What’s happening?

Donald Trump will be the 45th president of the United States. He is projected to win 305 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton’s 233.

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a projected margin of 1.2%.

Republicans also won majorities in the House (239 to 193) and Senate (51 to 48).

Why is it important?

A Republican President, House, and Senate may make changes to tax policy, health care, immigration, climate change, and foreign affairs, not to mention the Supreme Court. In the coming weeks, we will address each of these issues.

This week, we examine one much-discussed topic: Clinton’s gender. After an election marred by overt sexism and complicated by gender politics, 54% of all women voted for Clinton. 53% of white women, however, voted for Trump.

Clinton would have been the first female president and her loss is deeply personal to many. In her concession, she spoke directly to young women and girls: “To all the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.”

Clinton was the first earn a major party nomination for president, but she was not the first woman to run. According to the Smithsonian, more than 200 women have run for president. Here are several of the most important:

• 1872: VICTORIA WOODHULL

  • Woodhull ran for president almost 50 years before women gained the right to vote in 1920. She could not vote for herself.
  • She and the Equal Rights Party, which nominated her, tagged Fredrick Douglass as her running mate—but the two never campaigned together.
  • There is no record that her votes were ever counted.

• 1972: SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

  • Chisholm was the first black woman elected to Congress in 1968, and ran for the Democratic Party nomination for president in 1972.
  • At the Democratic National Convention that year, she won 10% of the vote.
  • In an interview afterward, she said, “I want history to remember me… not as the first black woman to have made a bid for the presidency of the United States, but as a black woman who lived in the 20th century and who dared to be herself. I want to be remembered as a catalyst for change in America.”

• 2012 AND 2016: JILL STEIN

  • Stein ran as the Green Party nominee in both 2012 and 2016.
  • Running against Clinton, Stein argued that “there is another feminist choice, which is consistent with the broader principles of feminism.”
  • Stein earned .36% of the popular vote in 2012 and 1% in 2016.

These are only a few of the many women who have run for president, not to mention those who have run for vice-president (Sarah Palin, Geraldine Ferraro, and more), as well as other offices and leadership roles. We are living in their legacy.

Discuss it:

This section is usually a highly charged two-sided debate. This week, we’re changing that. Honest debate is important, and The Short Version is committed to it, but at moments like this it is crucial to break down the idea that there are two sides at all. These responses are drawn from Short Version readers and community members, all either written for this post or reshared here with permission.

What’s next?

CAMERON RUSSELL, WRITER, PRODUCER, ACTIVIST, VICTORIA’S SECRET MODEL:

There will be 100 what-nows, but here is what I think you can do today.

Make sure you (1) hire, (2) pay well, and (3) listen to women, to people of disabilities, to non-binary, queer, and LGBT people, to people of color, and, especially, to women of color. Start this process today. [For those who work in fashion], change your casting. Put black and brown people on your covers. Sign them for your biggest contracts. Make sure someone from your permanent team is from a population vulnerable to President Trump.

The media is already trying to normalize Trump (turn on CNN to see what that looks like). And our most prominent leaders (Obama, Clinton, Sanders, Warren, etc) will try to make him seem passable—none of them want the markets to crash. Listen to the tepid language they use to describe an openly racist, sexist, incompetent human who has only seem failure in his career and has been accused of sexual assault, rape, and fraud, and was forced to settle 13 employment-related lawsuits and a racial discrimination lawsuit. It will be easy to be lulled by the siren call of mainstream media.

We have 70 days until he is sworn in. Make sure you can hear people who will be better tuned to his violence. We didn’t hear them before the election. Every media outlet and poll had the predictions wrong. Let’s make sure we can hear them and follow them into battle when it matters most.

AKINYI PALMER-OCHIENG, WRITER AND MSC GLOBAL POLITICS CANDIDATE, LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS: 

The phrase that stood out most to me this election was Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, we go high.”

As a black immigrant woman, I am so deeply hurt by the millions of people who voted for a candidate that shows such open contempt for me, my family, my sisters by birth and by choice, and my people.

But considering the appropriate course of action during the next dark four years, I cannot help but think of the young girls affected by this election. Almost a third say Trump’s candidacy makes them less likely to want a leadership position; over 40% say his words have fueled insecurity about body image. Despite the muck that Trump and his racist, misogynist administration might throw our way, I want those girls to aim high. To transcend the vitriol. Because if we don’t invest in them, and encourage them, we do an even greater disservice to the next generation. In 1996, then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote a book called It Takes A Village in which she wrote that “we are living in an interdependent world where what our children hear, see, feel, and learn will affect how they grow up and who they turn out to be.”

I’m still figuring out my long-term activism goals, but in the short term, I am checking in with my mentees and hoping to reach out to more young girls, especially girls of color. To help them maximize their potential, I am striving to help them recognize the power they hold in their own lives and within their communities.

I hope you join me in doing the same—and share ideas on what we as individuals and communities can do to support anyone feeling marginalized on both sides of the aisle.

Here are a few great organizations working to support women of color:

• Black Women’s Career Network
• National Coalition of 100 Black Women
• National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs
• Black Girls Rock

ADRIANNA PARADISO, MANAGER, PARADISO ROSEN MANAGEMENT:

We embrace the democratic system and move ahead with the vote of the people. What happens next will rely solely on Donald Trump and his decisions and actions. He may succeed or not—and that will be his legacy .

While I am not representative of middle America America Trump supporters, I can relate more to them, their fears, their lack of economic success, their being disdained by the bi-coastal liberal intellectual elites, and not getting any preferential minority treatment—even though they play by the rules.  I feel the same—I play by the rules, pay a lot of taxes, and no politician is accommodating me.  On the contrary, I’m just supposed to pay the bill and freely giving my money to however the government deems fit—even if I don’t agree—and I’m silently angry.  In any case, I am cautiously optimistic about a Trump Presidency.  The silent angrys have spoken, and while Trump has to deliver, it is our obligation as a country to give him a fair chance to lead.

[One note: If you have a view you would like to share that you feel is not represented here, please send it in.]

ELENA DI ROSA, PHILOSOPHY PH.D. CANDIDATE, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY:

I am responsible and accountable for this election result. Evidently, I live with so much privilege that I am shocked by the outcome when some are not. I didn’t realize that prejudice still runs this deep in this many, nor did I realize that the majority of Americans feel this forgotten by and disillusioned with government. I have been searching for someone to blame for this tragic outcome, and I should start with myself. I pledge to put my actions where my mouth is during the next 4 years so that the kind of ignorance and passivity I have displayed do not once again allow something like this to happen.

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