I really have no desire to listen to the coverage of the Supreme Court abortion hearings because it’s a foregone conclusion. They’ve worked for decades to stack the court, they’re gonna do whatever they want to do, and pretending there is some legal justification for what they are going to do and providing a thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires, and I just have no interest listening to bullshit artists put on a show.
Literally the only thing holding them back is personal restraint and a fear of overstepping, and I think maybe only John Roberts is mildly concerned about that. The rest of these guys are fanatics and movement conservatives and like their counterparts in the House and Senate, they don’t give a fuck. They understand what Democrats don’t, which is just use your power now and worry about the consequences later, and 99.99% of the time there won’t be consequences. There never are for Republicans.
Right now we should be focusing on how we can help women get from the deep red states where abortion will be completely outlawed to providers in the remaining states where it will be legal. And sorry to be grim, there will be no solution at the ballot box, because Republicans have things so aggressively gerrymandered that until there are fucking riots, we are looking at majority minority rule for a while.
It’s gonna be grim, so keep your head up and keep working and getting out the vote, it is going to matter. And don’t feel like you failed, this has been inevitable since 2016 when Hillary lost.
And btw- they are coming for contraception and gay marriage next.
Rusty
Listening in while working on other matters, the real issue will be how the supposed reasoning to strike down Rowe sets up striking down other precedent. I think it was Thomas bringing up Lochner (I don’t know the voices well enough to be 100% sure which voice goes with which justice), it’s clear he would like to overrule Lochner and destroy the entire regulatory state. Welcome back child labor! Others want to go after the right of privacy and eventually strike down access to contraception. This will be the jumping off point for a broad attack on a host of issues. The next decade will be ugly.
MazeDancer
Had to stop listening, too. Normally, I feel it my duty to bear witness.
But this time all I could feel was panic to the tune of “They’re coming for you, they’re coming for you. The crazed dominionists won’t stop until every woman, gay person, trans person, atheist, earth-based religion follower, non-christian, or Goddess loving being is locked up, in chains, or burnt at the stake.”
At least I know my female, non-christian, non-submissive self will be among the first groups burnt.
Jim
It’s going to be worse than that. The howler monkeys on the supreme court are not only coming for gay rights and contraception, but worker rights, environmental regulation, and the very underpinnings of the new deal. They’re aiming for a world that makes the dystopian nightmare of 1980s cyberpunk science fiction look positively quaint.
CliosFanBoy
any bets Social Security is on the chopping block too????
Kent
Exactly. I couldn’t listen this morning either.
I am always horrified by the Susan Sarandon mode of political though in which things have to get worse before they can get better. But maybe there is some truth to that with respect to this SCOTUS. People need to wake the fuck up about what is happening with our courts. It’s not just abortion. It’s climate change, voting rights, social justice, health care. Pretty much everything
The GOP no longer has any sort of legislative agenda. For the past decade their only agenda has been “nullification” through the courts. And it is essentially working.
JPL
@Jim: Since a federal judge already ruled that vaccine mandates are unconstitutional, I see OSHA on thin ice.
Eolirin
@CliosFanBoy: This court refused to strike down the ACA, no way they go after SS.
JPL
@CliosFanBoy: Definitely for those under fifty. Fights over Medicare will be interesting because the right will blame Obama care.
The republicans will make changes to both programs, that will weaken them, and thus make them disappear.
J R in WV
Cole said, in part:
While I fully agree with what Cole proposes we should focus on going forward, I foresee one serious problem with it. The RWNJ theocrats will wrap up abortion in a set of arcane religion-based laws that will make it stone illegal to assist, aid, help fund, transport, travel to another place or state for the purpose of even discussing fetal murder.
Let alone facilitating the actual performance of ending a pregnancy, even of an embryo doomed to agonizing death immediately after birth. Which is one of the reasons for late term abortions, to prevent the agonizing and prolonged death of a woman’s child from a terminal condition that is not survivable.
Perhaps the use of the U S Mail to move medical drugs which can cause a miscarriage will be the saving grace once medical procedures become “burn at the stake” banned.
Sorry to be so downer on a nice nearly-winter day. We’re getting light showers so far this morning, which is good, as I hear there is a fire in New River Gorge National Park, and it has been pretty dry lately, a good rain would save us from local brush fires, many started by deer hunters, that season started the Monday before T-day and runs for a couple of weeks in most counties.
They are thick around here…
Also too, on a completely different topic, female kitty Spike with a long running sinus infection ate a good breakfast, after doses of oral antibiotics and several doses of antibiotic nose drops. Think about giving a cat named Spike nose drops for just a moment… She is so named because she is so very sharp! But dear to me. Wish her luck!! She is 15 now, and the Vets think that makes her elderly — I’m 70.98, so not so elderly to me…
schrodingers_cat
So what are BJers going to do? Predict dystopia and promote apathy?
Scamp Dog
@Eolirin: I want to agree with you, but I worry that each success emboldens them, and that they will, before long, go there.
TheTruffle
What is the deal with the Supreme Court commission that Biden put together
Also, what can we do? I’m not about to give up.
Eolirin
@J R in WV: Nah, the real issue here is that once there’s no longer a constitutional protection anymore, they can pass federal legislation baning it everywhere
We can’t ever let them have congress and the white house at the same time ever again.
Eolirin
@Scamp Dog: They’d leave that to congress to do.
Kent
@J R in WV: Maybe so, but they won’t succeed. You can still buy illegal drugs in pretty much every HS in the country. Despite decades and hundreds of billions spent at the Federal level on the “war on drugs”
And Mississippi isn’t going to be able to reach into where I live here in Washington and do anything about information people post online or legal to purchase here drugs being sent to Mississippi via mail or FedEx
The tech savvy young and affluent won’t be particularly affected. A young white college student at the University of Mississippi will probably be able to get whatever they want or need online. It is the poor who lack such access and savvy who will be.
Brachiator
@Kent:
There is rarely any truth to this, and the people like Sarandon who spout this stuff often lead quite comfortable lives even when times are bad.
Things get better when people fight to make them better. This was true yesterday. It is true today. And it will be true tomorrow.
debit
Ugh. I have to tap out again. These discussions make me feel full of impotent rage and hopelessness. For my own mental health I gotta take a break. Peace out.
guachi
This is exactly correct.
Eolirin
@Kent: What they can do is start jailing women of color who have miscarriages by saying they were deliberate.
Hungry Joe
I’m already wondering about the legal vulnerability of those who help women flee to “free” — i.e., blue — states for an abortion. If I go to, say, Mississippi and drive a woman out of state to the nearest abortion clinic, in whatever state that may be, could I be indicted for murder, or conspiracy to commit murder, or whatever, in Mississippi? What if I never enter the state, but arrange for her transportation and for the procedure? And if I’m indicted, would California be required to expedite me?
In short, without the politics: If something is illegal in state A, and I help someone there to go to state B, where it is legal, can state A go after the person I helped, or go after me, now safely back in my home state C?
(Just saw J R in W V’s comment. So, yeah. Exactly. Can they do that — prosecute someone for discussing/aiding someone to break a law in a state where there is no such law?)
Kent
@Brachiator: My point was that way too many liberal-leaning folks in this country have not been paying any attention to the courts. Maybe now they will start. All those centrist white women who voted for Trump because Hillary had cooties for example.
Brantl
@schrodingers_cat: Just because you are counting the enemy’s munitions, doesn’t mean that you are giving up. Quite the contrary.
TheTruffle
@Brantl: So what is next?
