The Trump campaign's implosion continues today in the wake of even more women coming forward with sexual assault allegations against the human trigger warning. There's also video of him casually hitting on a 10-year-old, and Bloomberg's reported that he rejected his own campaign's efforts to vet him—and so here we find ourselves, weeks away from the general election, as down-ticket Republicans enter damage-control mode and Rush Limbaugh tries to pretzel the literal definition of rape into something the better fits the confines of a liberal conspiracy.
What a time to be alive.
I wrote after the second debate Monday morning that watching this election had stopped being fun. This is still true. It's nothing but tragic that Donald Trump's deplorable (deal with it) behavior towards women was evidently allowed to go on for so long. It is a national embarrassment that a man who apparently congratulates himself on sexual assault and has a track record that includes blatant racism and an array of predatory behaviors—everything from groping to spousal rape—is anywhere near the running to be leader of the free world.
But something's come out of this horrible week that's been oddly gratifying, even as GOPers endorse and unendorse and invoke their daughters and wives: We are finally having a national conversation about sexual assault that acknowledges that if you dehumanize women, there should be consequences. If your mere presence causes women to be "brought back" to their own assaults and various sundry violations that come with being female, you do not deserve to be president.
I'm not surprised by this. However gradually, attitudes toward sexual assault do appear to be shifting. With high-profile cases like those involving Bill Cosby and Jian Ghomeshi making headlines, campus activists filing Title IX complaints against their universities for mishandling their rape cases, public outcries over inadequate punishments in cases like Brock Turner's, and policy changes like ending statutes of limitations on rape and processing rape kit backlogs, the national mood around this issue is changing.
When Donald Trump loses the election in November, it will be because his well-documented habit of using power to belittle and degrade women has become his Achilles heel, alienating women voters and putting him out of step with the American electorate.
Because acknowledging the shift in how we handle sexual assault is a responsibility the President of the United States will need to take on. And when she takes office, I'm confident that Hillary Clinton, who helped found the first rape crisis hotline in Arkansas, can be trusted with it.