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While the tension and emotion of the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford and the defense of Brett Kavanaugh had subsided on Friday, one thing was clear: for legions of women stuck on the radio or television, these audiences were more than policies. They were personal.
"As a woman, if you are semi-socially active and you have a group of friends and you have never heard of sexual abuse committed on your friends, I wonder from where you come from, "said Phyllis Moore, a retired nurse. practitioner and former member of the San Mateo / Foster City School Board.
While members of the GOP Senate Judiciary Committee were advancing Kavanaugh's Supreme Court application to the Senate as a whole, even though they claimed that they found Blasey Ford credible, the hearings became a painful reprimand #MeToo movement for some women and a reminder for many that the war of the sexes was far from above.
"I feel stressed, nervous, tired, angry and desperate for justice. How many #metoo waves will it take? "Said Seo-Young Chu, who last year accused a Stanford professor, who has died, of sexually assaulting her while she was a student.
Cynera Dodati, a 22-year-old biomedical engineering graduate in San Jose State, said she could relate to Blasey Ford's experiments. "It was really painful to watch," she said.
Samantha Corbin, a Californian lobbyist who co-founded the We Said Enough movement in Sacramento nearly a year ago to shed light on sexual harassment and political aggression, also described a visceral reaction to the violence. ; hearing. "I was torn between my tears and, frankly, my rage was blind," she said.
Political experts believe the hearings could have a profound impact on the upcoming mid-term elections, potentially leading to a new year for women, nearly 27 years after Anita Hill accused Supreme Court candidate Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment. Thomas won his vote in the Senate, but a record number of women, including Senator Dianne Feinstein, were elected to Congress in 1992 after her confirmation. Already this year, a record number of women – 200 – are coming to the House.
The response of women will depend largely on the final outcome of the confirmation process, according to some strategists and experts.
"The only thing that could increase women's voter turnout in relation to the Kavanaugh hearing is a Kavanaugh confirmation," said Dan Schnur, former GOP strategist who is now a lecturer at the Annenberg School of Communication's # 39; USC.
Kevin Eckery, Republican strategist in Sacramento, said he doubted the audience would change the opinion of many voters in the mid-term, but agreed that it could increase voter turnout and increase voter turnout. enthusiasm of educated women from the suburbs who oppose Trump – a key constituency in California's many competitive districts spreading out of Orange County.
Blasey Ford's testimony "was fascinating and cruel and affected a lot of people," said Eckery. Between members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, all male members of the GOP, and the angry comments of some senators, "the optics were still very bad" for the party, he said. "It was authentic and unusually real for something that was happening in the Capitol Building."
For Jacquie Heffner, a member of the Central Committee of the Santa Clara County Democratic Party, watching the audience was horrible.
"Any woman who has experienced such trauma can tell you that there are things you remember and others you do not remember," she said. a pause as his voice began to crack. "It's hard to talk about things that have hit so close to home."
Heffner, 59, attended Catholic schools in San Francisco in the 1970s. That day, she said, the women did not speak up. Today, she said, "They do not take it like me, as many women of my age have taken things." Heffner hopes that today 's women, who have seen all male senators at the hearing, become inspired by politics. and vote, she fears that the lesson will be the same: "The women are still learning that's what he said," she said, "and the guy usually wins.
The Democrats hope that the fury generated by the hearings will help convince the voters who want to send a message to the Trump administration.
"Every woman college graduate knows exactly what happened to Christine Blasey Ford," said Katie Merrill, Democratic Strategist for the PAC Fight Back California. "Every college graduate woman knows that she's telling the truth, knows guys like Brett Kavanaugh and has had that bad behavior every time she's gone to a campus night."
Merrill said, "This is a crucial moment in our cultural history where we, as a nation, must face the fact that women must be respected and heard."
But Ray McNally, a Republican strategist in Sacramento, said the audience was likely to "also bail out Republicans," Kavanaugh's inflammatory defense inspiring his followers.
"Party loyalty is the highest I know, and I've been doing it for 40 years," McNally said. GOP voters and Democrats – both men and women – tend to stay with party candidates, he said. "It will encourage women to vote," he admitted, "but they do not vote like a monolith."
Assembly member Catharine Baker, a moderate Republican from East Bay, said she thought it would be a disservice for victims of sexual assault to transform the treatment of such people. complaints into a partisan political issue. "By putting this right in electoral politics, I think it belittles not only Ford's testimony, but also what we should be working on, as a community and as a nation," she said Friday.
Baker was relatively new to the job market at Thomas's hearings. But she said that she wanted her own daughter, now a teenager, to see that the country can handle the current situation better than it did 27 years ago.
Democrat Katie Hill, who sits in a competitive Los Angeles County seat, watched Thursday's audience with her staff. She said Blasey Ford had spoken of her own experience, "but for so many women, her words represented our own silenced stories."
"This question is not partisan – assaults and harassment do not just happen by party or gender," Hill said.
Some Democrats hope that the anger generated by the debates will push women to become more politically active, but some argue that Kavanaugh's confirmation could have the opposite effect.
If Kavanaugh is confirmed, said Jessica Levinson, a law professor at Loyola, "I think it would be quite understandable for women across the way to feel discouraged. I could see how it would deter people: "I have been fighting for two years and I am fighting and protesting, but it does not seem to have made all the difference."
Editor John Woolfolk contributed to this report.
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