Are the Republican men of Congress okay?
If you’re not sure why I’m asking, here are just some of the things that went down at the Capitol in the past few weeks:
🤡 Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy shoved Rep. Tim Burchett, one of the Republicans who voted to oust him last month, while he was giving an interview.
🤡 Rep. Derrick Van Orden called Rep. Matt Gaetz “an immature man child.”
🤡 In the middle of a formal committee hearing, Chairman James Comer told another member on the dais that he looked “like a Smurf.”
🤡 And Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin literally stood up and threatened to fight a witness during a committee hearing. He even started to remove his wedding ring as he got ready to fight!
And while all of this ridiculousness completely dominates the news, it draws attention away from what really matters: actually doing what we’re elected to do and serving our constituents and the American people.
You deserve elected officials who will do everything in their power to get to work and pass legislation that makes your life better - not a bunch of chaotic men who are more interested in ego trips and spitting contests than governing.
I’m going to call a spade a spade here: This kind of behavior is textbook toxic masculinity. We all know what it looks like to prioritize a “tough guy” attitude over everything else - it’s been the status quo in much of our society for a long, long time. It’s past time for us to embrace compassion, collaboration, and cooperation - concepts that have been considered traditionally feminine, but are also, in fact, central to effective leadership.
So how do we do that in Congress? Representation.
Even though Congress has become increasingly more diverse over the last several election cycles, it’s overwhelmingly still run by old, white men.
Now look - there’s nothing inherently wrong with old, white men. They represent an important population and perspective for our country. But the fact that only 28% of lawmakers in Congress are women (and even fewer are people of color) has a huge impact on the way things are run day to day and the policies that are prioritized or ignored.
Just look at the child care crisis! From a national poll this summer, 74% of voters (that’s 61% of Republicans and 86% of Democrats) said they wanted to see increased federal funding for child care. But instead of listening to their constituents, Republicans in Congress (most of them men) let emergency child care funding expire in September.
If more Democratic women were in Congress, it’s unlikely we’d be in this mess in the first place.
When we elect more Democratic women, we can move past all of the distracting drama that my Republican male colleagues are focused on.
When we elect more Democratic women, we can focus on issues that matter to the American people: protecting reproductive health care, lifting children out of poverty, ending the gun violence epidemic, and tackling the climate crisis.
And the best news - this is totally possible! We just have to put in the work - and we have to do it now.
I’m ready. I’m fired up to defeat my MAGA opponent (a man, by the way) and win big in 2024.
With your help, we can do just that - and support other Democratic women who are looking to get Congress back to the business of governing. Will you chip in any amount right now?
And one more thing: After all this, I *never* want to hear that women are “too emotional” for elected office ever again.
Thanks for reading and for your support!
-Sara
