Dianne Feinstein: 2018 Elections Will Be Another ‘Year of the Woman’

"Face the Nation" sat down with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, to discuss the Las Ve

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) told Democratic Party officials in Sacramento, California, on Saturday that the 2018 midterm elections are shaping up to be another “Year of the Woman” that could sweep Democrats into power.

“I predict based on what I see out there that we are going to have another Year of the Woman,” Feinstein said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Feinstein was referring to the first “Year of the Woman,” which was 1992. That November, women flocked to the polls after watching the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He was accused by a former employee, law professor Anita Hill, of sexual harassment. And while the hearings inspired conservatives — like Andrew Breitbart — to champion Thomas’s cause, they also evoked outrage among women who watched a panel of male Senators from both parties question Hill’s integrity, memory, and interpretations of events.

The U.S. House of Representatives’ history page recalls the result (footnotes omitted):

In 1992 women went to the polls energized by a record-breaking number of women on the federal ticket. Nationally, 11 women won major party nominations for Senate races while 106 women contended for House seats in the general election. The results were unprecedented. The 24 women who won election to the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time that November comprised the largest number elected to the House in any single election, and the three women elected to the Senate tripled the number of women in that chamber.

Feinstein was among those female Senators elected in 1992, who is facing a tough primary challenge from State Senate President pro Tem Kevin de León, clearly hopes that history repeats itself with the ongoing national outrage over sexual harassment in both parties, in Hollywood, and the media.

Many liberal women were already angry at the loss of Hillary Clinton in 2016, and the current scandals could fuel that outrage further. Though both parties have been caught up in the scandals — and Hollywood and the media are largely Democrat-dominated — Republicans might suffer more as the party in power. In California, Feinstein clearly hopes women’s votes will keep De León at bay.

“What it means is that we have an opportunity to really turn this next year into a year of change affecting women,” Feinstein said in Sacramento.

Ironically, 1992 also saw the election of Bill Clinton as president, whom liberals are now — belatedly — beginning to reject as the embodiment of sexual harassment and predatory behavior.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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