Kent
@Eolirin: They are already doing that. And will no doubt continue. My point was that there is still plenty of shit that people can do to fight this stuff. It will be a guerrilla war and there will be casualties. And it will be very ugly. But that’s not a reason to give up and not try.
schrodingers_cat
@Brantl: I see little fighting spirit just doom mongering in the comments and on the front page.
CaseyL
They’re coming for Lochner; Alito and Thomas have already mentioned it.
Quinerly
Listening intently while driving from Albuquerque to the best Green Chile Cheeseburger at the Owl Bar in tiny San Antonio, New Mexico. MSNBC analysis is great. Ruidoso, NM for the night. Hotel room with cable. Will get caught up tonight.
Ella in New Mexico
Pastor Pence says he’s so excited the Court is going to overturn abortion because the “vast majority of Americans” have been working towards this for 50 years”
Guess he hasn’t seen the latest polls on this
MisterForkbeard
One of the few things that gives me hope about all this is that there’s a real and wide understanding that the Supreme Court conservatives literally don’t care about facts or legal arguments. They’re just political actors.
There’s a huge investment in the media and republicans for pretending otherwise, but I don’t think anyone actually believes it. America mostly knows these people are all partisan whackjobs working for the Republican Party.
Assuming we get past the roadblocks they continually throw up, I think that means we have an actual chance at reform and improvement. And an understanding from most democrats not named Sinema or Manchin that we have to take some action.
TheTruffle
@Ella in New Mexico:
This looks like it’ll be a Pyrrhic victory for Pastor Pence and company.
Kent
@Hungry Joe: Many thousands of men and women also fought abortion bans in the many decades before Roe. Some paid a heavy price. That is the nature of these sorts of battles. It will just start all over again. Although this is more likely to be more of a civil war between red and blue states. I don’t see my state of Washington, for example, extraditing someone back to Mississippi for something that is legal in Washington. They will more likely tell them to pound sand using legalese. It will be the poor folks stuck in Mississippi who will bear the brunt of whatever wrath the state deploys in the service of the forced birth movement.
Ella in New Mexico
@TheTruffle: I have a really sick feeling we’re in for a long return on gains for that Pyrrich victory
Brachiator
@J R in WV:
We have been here before. Fugitive Slave laws were resisted and were one cause of the Civil War.
It will be interesting to see whether the Court upholds the Texas law which allows suits against people who aid a woman seeking abortion. We will see just how far the Court is willing to go not just in overturning Roe but in actively trying to stop abortions anywhere.
Conservative states and the GOP at the national level will try to shut this down.
Some on the Court recognize the mischief that will be caused if they formally overturn Roe. The zealots on the Court are eager to do this.
No matter what happens, it will be time to increase efforts to fight these goons.
Wvng
@Ella in New Mexico: In Pence’s mind all real Americans are against abortion. No one else matters.
The Truffle
@Ella in New Mexico: I still suspect a huge backlash to this. And not just in donations to NARAL.
UncleEbeneezer
@Quinerly: When I finally got to visit New Mexico a couple years ago, one of our first stops was Lotaburger. My wife lived in Taos for a couple years and had talked my ear off forever about it being the thing she missed most about NM. It was very good :)
kindness
John’s right. They’ll rule against Roe but they are coming after Griswald. That’s the decision that gave citizens personal liberty and choice as a right of privacy. It’s what allowed for contraception and gay marriage. That is the bridge they really want to burn down.
Roe is dead. We’ll see that. The ‘conservatives’ want Handmaiden’s Tale. We’ll see.
Oh and btw, California is a wonderful and lovely state. Those of you who can’t stand living in a neoreligious/fascist hell hole should consider moving here. It’s really not that much more expensive than other states when you look at the full picture.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
I guess I just don’t understand why they’re so emboldened. Don’t they understand they’ll be placing targets on their backs, especially if they try to go after Griswald?
Brachiator
@Kent:
I disagree. Many have watched as the GOP stacked the Court with conservatives. And we all saw how McConnell obstructed Obama.
More complicated than you suggest. And it is a big lie that a majority of white women voted for Trump. Also, to label them all as centrist means nothing.
The Truffle
@schrodingers_cat: Ditto. I think the backlash is already building. Doomsaying does no good.
Another Scott
We’re not doomed.
Yes, it will be horrible. Yes, this is what they’ve been fighting for for a long time. But they lose with their base if they completely gut abortion rights – they need it to rile up their voters. So, they will do what they can to lop another arm off women’s and reproductive rights, but will claim that it’s still there so that there can be more attacks at the state (and federal) level. These attacks have always been about dividing Democratic constituencies for political power (see, yet again, Jill Lepore’s “Birthright” at the NewYorker). They have to keep it as a cudgel for political power – nothing else works anywhere near as well for them.
Unfortunately, as Churchill supposedly said, (roughly), “Americans do the right thing, eventually, after exhausting all other options.” Supposedly recent polling says 60% of people want to keep Roe while 27% (there’s that number again) want it overturned. Maybe the SCOTUS will win this battle but lose the war because enough people in the mushy-middle will finally decide that the GQP has done too much damage and enough Democrats will be elected to reverse these horrible decisions and policies. Maybe…
We have to continue to do what we can to create the future we want to see. Don’t give in.
Cheers,
Scott.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Brachiator:
So then what are you saying, none of this will matter?
Benw
@J R in WV: fingers crossed for Spike!
Jim
@JPL: Yeah. It’s pretty clear that the majority of the court (and the Trump appointed judges throughout the Federal system) are just political actors intent on advancing a right wing political agenda. They rail against the characterization, but it’s true. Those of us in blue states need to push to include as many protections in our state laws and constitutions as possible so that things don’t go completely to hell.
guachi
Corporate leadership is dominated by men to such an extent that states will suffer low or zero negative effect on businesses by banning abortion. No company in American will refuse to open an office in Texas because of their law. There are no corporations anywhere that will make a show of uprooting their HQ and moving it from Texas. No car manufacturer will close their auto plant in Mississippi because of their law. Banning abortion is a complete freebie.
And with gerrymandering it won’t matter if there is outrage in North Carolina, Ohio, or Wisconsin when a Republican legislature and governor pass and sign a bill banning abortion. It will be impossible for the law to ever be rescinded because there will never be a D legislature in any of those states any time soon.
The only thing most of us can do is refuse to live or visit such states.
Eolirin
@guachi: We could alter the makeup of the court and pass federal abortion rights into law
Outrage leading to Dem Senators in those states would help.
The Truffle
@guachi: So…we just give up? Push for national divorce?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I thought the Brave Widdle’ Culture Warriors were making it clear that miscarriages are going to be the next to be crimizled because they might be stealth abortions. It does strike me that miscarriages are going to be the petard that the Religious Right will be hosted in because they are so boastful about pregnancies that it’s going to be hard to hide it when one fails.
Anyway, they hold up the Texas Bounty law, some blue state should return the favor with the gun manufacturers.
Mary G
I will never stop fighting. I will drive my handicapped van to Idaho, or Utah, or Texas, tour some tourist sites, and drive home with as many passengers as can fit who happen to be women. If I have the money, I will pay for their procedures and hotel and food here in California and then hopefully put them on a plane home. This is a fundamental freedom for me even though contraception worked well for me and I have never been pregnant. I was fortunate enough to have that choice all through my reproductive years and no woman should have any less.
I want to quote Gandalf’s speech to Frodo or Dumbledore’s speech to Harry about acting in the face of what appear to be insurmountable odds, but am too lazy to look them up.
