For months, Democrats have identified themselves with the diffuse cultural energy known as “the resistance.” Now that public outrage is actually beginning to create change, by pushing serial predators out of positions of power, the Democrats — and other progressive political institutions — are facing a moment of reckoning. It can be an ally of the emergent social movement against a culture of serial harassment and “open secrets,” or it can be a partner of convenience.

“Black women have been the most loyal supporters of the Democratic Party, through thick and thin,” Avis Jones-DeWeever, an adviser to the Black Women’s Roundtable, said during September’s Congressional Black Caucus conference. She said the party has focused more on wooing back “white male voters who have not supported the Democratic Party for 50 years” rather than “watering the garden in your own back yard.”