While at work on this issue, I learned that white was the signature color of the suffragettes, who wore long white dresses during their rallies and marches. When I heard that a call had gone out among women supporting Hillary Clinton to wear white on Election Day, I decided to pull out a flouncy white skirt and shirt from my closet. Wearing this hue of summer and hope and purity, I walked out on a soft autumn day under a radically blue sky to cast my vote on this historic occasion—voting for the first woman to be the nominee on a major party ballot.

Here at Vermont Woman we had been moderately confident that Hillary would win and had planned accordingly, with a series of articles. And we were hopeful that Sue Minter would win and had an article in the wings for that eventuality.
I went to bed before I knew the results, but it wasn't looking good. At 2 a.m., I woke up and lay in the dark feeling physically sick—a rough heaviness, some bleak realization, settling over me.

Then, as we all know, the unthinkable happened. I got up Wednesday to rainy blustery weather in South Hero and some seriously bad news. What, a year and five months ago, had started out as the joke campaign of Donald Trump had now, incredibly, become some kind of horrible alternate reality: Trump would be the 45th president of the United States, in what has been called the biggest upset victory in US election history.

Gloria Steinem, now 82, echoed my sentiments when she said, after the election results were in, "Donald Trump is not my president… I'm not going to disobey the law, but I'm not going to pretend he represents me."

Who Voted How?

It's important to note that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. According to Nate Cohn, New York Times polling guru, as of November 12, Clinton had gotten 63.4 million votes to Trumps 61.2 million. Despite Trump's solid electoral college win, he does not have a mandate by any stretch. This country is divided: every other American is in shock and deeply troubled by the outcome of this election—as if that will make any difference to Trump and the Republican majority. Ironically, Trump, at one point, said that the electoral college was a disaster for democracy. I wager he's now quite happy with it.

What has many folks in a spin is how off the polls were. The polls showed Clinton leading in states that Trump wound up winning, such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, and Pennsylvania. What happened? Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, said surveys had undersampled a demographic that strongly supported Trump, whites without a college education. Another suggestion is that many Trump supporters didn't respond to polls, so their numbers were underreported.

Other factors in the upset victory are Clinton's slight underperformance among groups that were expected to give her their full support, such as Hispanic and African American voters. She got 65 percent of the Latino vote and 88 percent of the black vote, whereas Obama racked up 93 percent and 77 percent, respectively. There was likewise a drop-off among young voters, with

Clinton getting 54 percent, versus Obama's 60 percent of four years ago. All these narrowing margins had their impact.
Still other factors are Democratic and Progressive voters who may have sat out the election and voted for no one or who voted for third party candidates. And there are likely numbers of Republicans who did the same: they could not bring themselves to vote for Trump, but they couldn't see voting for Clinton either.

There is something of a gender divide in the electorate. Overall, more men voted for Trump (53 percent to 41 percent), and more women voted for Clinton (54 percent to 42 percent). The percentage difference of 12 points is significant; still plenty of men supported Clinton, and plenty of women went for Trump. In a further breakdown of the vote, it has been noted that the group that especially favored Trump were white men without a college education; a whopping 72 percent of that group cast their votes for him. But 62 percent of white women without college degrees joined their male peers and also voted for Trump.

Sexism has certainly played its part but so has weariness with the status quo. Clinton is smart and eminently qualified. There is no comparison between her and Trump. But it was the year of the alt candidate, and Clinton carried the baggage of being an entrenched member of the political status quo. On both the left and the right there was and is much anger and frustration and loss of trust.

Many Bernie Sanders supporters said in the past and will say again that Sanders would have fared better than Hillary Clinton in this race. Both Trump and Sanders channeled populist energy, but whereas Trump fed on divisiveness and fear, Sanders delivered an inclusive message and rode high on a wave of optimism that he would challenge the oligarchy and be a champion for working families. He has been a vocal proponent for campaign finance reform and managed, unprecedentedly, to fund his campaign with many small donations.

Others feel that Sanders hung in there too long and became a destructive force; he was slow to withdraw and concede the nomination to Clinton and gave too little, too late to her campaign.

The Media, the Money

It didn't help that the media reliably pounced on the e-mail issue, while important issues and policies got put on the backburner. Trump with his volatile off-the-cuff remarks and tweets got plenty of coverage. I confess to being periodically spellbound by the spectacle of this orange-faced man spewing one outrageous remark after another: What new craziness did he say or do today?

And why did people keep supporting him, no matter what?