Evil is abroad in our land – I have a doctor’s appointment on Monday and received a stern notice that everyone, patient or not, who steps foot onto the grounds of the facility must wear a mask we will give you at the entrance properly at all times. Yelling, screaming, cursing, or use of physical force against anyone on our staff or other patients will be removed, forcibly if necessary. In California. Five years ago this would’ve been inconceivable.
I am not listening to the hearings or reading the paper. I am back at the infusion center all prepped waiting for my Retuxin to be mixed up and the IV hung, then I am diving into a book that I’ve been waiting breathlessly for, James S. A. Corey’s Leviathan Falls, the tenth and last book in the Expanse series, all written in ten years.
different-church-lady
Underground Railroad, Part II. What a world we’re living in…
Mike in NC
Overturning Roe v Wade would be the long overdue death of the fucking Republican Party.
jonas
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that even if there are some real wacko activists who would *like* to take on contraception and gay marriage next, they’re going to face some serious challenges in doing so. 1. The blowback if Roe is overturned (or, more likely, if the line between Roe and effectively banning abortion gets totally erased) is going to be massive. The dog will have finally caught the car. I don’t think they understand the implications of that and it’s going to keep them preoccupied for a long time. Second, I just don’t think even movement conservatives are interested in going after gay marriage per se anymore. It’s settled and done and the vast majority of Americans either actively support it or at least have made peace with it. They have a new scapegoat: trans and gender non-conforming people. It will be trans bathroom panic 24/7 and shitting on trans people for the foreseeable future (including, alas, their right to marry, adopt, etc.) Lastly, if you think banning abortion is going to make a lot of red states a whole lot more unappealing to particularly multinational companies with diverse workforces, just wait until the state legislature wants to ban the pill. You can (theoretically, if you can afford it) go out of state to get an abortion. You can’t just up and travel to a blue state every time you need to take your pill or buy a box of condoms. Who the hell would want to move their business to a place like that, even if the taxes are low?
Leto
@J R in WV: I posted this in the thread below: ‘A post-Roe strategy’: The next phase of the abortion fight has already begun
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Did you read my comment above where I noted that that Fugitive Slave Acts helped precipitate the Civil War?
What the Court may do matters a great deal. But I am saying that people need to up the fight now. To wait until things get worse, whatever that means, is insane.
Ksmiami
@schrodingers_cat: get ready to burn the fucking country down. I will not live under a goddamn theocracy
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@guachi: So who in their right mind is going to relocate to Texas if they run the risk of being drug into court for murder because their daughter has a miscarriage or some other culture war BS?Sure, it won’t make it impossible to do business in Texas, but it will limit the kind of professionals they can higher to totally NOT gay single white men who don’t mind really hot and humid summers.
Soprano2
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): They don’t care because they are religious fanatics who believe they are absolutely right to restrict women’s liberty in this way.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: I’m back to watching Get Back with my sandwich.
Woodrow/asim
@Leto: YES. The “what we need to do next” bit has been worked by people for DECADES.
Stepping out of the mode where “we” tell “them” how to run their activism, and instead we work with them to actually get enough boots on the ground to make change happen, is crucial.
(If I don’t respond, I’m going thru a lot, so presence here’ll be sparse. But this is important, and I wanted to place a marker.)
Ksmiami
@Kent: they close an abortion clinic, we burn up an evangelical Church. This is war.
Matt McIrvin
@kindness:
Yeah, see what happens when 150 million people try to move in.
bluegirlfromwyo
@Eolirin: That was the court before Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett. I’m not at all that confident about this one.
Leto
@Brachiator:
They’re already doing that: EXPLAINER: Medication abortion becomes latest GOP target
Eolirin
@bluegirlfromwyo: No it wasn’t. The most recent challenge was tossed earlier this year
Though tossing the ACA would have been suicidal. Far more so than Roe. The economic damage alone would have been massive, insane disruption to the entire Healthcare industry let alone the public blowback.
So they have some self preservation instincts. I don’t think the risks are great enough here to save Roe though. SS though? Much better to leave that to congress to slowly weaken until its basically dead.
Gin & Tonic
@Ksmiami: Sure, tough guy.
schrodingers_cat
@Ksmiami: your rhetoric is not helpful
Kent
@Mary G: You don’t actually have to drive your van yourself to Idaho to haul people back to OR or WA. All you need to do is help subsidize their Bolt Bus ticket to Spokane and the cost of a hotel room. If we are talking about medical abortions the barriers are mostly going to be cost and/or time. People won’t be able to afford to travel. Or they can’t take the time to do so due to work, child care issues, etc. And of course there are all the minors who no longer can access abortions without their parent’s help if it means traveling out of state.
KSinMA
@different-church-lady: The Underground Railroad seems like an excellent model for what needs to be done.
taumaturgo
@Another Scott: Optimism boarding on denial is a failed strategy. Please explain what would be different if the party insist on the reelection of more corporate democrats that are responsible for the current catastrophic results. We need transformation, not reactionary weak sauce solutions that amount to political malpractice that allows the opposition party while out of power to control the agenda and the narrative with the help of centrist democrats.
KSinMA
@Leto: Good article, thanks.
Cermet
Can hope they go after SS – talk about blow back; all those fox brain dead zombies will rise up in fear and eat the thug party. Trying to post date it will get a few zombie’s to go away but most will fear their next on the chopping block and go full on (I’d say brains but we know thugs don’t have those) after the thugs.
Cermet
@Ksmiami: Trying to vent by saying stupid stuff is pointless – unless your a troll. In which case I’ll point and laugh.
Kent
@Brachiator: According to Pew Research, white women voted for Trump over Hillary 47% to 45%. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters/ If not centrist, many of them were fairly disengaged and a-political. I lived in Texas at the time and worked in a big public HS with lots and lots of white women, many of whom were disengaged or Trump leaning because it was the local zeitgeist, despite the fact that they were ostensibly liberal in other ways. And I would guess that many were at least nominally pro-choice.
The percentage of people who are actually engaged in these sorts of issues is depressingly low. I don’t have any answers. But clearly, alarmist op-Ed’s about potential threats to Roe if Trump gets elected didn’t do the trick.
cain
@Kent: But won’t they also effectively can no longer enter Mississippi? If you get pulled over by the police you could go straight to jail for murder or whatever it is.
I think we are going to see a lot of news article of women going to jail for doing nothing more than having a miscarriage or having one to save their own lives.
Tne national trauma for women and their partners is going to be pretty high. It’s going to be a shit show of unintended consequences.
JMG
@Leto: Laws banning drug traffic and use have such a record of success in this country.
cain
The U.S. will run afoul of international laws on privacy – but the social media folks will have a field day since if hter eis no expectation of privacy then.. well..
Brachiator
@taumaturgo:
Do you realize how empty and meaningless this rhetoric is?
Kent
@cain: Theoretically anything is possible. But I doubt that local DAs will be going after affluent activist types who can hire good lawyers. They will go after the most vulnerable young women of color and aim for a chilling effect. A black or Hispanic 16 year old high school dropout who is a substance abuser with a criminal record, and had a “questionable” miscarriage. Those kinds of targets who can’t fight back. The intent will be to send a draconian message to anyone else contemplating the same.
WaterGirl
@guachi:
I just added that as a rotating tag.
cain
@guachi:
I disagree – sorry – but if you see laws such as the like in Texas – many will not move to Texas or any other red state. Gen Zs tend to be more pro-women’s health than previous generations as a whole.
Just wait till the horror stories start coming out. They might not move their offices because GOP might punish them, but they can quietly open offices in other states.
RandomMonster
I’m a native Californian and I could not afford a house even with a salaried white collar job. I had to move.
cain
@Kent: yes, to some extent this is about putting the genie back in the bottle – to be able to hate on non-whites and bring back the patriarchy.
