they re coming up with new ideas about how to organize. they are talking to each other in their anger and shock. they have formed new networks and the beginnings of new coalitions. they are learning about some of the history of progressive activism. they are learning about, in some cases, their own racial and class privilege and the way that it has blinkered them in the past. these are conversations i have had with women around the country in the past few weeks who i don t think would have had these kinds of conversations three years ago, five years ago. you know, that point is really interesting because i ve been watching interviews with some of the women who are sort of doing this volunteering, particularly in places like orange county or suburban virginia where you have a volunteer base that is largely white, relatively affluent, upper middle class women, it s not just that they re invested. their actual politics and world view is changing through the sort of experience of doing t
it has blinkered them in the past. these are conversations i have had with women around the country in the past few weeks who i don t think would have had these kinds of conversations three years ago, five years ago. you know, that point is really interesting because i ve been watching interviews with some of the women who are sort of doing this volunteering, particularly in places like orange county or suburban virginia where you have a volunteer base that is largely white, relatively affluent, upper middle class women, it s not just that they re invested. their actual politics and world view is changing through the sort of experience of doing the work. absolutely. they are learning things every day. and in many cases, because we have a roster, a historic number of women candidates, women of color candidates, candidates of color, candidates with progressive left politics, a lot of them find themselves in this position of doing work on behalf of black women, women of color running
something. generally the one thing that donald trump defied history in 2016 and the 2017 off year elections ran according to his president s approval ratings. your party gets shellacked. in january, they are trying to plot a path to november. we have to try any time we can to make it not about president trump, but something else. they re in a bind because even though the president s numbers are consistently in the 30s, the bulk of the most partisan activists are still with him. i talked about this challenge with folk who is worked for gilespie in virginia. we talked about the challenge and the problem we had is you can t abandon trump even though we know we are going to get polar for it. not only do you anger a lot of your voters, you lose your volunteers. it s impossible to run a campaign without a volunteer base. knocking on doors and making
line. the problem, the party never belt with it. absent frustration growing beneath them, if you will, they sort of papered over it, until trump became their champion. this is where are, jennifer, abortion is actually the perfect example. the republican party leadership, is there any bigger set of promises that they have, that they have broken with a community than their promises on abortion to the social conservative community who has been the most important volunteer base of the republican party? the most important small donor base? and every pla phis just one portion of the electorate. isn t that how trump got here? basically able to expose the establishment s, you know, they ve been b.s.-ing you, whether on abortion, immigration for all of these years? that s part of it but i think it goes back to the southern strategy and to richard nixon. there has always been a populist core in the republican party.
it to rockport, one of the communities hardest hit. they received the brunt of the storm. what are you seeing on the ground and how are you coping? thanks for having us. we have a volunteer base of operation set up in rockport and that area is absolutely devastated. what you would think of is category three, category four damages. the biggest thing that really captures our heart is that the people are in shock, they ve lost everything, one lady returned home and looked at me and my eyes, full of tears and said my home is gone. molly: i know you must be seeing those heartbreaking things, we are going to pause your interview for one moment. the latest will be monday.