As is the case more and more in American politics, it's a game of personality and entertainment. Popular culture is ill informed and unreflective, running on celebrity and sensationalism, sound bites and tweets. There is some poetic justice that we've gotten a former TV reality show star as our president—a man who has no real knowledge or sympathy for the middle and working classes but who has managed, by adroitly manipulating the media and his image, to come across as their champion.

Money is behind the media circus, of course. We don't have news; we have infotainment, cause that's where the bucks are—and truth takes a backseat. To be fair, the truth was out there. The media did call Trump out on his lies. But those news reports weren't front and center; if you wanted to find the truth you had to dig a bit. In any event, nothing seemed to matter to Trump's supporters, to the frustration of many: he was Teflon man, able to say and do whatever he wanted. I was heartened that more sober-minded Republican leaders repudiated him, which gave me some hope. But they were, I'm afraid, just seen as part of the untrustworthy status quo.

For me this election once again points up how key campaign finance reform is to restoring our democracy. The system favors those who are wealthy, backed by the political status quo, and funded by corporate donors. And now, with a Trump presidency and a Republican majority, hopes for getting Citizens United overturned are nearly nonexistent.

A Disaster for the Planet

Beyond watching hopes for a first woman president get soundly thrashed was the realization that the country will now be headed by a man who has been openly racist and sexist and espoused radical and destructive stances. Arguably the scariest aspect of Trump is his attitude toward the environment. He has famously called climate change a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.

In a recent interview with Democracy Now, Bill McKibben, environmental activist and cofounder of 350.org, noted that "the Trump presidency comes at a moment when we could least afford it. It's not like we were winning the climate battle before... but we were beginning to make at least a little progress ...Physics is our enemy, and it imposes a difficult time limit herecwe're going to have to figure out, as a nation and, maybe more importantly, as a planet, how to work around Trump, to one degree or another."

Women's Rights, Human Rights

For the women who wanted so much to see, finally, a woman occupying the highest office in the land, this is an unimaginable setback. If Hillary Clinton, the most competent and likely female candidate we've had yet, with years of experience in public service and backed by money and influence, can't make it to the Oval Office, what woman can? Many women despair that it will be a long time before we see another viable woman candidate.

It's well nigh inevitable that we're going to wind up with a far-right Supreme Court. Roe v. Wade is on the chopping block. Planned Parenthood is endangered. The Marriage Equality Act may get repealed. Trump has pledged to get rid of Obama's Affordable Care Act—although he appears open to compromise and may keep key provisions.

Beyond the loss of rights, I'm concerned about the very climate of the country. The election of Trump will now embolden the seamier aspects of the culture. Women and minorities have fought hard for the bit of equality and respect they have garnered. Raising awareness of sexism and racism has been tough and is a work in progress. I fear now that violence against women and other groups—immigrants, Muslims, people of color—will be on the rise.

What to Do

A few have hoped, dimly, that the office of the presidency will in itself have a moderating effect on the man. Some apologists say that Trump's inflated rhetoric on the campaign trail doesn't necessarily indicate what he will do. Others offer that he will have advisers, who may prevent him from shooting from the hip—except under consideration, along with Abell, are the likes of Rudy Giuliani for attorney general and Newt Gingrich for secretary of state. Hardly sober-minded moderators.

The problem is the personality of Trump himself, who plays fast and loose with the facts and does not take criticism well. Will this rather infantile 70-year-old man really change? Worse is the startling lack of balance of power in the government. The Republicans are in control of the executive and legislative branches and with several Supreme Court appointments looming, their influence will be long felt in the judicial branch. Even if, four years down the road, Trump gets kicked out and the power shifts from the Republicans to the Democrats, we will be saddled, in all likelihood, with a conservative majority in the Supreme Court for the next quarter of a century.

It's hard to fathom where we are and how we got here. I was a Bernie Sanders supporter and for a time rode high on a joyous vision that we could really change this country for the better, that we could redress the imbalance of wealth and power. For the first time in my life I gave money to a presidential campaign, all in the spirit of hope. Now that all seems like a faraway summertime dream. When Hillary Clinton became the nominee, I instantly switched my support to her, and I continued to give—although my motivation for giving gradually became one of fear.

It seemed impossible that Trump would win. People were talking about the demise of the Republican Party; party members themselves seemed worried that they had, in Trump, created a monster who in his likely fall would pull down the whole party with him. Democrats felt assured of not just winning the election but of gaining power in Congress.

What a shock to find the world suddenly gone topsy-turvy. It's not the Republican Party that is in shambles, out of power, and bankrupt. It's the Democrats and their Progressive allies that are stunned, picking up the pieces, and about to witness the dismantling of many hard-fought-for programs and legislation. The collective id of the nation, it seems, has been unleashed. We are indisputably an oligarchy, and now we're inching toward fascism.