But I’m not so sure this is going to work as they expect. While yes, the poor are going to eat it in the shorts and hard. But they do have agency through voting. Secondly, white population continues to go down while non-white population continues to climb. These anti-abortion laws will only accelerate this dynamic.
taumaturgo
@Brachiator: if the leaders are not held accountable, explain how the party will manage to avoid further failures while the house burns down. This moment in history calls for transformational change, no more status quo defenders.
WaterGirl
@Mike in NC:
Overturning Roe v Wade would be the dog catching the car. It would not go well for them.
Roger Moore
@Kent:
I hate this mode of thought, too. The people who adopt it aren’t willing to put in the work of convincing anyone they’re right; they just want things to collapse so everyone will see how right they were. And they are just fine with things going to hell because they are well enough off they believe they won’t personally suffer much in the process. It’s the lazy, entitled person’s concept of political progress.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@guachi:@kindness: I think that is a terrible strategy. I am absolutely not moving to a state with 40 million people and ONLY 2 Senators. That is like saying I want to have no political power in this country, that surrender to those fiends is the best way to go.
I also want to add that while I do feel bad for most poor women in red states who will need abortions, I haven’t failed to notice that a majority of poor, rural, less educated, white women did vote for this. Just like with coronavirus, I can’t stop them from hurting themselves or members of their families.
Kent
@RandomMonster: I doubt that very many people will actually move from a red state to a blue state due to abortion rights. Some will, perhaps. But they are the same people who likely would not have move to a red state anyway due to a hundred other liberal issues. Or the same people who can’t wait to get out of red America for a hundred different reasons. We moved from Waco to the Portland area 6 years ago. My daughter could probably give you dozens of reasons why she doesn’t want to move back to Texas. Abortion might not even be on that list and probably not near the top.
The people who have the means to actually relocate to California are the same people who take vacations in Cabo or Spain every year and can easy enough fly to Toronto or Los Angeles if they need reproductive care that they can’t get at home. That is a whole lot cheaper than moving your whole life and family.
SpaceUnit
Oral arguments have apparently concluded. Can’t get a firm grip on the timeline for a decision.
Brachiator
@Kent:
I have posted about the Pew Research many times, as a corrective to the false idea that 53 percent of white women voted for Trump. And 47 percent to 45 percent is pretty tight.
There may be a huge gulf between being disengaged and Trump leaning.
Also, it is clear from the Pew data that even white women are not a monolith. There are some interesting voting patterns depending on whether the women are married or single, and whether they are college educated or not.
And in the South, white women tend to vote a lot like white men. This is much less true in other regions of the country.
But the bottom line is that a lot of women in red states appear to support abortion restrictions. And I don’t know that this is because of hypocrisy, denying abortion to poor women, but retaining the right for themselves. In Mississippi, where I think there is only one abortion clinic, even middle class women are impacted by any restrictions.
People will have to seriously re-think their positions, depending on what the Supreme Court does.
Kent
@SpaceUnit: Typically near the end of the session which ends in June I think. That is when most of them come out.
trollhattan
@Kent:
They voted for a proud serial rapist. Because they could not vote “for that woman.” ‘Tis a mystery.
chrisanthemama
@different-church-lady: Don’t forget our allies at Planned Parenthood. They saved me, a pregnant teenager in CA in pre-Roe 1968, by arranging for my abortion in Mexico City. It was safe and it was illegal, and I was lucky. Married since 1970, with a beautiful 38-YO daughter. Keep Planned Parenthood in your donations.
SpaceUnit
@Kent:
Interesting. That’s getting pretty close to the midterm elections.
Brachiator
@taumaturgo:
What is transformational change? Is this like Clark Kent stripping off his outer clothes and turning into Superman?
Your problem is that you keep wanting to demand that everyone magically see the world as you do. But you never have anything concrete or persuasive to propose.
The Thin Black Duke
@Brachiator: He masturbates to this nonsense, so I suppose it has a purpose, empty and meaningless as it is.
Kent
@Brachiator: Transformational change of the sort that taumaturgo seeks never actually happens in the real world absent cataclysmic events like world wars and revolutions. Which tend to kill millions of people. Actual change is almost always incremental and comes in fits and starts. Often you can’t even see it happening at the time but have to step back and look at say a 50-year time period to see what change has happened
You can roll up your sleeves and get to work. Or you can wait for the revolution that will never happen, like the grey old guys that used to hand out the Daily Worker at my university.
Suzanne
@jonas:
Yes. The social conservatives shot themselves in the foot by allying with the fiscal conservatives and now we have not just a market economy but a market society. And women (and allies) have a lot more social status and money than they used to. Any state that actually bans abortion or contraception will become a fucking slum. A shithole state, as it were.
Ksmiami
@Cermet: not stupid… not a troll. Just time to meet the threats head on
SpaceUnit
I suggest that if Roe is overturned women in red states should refuse to engage in sex. A boycott movement. And since every movement needs a slogan I’ll offer one:
Turn ‘Em Blue!
Roger Moore
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I think they key thing to understand is that this is coming from feelings of desperation, not strength. They are terrified that their position is unpopular. That’s why they’re fighting so hard to gerrymander and otherwise tilt elections. That’s why they’re so focused on packing the courts. They know they’ll lose if the public gets its say, so they’re doing everything in their power to make sure the public doesn’t get its say.
Also, they’re terrified what will happen to them if they lose power. They see losing power as the thing that paints the target on their backs. As long as they can maintain power, they can use that power to protect themselves. Once they lose power, they’re afraid all the stuff they’ve done will come back to haunt them.
Kent
@Suzanne: Don’t bet on it. People have had a hundred other reasons to avoid red states for the past decades. It didn’t slow the migration of people and capital south. I doubt this will either. The type of people who are politically engaged enough to do so already aren’t moving to places like Mobile Alabama for a hundred other reasons
If/when this gets overturned. It won’t be because red states feel economic pain from all the liberals who choose not to move there.
Soprano2
After my sister’s death my mother found a bunch of her journals. When I read them, I discovered that in 2003 my sister had an abortion. I was a little bit hurt that she never told me about it or asked me for help or support, although it did explain the time she asked me if I knew that you couldn’t get an abortion at a hospital and I said something like “Yes, for some reason activists thought it would be better to have abortion clinics rather than having them in a hospital, and boy did that backfire, because most hospitals in most states made it almost impossible to get one there and the clinics became targets for anti-abortion activists”. She was pregnant with the man who my mother always wished she had married (She left that man a substantial amount of money in her trust, I think she thought of him as the son she always wanted. I guarantee you she never thought about my husband in that way). My mother & I never talked about it, but I always wondered how she felt about finding out her “almost perfect daughter” did that. Probably not too good. In her trust, my mother is leaving 5% of her estate to one of those awful “pregnancy care centers” that lies to women about pregnancy and abortion. I wonder if that’s why she did that, because I never knew her to care that much about the issue.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: On average, women are more religious and more likely to be active in church than men. This complicates abortion politics where you’d think it might cleanly break down by gender.
The QAnon fanatic I personally know is a woman who got there through single-issue anti-abortion politics.
Leto
@Suzanne: considering how very large multinational companies keep building new plants in South Carolina, I don’t think they give a shit. Slums = I don’t have to pay those people shit, and they’ll accept it.
James E Powell
@schrodingers_cat:
No way, but I am done the notion that standing up for abortion rights sways voters toward Democratic candidates.
Brachiator
@Soprano2:
There is so much here that maybe many women went through in private. Thank you for sharing.
