Melissa Roth -- Freespeak Blog

It's sort of my worst nightmare come to life—to be back in the psychologically and physically abusive home I grew up in.  After 40 years of working my way out, here I am.  Those of us who come from that world are survivors.  We survived and I survived at tremendous cost and using whatever tools we could find.  I know that the compulsion I feel right now is to go back to those habits and patterns that got me through the first 18 years of my life.  I was a moving hiding target.  It is hard to hit a moving target and hard to be attacked if someone doesn't see or notice you.  So, you try to blend in and hide and stay out of sight.  And when you are in sight, you are quiet, you make yourself small.  Because when the person with all the power and authority in your life is erratic, raging, vengeful, and screaming you live in fear.  And if you can, you run.  Having that kind of person with all the power in my life now brings back a...

I am going to buck a popular premise here.  Hillary Clinton didn’t lose because she was an establishment candidate.  She lost because Donald J Trump was the only person who could’ve beaten her.  Hillary Clinton could have beaten  any other candidate.  She would have mopped the floor with Kaisch, Bush, Rubio, Cruz, Christie, or Walker with her experience, her policies, her knowledge, and her strength.  Hillary came out stronger for improving the ACA, college affordability, tax code fixes, overturn Citizen’s United, women’s rights including equal pay and family leave, overturn Hyde, protect Roe vs Wade, gun safety laws, protect the environment and go to clean energy, fix the voting rights act, make registering to vote automatic and appoint liberal Supreme Court Justices.  None of the rest would have elicited the same enthusiasm from the swathes of white voters and the fringes of the alt-right, in addition to mainstream republicans.  I am s...