Mad, Mad As Hell, & Madder Still: Hillary Women One Year Later Punch Our Way To The Voting Booths | Take Note, We Are Just Getting Started

It's one year later -- one of the worst nights of my life. I drank more vodka than I want to admit. If Mika on Morning Joe opened her Bernie-loving trap on Nov. 9, I would throw a high heel at the TV and hopefully smash her away forever. 

Writing for Harper's Bazaar, Jennifer Wright reflects on that awful night a year later and the day after women hit the voting booths, inflicting serious pain on the Republican party in our first reckoning after Hillary's defeat. 

I watched as millions of women excitedly gathered in secret groups to support Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. There they talked about what an exciting moment in history this was. They did not venture out because their husbands might not like their vote, or Bernie voters might yell at them, or someone at their work might not like it. We saw at the time, I think, no contradiction in being posed on the edge of ultimate victory for womankind and also secreting ourselves away to make ourselves completely unobjectionable. We were always supposed to be unobjectionable.

So quietly, unobjectionably, we waited. We baked cakes, and chilled champagne, and put stickers on suffragettes graves. And so many of us thought how especially satisfying it would be to see a woman win against a man who was repeatedly accused of sexual harassment, who bragged about sexual assault, who seemed to embody the worst of what women encounter from men.

"It became clear that you can be the most qualified woman and still lose to the least qualified man."

On November 9, we woke up, and Donald Trump had been elected.

That was like a spell being broken. All across the land, women woke up and realized we were never going to get where we wanted to go by playing by the rules. Even if you walked the tightrope of acceptable feminine behavior perfectly, even if you managed to sidestep every trap laid for women, you would still never to get to the top. The bar for men was so low they could slither right over it.

And I think something inside us broke. Some dam within so many women that kept them quiet, that kept their anger tucked away, pent up all the times women smile politely when we feel like screaming. That dam burst.

And every furious moment we’d tried not to think about came flooding forth. We were awake, and we were righteously angry.

NJ John Carman Now Has Time To Cook His Own Damn Dinner As Ashley Bennett Gains Sweet Revenge

John Carman, a Republican member of the Atlantic County Board of Chosen Freeholders, a county legislative body in New Jersey, posted a meme on his Facebook page in January making fun of the Women’s March. Ashley Bennett was not amused . . . and so she beat him out of office. 

By now women should find a sense of humor, right? John Carman, a Republican member of the Atlantic County Board of Chosen Freeholders, a county legislative body in New Jersey, wondered in January 2017 if the millions of women -- accompanied by beyond decent numbers of men -- who attended the Women's March would be home in enough time to cook dinner. New Jersey resident Ashley Bennett was not amused.

"Seriously," Carman responded when dozens of women showed up at a freeholder meeting , one carrying a box of macaroni and cheese and telling Carman to "cook his own damn dinner."  Professing good humor and urging women to find the same, Carman insisted that ". . . the women I'm surrounded by, my family, my friends, my colleagues are all strong, confident women, women who are sure of themselves. They didn’t get offended by this." Vox explains:

Bennett, a psychiatric emergency screener, attended the meeting but walked out when she heard Carman’s response. "I walked out because you had the entire time to sit and collect your thoughts, and hear what people were saying, and instead of apologizing and saying you could do better, you disrespect people and say the people you surround yourself are strong," she said at the time. "There are a lot of people who are strong."

Adding to Ashley Bennett's irritation was Carman's fashion choice of wearing a confederate flag over his state of New Jersey patch. Other voters agreed. So Bennett -- who had never run for a political office -- ran for Carman's seat and she beat him. The fact that Democratic US Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand from New York read Carman's sexist comments on 'Lovett or Leave It' probably helped her candidacy. But bottom line, Bennett opened up her own vocal box windows and said "I'm not taking this anymore." 

“People want change,” Bennett said after her win. “I am beyond speechless and incredibly grateful to serve my community. I never imagined I would run for office.”

Bennett was embraced by progressive national groups like Run for Something . “Ashley’s story makes me so damn happy,” tweeted Amanda Litman, a former Hillary Clinton campaign staffer and a Run for Something founder. Producers from the Lawrence O’Donnell show on MSNBC invited Bennett to appear on the show Wednesday night. We'll be tuning in.