You do not have to add to what you have said, but I still wanted to note a couple of things.
If I understand correctly, your sister became pregnant by the man your mother wanted her to marry. And yet, she did not marry him? Sounds interesting, and very brave. Did she later marry someone else?
It also sounds a bit as though your mother held your sister up to you as someone to admire or to emulate?
That your mother left some money to pregnancy homes is, I think, understandable, even from a pro-choice position. Women should have options, and help, not be forced or constrained. But yeah, I guess it would be nicer if she left money to a more honest organization.
Leto
@SpaceUnit: The Lysistrata approach?
Edmund Dantes
@Kent: they already go after women of color for miscarriages if there are potentially drugs,alcohol, etc involved. What you mean to say is they will go even more so than they do now.
it’s like people don’t even know what’s going on in this country already.
Freemark
@Ella in New Mexico: Unfortunately since they don’t care about how the majority of people vote I’m sure they care even less what the majority of people think.
James E Powell
@Ella in New Mexico:
Polls don’t matter, elections do.
TheTruffle
@Eolirin: Those alternatives would be preferable to gloom and doom, yes. The key is to elect more pro-choice Dems.
Kent
@James E Powell: Or the notion that being a anti-choice Democratic politician in a red district is in any way going to save your skin. They will still hate you for a hundred other reasons even if you agree with them on abortion.
taumaturgo
@Brachiator: I understand why is difficult to accept a measure of responsibility for supporting a party that failed miserably to politically uphold women’s rights to choose. I hear you. I’m simply asking if current failed party leadership continues in power, what can or could be different? Same leadership, different outcomes? To answer these questions dispassionately will lead to the conclusion that the party is in need of new and different leadership that would bring more effective political strategies, a reconnection with the working class needs and desires, and a reconnection with the vast majority of eligible voters that don’t bother to vote. A political strategy that is not trying to have both ways catering to corporate fat cats and pretending to care about the working folks. A political strategy that’s is not about they are evil, we are good but is about transcending the differences to find common ground by demonstrating an honest and sincere commitment by placing the needs of the working class above all else. This I believe was what the Democrats stood for.
James E Powell
@Brachiator:
Many people in Maine saw that and went out & voted for Susan Collins anyway.
The Moar You Know
They did the work and kept their focus and VOTED IN EVERY ELECTION.
We didn’t.
Matt McIrvin
@Hungry Joe: I could see a future Republican executive/legislative trifecta passing a federal law that would make it illegal to transport people across state lines for purposes of violating state abortion laws (if they’re not willing to do a federal ban outright, which could also happen).
Kent
@Edmund Dantes: Yes, of course. My point is that random DAs in red counties in red states who decide to enforce anti-abortion laws will most likely do so by targeting vulnerable women close to home, not affluent activist types from out of state. It will be a target rich environment for them because there will be lots and lots of desperate poor women. So it will be easy for them to target less than sympathetic vulnerable types.
They aren’t going to try to send the state police out to surveil and arrest some out-of-state activist passing through Mississippi. Why bother when they will have hundreds of local cases to pick and choose from. It will be just like the war on drugs. They never went after Trump and his parties when his nose was full of blow. They went after crackheads on the street and black dealers on the street corners.
TheTruffle
@jonas: These are good points. I do think the blowback is building now. The right-wing overreach in California led to the state becoming bluer, right? And I remember Colorado, which used to be called “the hate state” when it passed anti-gay laws. Today, that state is much more Dem and has a gay governor. My point: the backlash is coming.
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
It takes a dammed fool to discuss resistance to “legal” conditions in a public forum. That’s how Jan 6th insurrectionists all got arrested. Wake up, S Cat, we need to discuss these things in quiet corners away from the public and theocratic agents. Here, we are safe protesting crazed religious legalisms, but not safe discussing protest movements that will almost certainly violate theocratic laws against discussing the facilitation of fetal murder… or whatever the theocratic patriarchy decides to call it.
They will have to kill the 1st amendment, the postal service, pharmaceutical companies, free international and interstate travel, the list is endless. We will have to fight back against those who work to destroy our freedom and way of life. Talking about that fight in public is not advised. Please stop calling us names for being discrete. You have never participated in revolution, have you? I first fought the government in 1968-69 trying to stop the war. We planned it mostly in private for good reason. And things are worse now than they were back then. Again, please stop calling us names for being discrete!
SpaceUnit
@Leto:
Hmm. They didn’t teach that one in high school.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: Not Soprano, but my guess is the “pregnancy care center” in question is one of those fake Christian counseling outfits that lure anxious teens with promises that they’ll provide information on options and then subject them to anti-abortion propaganda. There are a lot of them. They don’t do jackshit to help the people they target.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@taumaturgo: So why haven’t the socialists or the progressives protected us from all of this? They’ve won elections. Why haven’t they stopped everything the Republicans are doing to America? Instead, they’ve become the poster children Republicans use to whip up support from their voters, both at the polls and for fundraising. In all seriousness, I’d bet you that AOC has raised more money for Republicans than Democrats, though not intentionally.
Anyway
@Eolirin:
Indiana already did it – immigrant woman was imprisoned after a miscarriage.
J R in WV
@Benw:
Thanks. She’s eating a little more. Dropped from 5 lbs 11 oz to 5 lbs 10 oz, but eating better is how to get better! Such a sweet tiny predator… Imagine putting nosedrops in her nose !!!
Subsole
@Kent:
Exactly as intended.
Conservatism is nothing but the idea that standards should apply to everyone but me.
Shakti
@Brachiator: It doesn’t essentially changes the truth that white women voted for Trump in 2016 for me. Because that’s still a majority. So, what does saying 47% versus 53% of white women voted for a fucking misogynist garbage trash bag change for you?
Anyways, white women as a group voted for Trump again in 2020 in larger margins. 53%.
I clung to the fact Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 because it suggested that not the majority of people hate my fucking existence. Welp.
Matt McIrvin
Anti-Democratic-Party progressives spent decades telling us that voting for Democrats just because of the Supreme Court and abortion rights was “voting with your vagina” or succumbing to “extortion”.
I remember Michael Moore explaining that it would be OK if Bush won because of Nader votes because the Republicans would never really overturn Roe–they needed it too badly as a wedge issue. He didn’t seem to consider that Supreme Court justices might be true believers.
Kay
@WaterGirl:
Their base is passionate about overturning it and our base doesn’t care enough about it to keep it.
It nets positive for them, politically, in the same way gun nuttery nets positive for them and they’ll take this to the absolute far Right extreme in the same way they have taken gun nuttery to the absolute far Right extreme. It’s following the exact same pattern.
Kay
@WaterGirl:
They gutted federal protections for voting rights and every Republican state went as far to the Right as they possibly could, immediately. Same with guns. Now they will with abortion.
You have to ignore the last 2 big issues where the country went far Right to think this will go differently.
Matt McIrvin
And I guarantee the same people who went on about “extortion” in 2000 or 2016 or 2020 will now complain that Joe Biden is useless because he couldn’t somehow stop the Supreme Court.
Roger Moore
@Kent:
This is exactly right. They won’t go after middle-class white families who just happen to take their daughters to a state where abortion is legal, but they will go after poor BIWOC who have miscarriages. This is a big reason companies aren’t too worried about this stuff affecting their recruitment and retention in red states. The kind of employees who might move from out of state to get a job working for them will have ways of getting abortions if and when they need them.
ruemara
@schrodingers_cat: Sounds like. Use power? Dudes, since day 1, Biden has used his power. You want more power used? Then flip more Senate seats. That’s it. Get more white people to stop voting GOP or get more non-voters who aren’t GOP to vote & vote regularly. I’m not giving up because once again, the fucking majority of this country has ensured I’ll have to fight more goddamned thing. AGAIN.
