Democrats Launch The Last Weekend As Largest Grassroots Army Ever Assembled For Midterm Elections

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Nearly two dozen top progressive groups which include Swing Left, Indivisible, MoveOn, Organizing for Action, Latino Victory, United We Dream and the Working Families Party will launch on Wednesday a massive get-out-the-vote effort aimed at helping Democratic candidates during the last days of the 2018 midterm elections. 

Organizers say the effort, dubbed “The Last Weekend,” is focused on recruiting the largest grassroots army ever assembled before a midterm election — one that will not just vote for Democratic candidates but volunteer for their campaigns.

“The stakes are so high that voting isn’t enough,” said Ethan Todras-Whitehill, executive director and co-founder of Swing Left, which is organizing the effort. “You’ve got to do more. The new bar is not just voting, but volunteering in key races that matter for determining control of the government.”

“I can’t think of another time where you had this diverse array of progressive organizations coming together the last weekend before an election,” said Cristobal Alex, presidential Latino Victory, which is part of the effort. “Not just to get out the vote, but to mobilize an army of super volunteers ahead of the vote.”

A Defiant Emmy Awards Show Finds Backbone For Women From Handmaids To Victims Of Domestic Abuse

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A Defiant Emmy Awards Show Finds Backbone For Women From Handmaids To Victims Of Domestic Abuse

No more listening to talking heads make their Emmy Awards predictions. Boy did those guys screw up . . . and they were mostly guys, if I think about it. Perhaps they got it wrong, because as Joanna Robinson writes for Vanity Fair: "the Emmys raised a surprising middle finger to the patriarchy."

On the same Sunday that America's asshat president was Tweeting a meme of him driving a golf ball into Hillary Clinton, knocking her down as she boarded a plane, it was revenge of The Handmaid's Tale in LA on Sunday evening. Yes, 'Big Little Lies' was expected to take home some statues, but no one predicted that the evening would become a fierce of women's rights under total threat by the Trump administration. 

The night was anti-Trump and the Saturday Night Live wins were not as pro-women as anti-Trump, even if Kate McKinnondid wear a white pantsuit and thank Hillary Clinton. 

Leave it to Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton to go off-script, bringing the sassy tone of their '9 to 5' movie to the stage in Los Angeles.  “Back in 1980, in that movie, we refused to be controlled by a sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical, bigot,” Fonda said. “In 2017, we still refuse to be controlled by a sexist, hypocritical, lying, egotistical bigot,” Tomlin chimed in to massive cheers from a liberal audience totally Trumped out. The night's first standing ovation for feminism was in the house.  

Then came the night's big surprise, and it wasn't big wins for 'This Is Us', the predictable family drama. 

Older Women Make Major Progress In 2015 Emmy Award Nominations

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Anne is reading …

Emmy Awar Nominations: Full List of 2015 Emmy NomineesVariety

15 Of The Emmys’ 18 Leading Actress Nominees Are Over 35 Huffington Post

The 2015 Emmy Nominees are noteworthy in the women’s category for age diversity. In the category for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, Amy Schumer is the youngest at 34, and Lily Tomlin at 75 replaces Betty White as the oldest nominee in the category. White was nominated at 69 for ‘Golden Girls’ in 1991. Tomlin costars with Jane Fonda in the Netflix show ‘Grace and Frankie’.

Two African American women in their 40s are nominated for lead actress in a drama — Taraji P. Henson and Viola Davis). Davis said in a roundtable for The Hollywood Reporter, “I had never seen a 49-year-old, dark-skinned woman who is not a size two be a sexualized role in TV or film… I’m a sexual woman, but nothing in my career has ever identified me as a sexualized woman. I was the prototype of the ‘mommified’ role.”

Zeba Blay writes for Huff Po:

Hollywood perpetuates the straight male fantasy that every woman who is on screen, no matter her age or station in life, should be “fuckable” (in the eyes of white heterosexual male viewers). But this year’s Emmy nominees prove that pandering to that kind of audience is unnecessary and boring — there’s so much more out there. Davis doesn’t have to play the mom or the “Law & Order” judge just because she’s 49, and conversely Amy Schumer doesn’t have to play the dumb blonde type — instead, she can satirize it.

If substantial progress has been made on age and racial diversity, Variety reminds readers that only three women were nominated out of 23 in top writer-director categories. The Academy promoted this reality as a 60% increase in the number of women nominated, but Variety pans this fact “at a time when the market place for TV series is expanding rapidly.”