Happy Birthday #2 Good News!

This week’s Good News from the Resistance: Happy 2nd Birthday to Good News! It’s hard to believe that what started as a whisper in my ear two years ago is still going strong (albeit, a tad less frequently). What was my motivation? It’s explained in the Inaugural Issue, which featured a selfie of Yours Truly flanked by friends Marjorie and Rosalind, as we stood in line at the supermarket after scoring a family-size container of Cheetos. That night I was hosting a sign-making party for the next day’s Inaugural Women’s March. Guess what we did with the Cheetos?

This week, I re-read all 80 issues of Good News. My conclusion?  We, the Resisters, have been successful beyond my wildest dreams at staying the course and living our mission: to dilute, delay, and defeat Trump’s nefarious plans. If you don’t believe me — or don’t remember details of the last action-packed two years — jog your memory with this Good News 2 Year Birthday Recap. Rejoice. Then get back to work!

• Indivisible started it all, urging us to show up and kick up a fuss at GOP Town Halls. Tea Party star Dave Brat (R-VA) was one of many legislators who complained about being held accountable to his constituents, when he famously whined, “the women are in my grill no matter where I go.” One of those pesky, out-spoken women, Abigail Spanberger, now holds the former Congressman’s seat.

• Activists across America organized into scores of groups, all with a single goal: Turn Congress blue. Along the way, groups like Swing Left, Sister District, Let America Vote, Black Voters Matter, and Flippable started laying the groundwork for future elections, shining a light on the GOP’s smarmy voter suppression and gerrymandering.

• From the start, Our Meanie-in-Chief’s agenda was to erase all that Obama had done. Topping his list: Repeal Obamacare. With Republicans holding both houses of Congress, the Great Negotiator failed. John McCain’s vote against the repeal was perhaps the most stunning moment in C-SPAN’s history.

• Resistance comes in many forms. States figured out how to Resist. So did the Art Institute of Chicago. And Stormy. And a trove of former White House employees.

• Our Misogynist-in-Chief motivated a 1,000% increase in women candidates. A harbinger of what was to come: They started winning down-ballot special elections.

• Democrat Doug Jones won in Alabama – prevailing against the sexual molester Trump supported.

• Tina Fey’s SNL response to the Charlottesville march was pitch-perfect. She reminded us to resist and eat more cake. And grilled cheese.

• Mueller signaled he was going in for the kill, squeezing our Liar-in-Chief’s Inner Circle “like a tube of toothpaste.” By Spring 2017, the White House had started to lawyer up. Campaign manager Paul Manafort is going to jail, and a handful of others (so far), thanks in large part to Mueller’s “prosecutorial masterpieces.”

• Our Grifter-in-Chief’s Cabinet members learned the hard way that the American people didn’t want to pay for their families to travel on private jets, nor did we care for them using their positions to enrich companies like Halliburton.

• The list of Trump Administration casualties (so far) is simultaneously heart-swelling  and astounding.

• In the wake of the Parkland massacre, young people became radicalized and unleashed their power by organizing a National School Walkout for over 1 million students.

• Last November, our Resistance work paid off mightily, when the midterm elections ushered in the most diverse Congress in U.S. history.

• Icing on the cake? Maddow beat Hannity. Mar-a-Lago’s gala business is down. Our Idiot-in-Chief’s favorite pollster is typically wrong. And there’s an ironic sense of justice in a TV-addicted, lazy, illiterate, Angry Creamsicle coming to the rescue of the publishing industry. (Not that we judge).

We are what Democracy looks like.