@WaterGirl: I love you, but go back and reread those stats I posted in my post about candidates. Go revisit Wendy Davis’ run for Texas governor after her filibuster. If white women flipped to regularly Democratic voters by 5% as a group, this country would be different.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Yup
@Matt McIrvin: Nicholle Wallace the other day was plaintively emoting about whether or not Joe Biden understands the threat to voting rights even as she was reporting how the trumpists are taking over previously obscure state and local offices that might enable them to create the Constitutional crisis they see as an opportunity to solidify power. Leaving aside the fact that Ms Wallace worked to elect the man who appointed John Roberts precisely because he was a lifelong opponent of voting rights*, the right understands the levers and levels of governance far better than the Green Lanternists of the Left, even those recently converted to the Left (using that term in its broadest sense). Their game is long, broad and deep. We indulge in fantasies about executive orders and “a stroke of a pen!”, then stay home because those fantasies were not made real.
ETA: *which happened while Donald Trump was playing tug-of-war with Pat Buchanan over the Perotista movement, and before that reality show producer stumbled into his life to save him from financial ruin.
Ohio Mom
Certainly, poor women and poor women of color will suffer more than they do now, though let’s remember that many of them have long adjusted: red states have already made abortion largely unattainable by closing clinics and enacting various laws, such as the ones that make you get a sonagram one day and come back another for your abortion. That’s too much time away from family and work for women who would have to travel a day or two to one of their state’s remaining far-flung clinics.
They’ve adjusted by learning how to use the black market for abortion pills, and in many places, there is something of an underground DIY abortion network (the equipment used are called “menstrual extraction kits,” you can google this easily).
I predict that the group of women that the overturning of Roe will hit the hardest are Red suburban women. They are not used to “the system” not working for them.
At my synagogue there is a dad who is a school pyschologist at a high school in an upper-middle class suburb. He describes that one of the most tiresome parts of his job as when he has to act as if he didn’t know what this latest girl entering his office sobbing is going to tell him. Yes, she is pregnant and afraid to tell her parents. Ho hum, at least he has the drill down pat.
In another prosperous Red small town outside of Cincinnati, Lebanon (about thirty miles north east), the city council recently passed a law prohibiting abortions (there are no clinics anywhere near the town) as well as prohibiting anyone from helping anyone get an abortion. That means you, mom!
Well the two council members who spearheaded this new law were bounced out of their seats on Election Day, and there is a petition circulating to overturn the law.
When Roe is overturned, there will be a backlash. It may take longer than we’d like, women will suffer as they did before Roe and in other countries that do not have legal abortion, it will be a very dark time, but it will end.
The damage in the interim will be of course the women and families who can’t get the health care they need, but it will also damage our national fabric. Unfair laws make citizens cynical about their government. Think of the anti-vaccine movement, only bigger and legitimate.
Kay
I was shocked the day they gutted the VRA, because the voting rights act had just been renewed with a vote of 98-0.
I haven’t been shocked at anything they do since, and I don’t think anyone else should be either. If they’ll gut a landmark civil rights law- the “crown jewel” of the civil rights movement- they’ll do anything.
Miss Bianca
@KSinMA: There’s been an underground railroad sort of thing for abortion before. The Jane Collective in Chicago was an example.
I was taught to do menstrual extractions (basically, home abortions) back in the day, by women who had been members of Jane. Just in case. Some of us have always known this day was likely to come…again.
Subsole
@Ksmiami: I promise you that is not going to work the way you feel it should.
That said, I get we’re all grieving here. I just ask you don’t carry that out into the world. Because it will not work.
Edmund Dantes
@TheTruffle: yes, then be yelled at for being purists when they try to primary those anti-choice Dems cause lefties don’t get what those red districts want.
Soprano2
@Brachiator: They got engaged, but then my sister broke it off, and she never married. I thought she might have married the man who was killed in the plane crash with her (different man), but I’ll never know for sure. My sister was looking for someone just like my dad, I think; she could never find someone who lived up to what she wanted. I think my mother believed my sister would have been better off if she had married the man she was once engaged to, but that’s not what she wanted. He had two kids from a previous marriage who he had custody of, so my sister got a good taste of what being a parent might be like.
As for the other question, my mother favored my sister; it was pretty obvious to people if they just paid attention. My husband noticed it pretty quickly. My sister got excused for pretty much anything she did where I didn’t. My sister was the more attractive, more photogenic one – she always looked at the camera when her picture was taken even though she was never a model. It’s the usual circumstance of the child who is dependable and always there not being appreciated as much as the child who is more absent. Plus, when my sister was young she was a big-time daddy’s girl, and I don’t think my mother ever believed my sister loved her as much as she loved my father. Complicated family dynamics. My sister was the “good” daughter who made a small fortune founding her own environmental consulting company (which is now a whole lot bigger, she would be so proud of what it has become); I was the not as good daughter who settled for working for city government. She visited the pub we bought once or twice, but it wasn’t her kind of thing, and I think she saw it as cheating since I didn’t actually found it, but just bought it. Again, complicated.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: I read that after the Supreme Court declined to stay the Mississippi law, a number of lefties, including Senator Sanders’ former press secretary, scrubbed their twitter timelines. They wanted to hide their scornful rejection of the idea that Supreme Court appointments were a compelling reason to vote for Hillary Clinton.
taumaturgo
@Kay: Please, let acknowledge even if at the margins the complete political failure of the corporate democrat’s leadership to mount a strong fight for women’s reproductive rights. The history is abysmal, political malpractice. The Democrats are losing and will continue to get worse up and until the party leadership is replaced.
J R in WV
@SpaceUnit:
While that sounds good, is marital rape illegal in those states? Doubt it.
The Thin Black Duke
@ruemara: Thank you. As hateful as right-wing assholes are, I give them credit for showing up every goddamned time when there’s an election, local or national. Meanwhile, “our” side bitches on Facebook because Biden isn’t a Green Lantern who can fix things overnight. I’ve cut off people that spew “both sides” bullshit or frame everything as All Or Nothing. This is a struggle that’s going to keep on keeping on for the rest of my life. That’s the reality black people in America live with.
ruemara
@taumaturgo: Dude. Pound sand
@The Thin Black Duke: You know I call it like I lived it.
Ohio Mom
@Miss Bianca: Yeah, a women’s group I belonged to in my undergraduate (pre-Roe) days had a presentation on menstrual extraction.
Someone in the audience asked in a worried voice if the equipment would be sterilized and if so, how. The speaker deadpanned, “Lots of things put in vaginas aren’t sterilized.”
Matt McIrvin
@taumaturgo: Oh, for fuck’s sake. It was the Greens and the tough-guy revolutionaries who kept telling us that “gonadal politics” didn’t matter and was a corporatist distraction.
WaterGirl
@ruemara: I think many white women are mostly protected from all the awful shit they help Republicans do – because it mostly impacts other people, not them.
This time it will impact them personally. Sure, it will be a problem hat they can solve by money and privilege, but I still think it will impact them.
Maybe more than 50% of the country is drunk with evil and malice, but I’m hoping it isn’t. We’ll find out soon enough.
Subsole
@taumaturgo: Can you please break that down into plain words?
I hate to be such a blatant dick about this, but your stuff is hard to read, and harder to understand.
