Thanks for the much needed hope, America.

(Image of a 10-year-old girl named Macy, who had a moment of genuine excitement when she and her family ran into Hillary Clinton getting coffee in Denver on Monday, Oct. 13, 2014. Photo via screen grab, via video from Chicago Sun Times.)

With less than a week to go until Election Day, Americans have already cast a record number of votes, with many waiting in lines for hours to make their voices heard. Over 62 million early ballots have already been counted, which is setting us up for historic levels of turnout on Nov. 3, 2020. This notable increase firmly establishes the line in the sand, a boundary that could only be considered ephemeral, and this surge is happening now thanks to women and young voters.

I’m not sure if this unexpected turnout is catching me off guard because I have become so entrenched in skeptical caution lately, but regardless of my addled perception — it is filling me with something I have not felt in so long…hope. The last time around, white women let us down big time. Just putting that reminder from 2016 out there is like a perpetual punch in the gut for all of us who worked so hard to see the dream of our first female president realized. Now, women are mobilizing to do the right thing, even if it is motivated in theory by the patriarchy and it is happening four years too late. I won’t forget, but this increased female civic participation is seriously helping me to forgive.

Maybe this is a case of self-actualized delusion, but it’s possible that many women are motivated by what is pushing me to back this Democratic ticket — Kamala Harris. If we can’t shatter that glass ceiling entirely this year, we might as well slap another crack in it and hope that this one is big enough to create a collapse of the entire structure.

In August, the Biden-Harris campaign received more than $33.4 million in itemized contributions from women, which is more than double the $13.7 million collected the previous month from female donors. While it is still discouraging that the Trump campaign was able to raise $8.7 million in contributions from women during the same month, the fact that the Biden campaign outpaced him so significantly is impressive.

Polls show Trump is consistently falling behind Biden when it comes to female approval. In 2016, Trump averaged a 5 point advantage among white women after Sanders exited the race. Biden is currently leading by 18 points with white women demographic now, as compared to 2016. Trump has been up by an average of 20 points this year with white men, as compared to 24 points in 2016 — which means nothing much has changed with this demographic (insert jokes here) and this has created an impressive 30 point gender gap among white voters, compared to the 20 point gap in 2016. 

Amee Vanderpool @girlsreallyrule

Black women are the only group we can completely trust to vote their interests, and not diverge into some BS agenda peddled to them by white men-don't ever forget that.

Trump begging suburban women for their help, after he again miscalculated who women really are and what they do, has been an added bonus. Trump didn’t seem to get the memo thirty years ago that white women in the suburbs also work, and that not all of them are as petrified of crime as he needs them to think they are. His attempts to lure white women in the suburbs with more racist rhetoric, like the one about how he's helping protect the suburbs from “low-income” housing by overturning laws aimed at combating racial segregation, is also not working.

Even if it took four years for a majority of white women to come to their senses and do what they should have done in 2016, I am choosing to embrace the shift, rather than dismiss it. I am clutching the motto of “better late than never” so close to me, that she will never escape and tune out her civic duty again.

Hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it. Hope is the belief that destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by the men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.

―Barack Obama

Another fantastic rally is coming from the youth of America (God, I sound old.) People aged 18 to 29 are voting early in huge numbers in states that will be pivotal for both candidates. States like Michigan, Florida and North Carolina are swing states that the candidates must win to secure the election, and the outcomes in these states will likely be determined by younger voters.

As of late October, 257,720 young people had voted in Florida, which is nearly 214,000 more than had voted at that time in 2016. In Texas, nearly 500,000 voters under the age of 29 had voted by Oct. 21. Texas is another pivotal state that has previously been considered such a stronghold for Republicans that it was rarely a factor in election total calculations for Democrats come election night. But, almost 7.4 million people in Texas have cast early votes as of Sunday, and this is 82% of the state's total votes in 2016. Other critical states that could now be in play for either side, such as Montana, North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia have also reached 65% or more of their 2016 vote totals.

It could be easy to get trapped in the fear that all of this increased early voter turnout is just a reflection of the fairly equal political divide in this country, and that supporters of Trump are being fueled by his slipping poll numbers to vote early, and to vote against Biden. While Republicans are expected to amass their largest numbers on Election Day, early voting does favor Democrats based on current data. Moreover, Democrats are also turning out more low-frequency and newly registered voters than the GOP, which means that Biden can expect to pull more new voters.

I have to admit that the stress of the last year, including the pandemic, the plunging economy, the Trump malaise exhaustion and the general worry about the state of things, has made it difficult to get a sense of how people are truly thinking and feeling with regard to this election. I am also painfully aware of certain scientific truths these days, and I think about Newton’s Law of Inertia whenever I analyze human behavior. It perfectly describes the conundrum of Trump, and explains why he still has so much support.

An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force — Newton explains so much about the electorate and human apathy all at once. It is also the only way I can rationally assess behavior I consider to be irrational, such as a person who would willingly vote again for Donald Trump. People in a rut, even if they aren’t inherently racist and horrible, need an exceptionally hard push to help them correct course. I can’t tell if voting in opposition to someone will amount to that same force, like it did when voting for someone as inspirational as Barack Obama.

In 2004, I watched the Democratic National Convention, like it was the police chasing OJ down the freeway in a white Bronco. I also have a phenomenal Al Sharpton impression, so I was responsible for entertaining at my small, nerdy viewing parties as well. It was an exceptionally defeatist time for the country and for my life — we had dealt with Bush stealing the election in 2000, and he was poised again in 2004 to get re-elected.

I was also in my third year of law school, and at this point had become so morose that I overcame a crippling fear of flying by actually wishing for the plane to crash on every take-off when I returned to school, so that I could get some sleep. But something that summer changed when a newly elected Senator from Illinois took the stage — Barack Obama gave me a much needed jolt of electricity by reminding me of the simple truth that our form of democracy is truly brilliant.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness…But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

— Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence

There is nothing else I can do except leave it all out on the field and I have been working on that for more than four years. I have repeated this phrase over and over to people when discussing the election and in response to people asking me how I think it’s going. When the early vote numbers keep steadily increasing at this record pace, I am reminded of why I love this country so much — we often get it wrong, but those who are passionate about getting it right can inspire the necessary corrections that are needed to make us all proud. The truth is, I have no idea how it’s going, but thanks to some ladies and some young people, I now feel like it’s safe to hope, again.

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Amee Vanderpool writes the SHERO Newsletter and is an attorney, published author, contributor to newspapers and magazines and analyst for BBC radio. She can be reached at avanderpool@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @girlsreallyrule.

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