Virginia vaginas are safe for now

Tonight Democrat Terry McAuliffe won the VA governors race, defeating regressive Tea Partier Ken Cuccinelli. The later was against abortions in any circumstance, for forced transvaginal ultrasounds, for a fetal personhood bill that would completely outlaw abortion, and remained silent on the Violence Against Women Act. In other words, anti-women.

And it was women that gave McAliffe a narrow victory tonight. Well, some women. While he had the majority of the female vote it was from minorities and the unmarried. White women though went for the regressive by 16 points, married women by 11 points. And the race was close overall, the Democrat winning by only 2.4 points. So it is still disturbing that many women have been brainwashed to vote against their own interests with this backward bully who hates them, or at least wants to keep them in their place.


Nevertheless, McAuliffe won and it's a win for progressive forces over the Tea Party regressives. The hope is that this is a bellwether indicator for the upcoming '14 Congressional mid-terms. That the outcome was decided by unmarried women of color makes the regressive campaign to restrict their voting rights all the more poignant and critical to the mid-terms, since they know they cannot win without such disenfranchisement. Virginia vaginas are safe for now but we must remain vigilant and fight like hell to defeat voter suppression laws going forward. Even without such restrictions outcomes are going to be close like tonight, so every vote will count.