Like, jargon stacked on top of buzzwords. Just an impenetrably obtuse thicket that seems to boil down to “lol god punish you for not vote Birb-on-podium Man.”
What, exactly – and in small words for idiots like me, please – are you proposing?
@taumaturgo: One way to avoid failures is to actually spell out whatever the howling fuck Transformational Change ™ is.
Subsole
@SpaceUnit: Nah dude. They’ll just repeal consent laws next.
I wish I was joking.
Miss Bianca
@taumaturgo: Oh, you know what? FUCK OFF. What have you ever ACTUALLY done to protect women’s reproductive rights, tough guy? Have you worked at Planned Parenthood? Have you held women’s hands while piloting them through screeching hordes of anti-abortion nutjobs outside clinics? Have you donated money to NARAL or any other group? Have you worked on pro-choice Democratic candidates’ campaigns only to see them LOSE to anti-choice nut jobs who bludgeoned them as being “pro-abortion”? WELL, I HAVE. And so I can tell you that this schtick of “Democratic Leadership all BAAAAD” and “ALL THEY NEED TO DO IS BE PRO-CHOICE AND THEY WILL WIN” is full of shit. And *you*, personally, are so full of shit the fucking whites of your eyes are brown. STFU and GTFO.
Miss Bianca
@Ohio Mom: Yeah, funny except that for menstrual extraction you’re actually going up into the cervix, not just the vagina, so you’d better damn bet I’m going to sterilize that equipment.
taumaturgo
@Subsole: You are not blatant at all, just a tad disingenuous. Simple for you. Tired of losing? Change the leadership, or at least hold them accountable. Happy with the party getting its ass kick? Keep supporting the current people in charge, the GQP will thank you for it.
Brachiator
@Soprano2:
Again, thanks for sharing. Families can be very complicated. And sometimes affection and relationships are more complicated than we give credit.
I had an aunt who I always thought was very stern and remote. My mother told me that before my sister was born, this aunt said that she would leave my mother some money if she named my sister after her. My mother preferred another name. My aunt made other plans with her money. I always thought my aunt was kinda selfish because of this.
A whole lot of years later, I learned that my aunt and mother were close as young women. And in fact they were closer in age than they were to my other aunts and uncles (as a kid everybody seemed old to me).
Anyway, when my mother decided on college, she wanted a school that her grandfather did not like, and he was the one who would pay the tuition. My aunt, who was now working, paid my mother’s entire tuition for the first two years. No questions asked.
This led me to re-evaluate everything I thought I knew about their relationship.
And later, when my aunt passed away, she left some property to my mother.
Soprano2
Yep, also the people hollering every day because Garland hasn’t arrested the whole TFG administration yet. They have no idea how things actually work.
TheronWare
They should perhaps add another 9 Justices to the Supreme Court.
The Thin Black Duke
@taumaturgo: Blah blah blah. Bored now.
taumaturgo
@The Thin Black Duke: See you at the next big failure.
Kay
@taumaturgo:
There’s nothing to discuss with you. I think “the Democrats” is just way too broad to even start.
Just as an aside, I’m not sure Lefties should be throwing stones. My whole adult life interacting with them, “reproductive rights” were never a high priority. Not an area of strength for the Left. A lot of people criticize them for it, for “the Left” being sort of sexist and they got that reputation because it’s true.
Kay
I think I would be good as a “underground railroad” type logistics person for getting women around, so maybe I’ll do that. It sort of appeals to me, the self help aspect.
taumaturgo
@Kay: Thank heaven reproductive rights are a high and serious priority for the centrist democrats. We all can see how well that was handled, but on cue, the fault lies with the left and never with leadership.
Betty Cracker
I didn’t listen to the arguments, but Kate Riga at TPM and other people who did seem to think the SCOTUS conservatives aren’t going to bother with window-dressing. I thought they’d take a more subtle route, tbh, but maybe they see that’s not necessary.
James E Powell
If & when Roe v Wade is overruled, “Democrats want to bring back abortions!” will replace “Democrats want to raise taxes & give free stuff to black people” as the central theme of every Republican campaign.
It’s how the rich will prevent their taxes & our wages from going up.
ruemara
@taumaturgo: No one is showing up for your party dude.
Subsole
@taumaturgo:
That is MUCH clearer. Thank you.
Regret to report your understanding of the situation may diverge somewhat from your subjective assumptions vis a vis your comprehension re:same.
The working folks are doing this to themselves.
In brighter news, I finally figured out what I find offputting about so much NuSocialist wordage. The naked paternalism inherent in thinking these people aren’t fully aware of what they’re doing to themselves and others. Like, if AOC just says the right power-word, they’ll vote Democrat or something.
Too much NuSocialist thought discusses ‘workers’ the way conservatives discuss blacks – like stupid, helpless children trapped on a plantation somewhere, just waiting to have their shackles broken by the right mix of glorious transformative rhetoric.
Also? We already win the working class. They overwhelmingly vote Democrat. YOU mean bouge-ass white folks with no college. Many of whom are in fact skilled professionals. Trade workers.
Those boys slit their own throats for Reagan in exchange for keeping the blacks out of their union. Been doing it every chance they get ever since.
We would have to ditch everyone else to get them back. Which I see you advocate, to the exclusion of all else. Why do you expect that to work?
Why should we focus on the working class to the exclusion of all else? Even the working class don’t do that.
And the folks you actually are thinking of when you utter that little shibboleth? They deffo don’t do that. Why would they respond favorably to us doing that? I mean, what? You think they’re gonna flock to us if we cancel school debt? Nah. They’ll vote republican to punish us for rewarding laziness. They didn’t get no free ride (even when they did). They ain’t sittin’ still watching someone else get one.
Real talk: what is your background with the white working class? Because the one you know seems very, very different from the one I know.
bluefoot
@Edmund Dantes:
I know a lot of POC who have had CPS called on them when they have taken a child to the ER, no matter what the cause is for the ER visit. This are POC of all social/economic groups, including executives I know.
It’s pretty much policy to go after POC in whatever situations present themselves. whether that’s driving while black, walking down the street with Skittles, or taking your kid to the hospital who got injured on the soccer field.
Kay
@taumaturgo:
I didn’t say “the fault is with the Left”. I said it’s never been a priority with The Left, which is true.
The Democratic base doesn’t care about judges or abortion rights. They don’t vote on those. If anything I would say “Democratic leadership” cares more about it than most rank and file Democrats do, so in that sense it’s kind of an odd issue to attack leadership on. Anyway- IMO? Not a real area of strength for The Left. Might want to hold your fire on this one.
The Thin Black Duke
@Subsole: Wow. This was amazing. Serious Bene Gesserit fecority.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I think they’re emboldened by how little public/media pushback there was to the Texas trial balloon they floated. I would be if I were them.
They’ve had three in a row where they went really far Right with no appreciable pushback from the public – guns, voting and now abortion. If this goes like guns did it’ll be (still) further Right still in just a couple of years. We’re drowning in guns. It didn’t harm them politically at all. Far from “backlash” now every gun nut thinks they have a get out of jail free card.
RaflW
Imagine, soon: It will become a crime in some states to travel to another state (or country) to receive medical care that is legal in that other jurisdiction. In fact it will become a crime to just assist in that travel.
Not just a tort that someone can sue for 10K. But an in-the-slammer crime.
FREEDUMB
eta: I’m old enough to have heard a sermon from a UU clergy member who was part of the northeast clergy alliance that helped women from Massachusetts get abortion care. It was a heck of a talk.