But we can't afford to give into despair and apathy. Hillary Clinton said it well in her gracious and moving concession speech that caused me to tear up: "Our constitutional democracy demands our participation, not just every four years, but all the time. So let's do all we can to keep advancing the causes and values we all hold dear... never stop believing that fighting for what's right is worth it. It's always worth it."

In two years many congressional seats will be up for grabs, and maybe just maybe we can shift power slightly. Four years, I have told myself, is not that long in the grand scheme of things: it certainly isn't from a historical perspective, and this nation will be able to weather it, ultimately. I have to believe that.

But there are some major catastrophes afoot, the big one being climate change: we have no time to lose. We will have to work together and with determination to slow or halt Trump's destructive agenda. It won't be easy, and it may get ugly. But our very lives and those of our children depend on it.

I began Election Day going to the polls with my 15-year-old daughter to vote for Hillary Clinton to be our first woman president. I ended the day with that same daughter in my arms, sobbing with confusion and despair. That morning I was joyous and hopeful. I spent the day making calls to get out the vote, sending messages of encouragement to my friends running for office, and later anxiously awaiting results in a big room full of nervous Democrats.

I drove home late at night, listening to the radio as Sue Minter conceded the Vermont governor's race, so I could be present for my daughter. I didn't know what to tell my burgeoning feminist about why our country had chosen an unqualified, racist, sexist, mean-spirited man to be our next president. Fear and anger are not good enough explanations.

On Tuesday I was hopeful. On Wednesday I was devastated. Today I am determined. There is clearly so much work to do, and we have no choice but to get it done.

I lead an organization that recruits and trains Democratic women to run for public office. Emerge Vermont, part of a nationwide network of 17 affiliates, was founded three years ago by former governor Madeleine Kunin and a group of women in Vermont politics who saw a need for better preparation and support for women seeking office. The results of this week have underscored the mission of Emerge. Our work is more important now than ever.

Nationwide, women hold fewer than one-quarter of the more than 500,000 elected offices. In many regions or elected bodies, women hold even fewer positions. The representation for women of color compared to their percentage of the population is even more abysmal. The vast majority of elected officials in our country are still white men.

The simple truth is not enough women are running for office. Women face structural and personal barriers that prevent them from becoming candidates—a lack of confidence or ambition, inequities in domestic and workplace divisions of labor and compensation, a paucity of role models, and an expensive, polarized elections process that generally favors incumbents.

Women are less likely to see themselves as elected officials, and other people are less likely to see them as candidates.Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton's experience has highlighted the fact that in many cases, when women do run, they face a double standard with which male candidates simply don't have to contend. Women must be likeable and strong to get votes and positive media attention. Likeable women are often not seen as strong, and strong women are often not likable.

While the blatant misogyny directed at Clinton by her opponent, his followers, and many members of the media may be extreme, most women candidates for public office at all levels report that they must contend with questions and criticism about their families, appearance, qualifications, voices, and choices that are simply not directed at male candidates. The sexist double standard is real, and detrimental to women who seek office, discouraging more women from running.

We need more women in office because it turns out that women govern differently, and oft times more effectively. Women tend to be more collaborative leaders than men, and they get more done. Women diversify nearly all public decision-making bodies, and diverse groups make better decisions. Women lead with compassion and focus on issues that are often overlooked by men.

Women in office are better for our daughters. It turns out that when there are more women in public leadership positions, parents have higher aspirations for their daughters' futures, and girls themselves have higher aspirations for what they can do. Having more women in office changes how society thinks about women and girls, and how we think about ourselves.

Running for office is extremely hard work. It's time-consuming, expensive, and emotionally and physically draining. Campaigning takes a toll on everyone involved, especially women who contend with the added weight of sexism, of doing everything men do "except backwards and in high heels." It will only get easier if more women run and win. If we don't want Clinton's efforts to be in vain, we need to ask women to run and support them when they do. We need to hold our government, the media, our political parties, and ourselves accountable for how we treat women candidates and leaders. We need men to be our partners and supporters, and to create space for women to have a meaningful place at the table.

There is no question we are a country wounded and divided. The presidential election unleashed a hell storm of hatred and proved that sexism and racism continue to be strong and destructive forces in America. For those of us who want to ensure progress toward a more equitable and just society, we have to recommit to the work of making it happen.

It remains possible that the potential for human civility will overcome the ability for human cruelty, that love will trump hate. So, let's get to work, for our country, our state, and our children.