Joy Reid goes below the belt, Jane Sanders responds

[karynnj]

290. I am reminded of what Obama said that progress is not a smooth path forward

Obviously, the Trump administration, even more than most Republican administrations is moving in the wrong direction. I am optimistic that the long term trend is still in our direction. I suspect that the company your daughter worked for might - at the moment - need to change their culture which likely was the same 30 years ago. As to abortion rights and birth control, it is true that regressive states have nibbled away very significantly at abortion rights.

However, some things have changed in the right direction. This fall, my daughter and her fiancee, Meg, were married in a service surrounded by family and friends. This was something my sister could not do 30 years ago when she and her love first committed to spend their lives together. My sister and her wife were incredibly moved when she announced her engagement and started planning a wonderful wedding with that included many of her fellow theology PHD friends.

The income gap between men and women has narrowed significantly since 1987 (30 years ago) - even though women now get slightly less than 80% of what men get. https://www.pay-equity.org/info-time.html It is frustrating hearing the many many harassment charges, because this was something that was an issue in the 1980s and big corporations required managers to attend training on this issue and many companies spoke of having a zero tolerance policy. I saw people fired in organizations I was in for violating this ... but I also saw that it was not in reality anywhere near as clear as the policy stated. My point was that I think the anger and the number of very prominent people fired is greater than the impetus behind the corporate response in the 1980s. One would think that the response eventually will be stronger given the stronger force out there now.

However, what we might actually see is that as on birth control and abortion, there are two Americas - and not the ones identified by John Edwards! The red states and the blue states are moving in opposite directions. In the blue states, abortion and birth control will be available and likely affordable. Sexual harassment will increasingly come with potential high costs in the blue states. Meanwhile, in the red states, abortion and birth control will be under fire ... and they will very likely vote for someone who almost certainly at least was the creepy older man who preyed on teens -- especially vulnerable ones -- in the mall if not a full blown sexual predator.