as men, I guess.
The president is going to have to come to the table. As Chuck Todd said on MTP Daily recently, presidents have to go the 80% of the way when there is a stalemate like this and Trump simply has not done that yet. He is digging in his heels thinking that if he doesn’t, his base will desert him. They may anyway if Mueller has enough evidence to show that Trump led or participated in a conspiracy to fix the 2016 election with the help of the Russians as is looking more likely every day.
I believe this is coming into the final turn and they are headed for the stretch run. Most of what we are seeing now is noise although painful to the 800,000 government employees affected. Mr. Trump should never have been president. He probably cheated to get there and Hillary Clinton ought to be in the White House. Just as with Richard Nixon, we will learn that history can be bent by crooks with sufficient money and effort. That it happened a second time (at least—who knows the truth about 1960?) should surprise no one.
If it takes the women to finally get Trump out of the White House, so be it. We will then be even more in their debt than we already are. This year, 2019, may be the ultimate revenge of the Furies. They may fix things for good. They are trying in Hollywood, why not in Washington, DC?