Soprano2
@The Thin Black Duke: And it has the virtue that every word of it is true. I understand the obsession with the white working class, because when the press talks about working class voters these are the people they are actually talking about, and in our society the vote of white people, and especially the white man, is still seen as the ” real, legitimate, ordinary” viewpoint of society at large. They want to get back the credibility they think the press would give Democrats if suddenly white working class men started voting for Democrats again. It’s not going to happen, but this is what everyone who advocates for this approach wants.
Nobody in particular
@Ksmiami:
I like what Cole says here. He’s been reading my comments!
Burning churches is counter-productive. And we’re not quite at the point where a hot civil war breaks out. Remember, these clowns are often re-enactors of Civil War battles. They think conflict like this will be just like the last civil war – because they are idiots. It is going to be hybrid and non-linear. As always, the greatest threat comes from lone wolves, and right now, the court. If a handful gets together to pull some Rube Goldberg plot, the OpSec is so poor, they all get caught. We really need to realize that this is the whole ball game. Most just don’t. Dr. Silverman gets it. Read the work on Monkeywrenching. It’s online.
“The first one to mention dynamite is the narc.”
Judy Bari, Earth First
And I understand the sentiment, but keep the powder dry for now.
Subsole
@taumaturgo: When the left refuses to show up, thereby enabling fascist wins? Yes. They do own the responsibility for that inaction. Their reasons do not change the results.
You see the disconnect here, right? You criticize us for not accepting blame, yet I have never once seen the Left accept responsibility for the consequence of their stated strategy.
Stay home unless and until I am motivated. Well and good. You know people will suffer when you do so, but do it anyway. Fine. That is your right. Your reasons are your reasons. They may even be valid.
But what you do is this weird little sleight of hand where you refuse to act, then blame the results of your inaction – which, to be clear, you could and ought to have prevented – on other people because they didn’t motivate you to act. You made the decision. You alone. What follows that decision rests on you, but you refuse to accept it.
Basically, you allow the rape, then blame the victim for not yelling loud enough, then lecture everyone else about accepting responsibility for their terrible, terrible life choices. All while refusing to acknowledge that maybe there are higher goods on this earth than whether you felt motivated to stop a rape.
It’s kinda gross.
Honestly? It reminds me vaguely of the transactional morality I see in college Libertarian circles.
Ancient Atheist
Half of America supports a Conservative Christian Capitalist Confederacy over a Constitutional Democracy. Conservative = Oligarchy. Christian = Prosperity Evangelical. Capitalist = Free Enterprise. Confederacy = State’s Rights. So, to re-state… a bunch of ill-educated, armed, rednecks want free enterprise evangelicals to write local laws to protect individual liberties against tyranny. Yeah, that’s going to work.
Nobody in particular
@Subsole:
The educated aware people who don’t vote are often turned off by politics. And the right is intent on keeping it ugly. And this includes some academics.
Bertolt Brecht
Nobody in particular
@Subsole:
The educated aware people who don’t vote are often turned off by politics. And the right is intent on keeping it ugly. And this includes some academics.
Bertolt Brecht
Subsole
@The Thin Black Duke: Thankee.
Have you seen the movie yet? I am very, very curious to see how it translates.
Morzer
I think this is the logical outcome of a system designed by wealthy, white men for wealthy, white men. I don’t believe in giving up, but it’s clear that the system as it stands is ever going to allow for anything like a genuine democracy in America, much less full rights for anyone who isn’t wealthy, white and male. Democrats have to think bigger, fight harder and do whatever to takes to win. No more high-minded, weak losers who knuckle under with just a faint mewl of protest. We can’t win a semi-cold, undeclared civil war by being the nice guys.
Betty Cracker
@Subsole: Although that T person babbles endlessly about the “working class,” IMO the real problem is a rural-urban divide. The table is just plain tilted against Democrats. We can and do win majorities without gaining ground, sometimes even losing it, and that won’t stop until there’s structural change (adding states, abolishing the EC, proportional representation in the senate, an end to gerrymandering, etc.). I don’t have any answers, but I think that’s the problem.
Morzer
@Betty Cracker: I like this fiery revolutionary cut of your jib, Ms. Cracker. Shall we try and bring democracy to America? Hell, we can even serve … what was that delicious name?… freedom fries.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@taumaturgo:
“centrist democrats” like Susan Sarandon who vigorous campaigned for Trump or Michael Moore who insisted Roe would never be overturned so vote for Nader/Stein or “centrists” like Bernie Sanders who wagged his finger at women concerned about reproduction rights that southern whites are “getting hang up on abortion issues and it is time we started focusing on the economic issues.”
time after time after time, whether it was the Naderies (“no difference btwn Bush and Gore”) or the Hillary haters (“Trump will lead us to a glorious revolution”) they always insisted voting for future Court appointments was irrelevant. Of course they could afford to do that because they’re rich or old or male or live in blue states.
Pathetic.
Nobody in particular
@Betty Cracker:
Definitely. Structural, and now institutional changes since our friends on the right, have wrecked all the hotel rooms- like the Stones.
@Morzer:
I prefer to leave race out of it. There is no scientific basis for it in any case.
It’s the Golden Rule. One of them: Those who have the gold make the rules. In Africa, some dictators are black. Class Justice.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Soprano2: The obsession with the white working class is also partly about where they are located.. suburbs, exurbs, rural areas. The majority of our working class voters are in cities and some suburbs. Thanks to the electoral college, losing those people does put us at a disadvantage. That being said, I think the leftist strategy of throwing away our dedication to civil rights (including the rights of women) to bring more of those people on board is a terrible, no good, very bad idea.
The Thin Black Duke
@Subsole: The problem with Dune is that there isn’t enough Herbert. Looks purty, though.
Subsole
@Nobody in particular: When you say educated and aware, what do you mean?
Because being aware and being politically illiterate seem mutually exclusive. Sorry if I missed something obvious.
As far as tuning out?
I have found most people retreat to false balance or “they’re all rotten” as a way to avoid uncomfortable conversations.
I usually just follow up by pointing out one side wants to outlaw gay rights, abortion and each person’s vote being equal. Point out the two positions, as evidenced by their actions, are diametrically opposed. “Whichever of those you agree with, I don’t see how you can say they’re the same.”
May not convince them, but hopefully it makes them stop equating “balanced” with “fair”.
Morzer
@Nobody in particular:
Well, I’ll just go and tell the GOP to stop making everything about race then.
Nobody in particular
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
Viggo Mortenson voted for Stein in 2016. Hollywood celebs are not often the brightest bulbs on the Christmas Tree.
Morzer
@The Thin Black Duke: It’s amazing how many purty people you can find wandering around on Arrakis!
Nobody in particular
@Morzer:
I just indicated my preference. YMMV. I don’t control the morons on the right. They won’t listen so don’t waste your breath. Or put off allies that may be white.
We all came from Africa, or Aliens, depending on your individual preference. Mitochondrial Eve.
Ksmiami
@Kent: global warming will render much of red state usa unlivable
Ksmiami
@Nobody in particular: shut down their technology and remove medical care from the rural hickvilles- let them do their own research.
Ksmiami
@Nobody in particular: Richard Dawkins ftw…
The Truffle
@Kay: For every action there is a reaction. Not sure why it is taking so long.
Ksmiami
@Kay: I’ll fund it…
Morzer
@The Truffle: Sometimes I suspect that physics and politics are different domains and laws do not transfer between them.
Nobody in particular
@Subsole:
In 2016 I got one woman to go and register to vote. She wasn’t an academic. But she was smart enough to see Trump was poison.
One of my former professors, during my pursuit of accreditation as an addiction specialist, a young woman who taught in the program, was decidedly not going to engage. That was then. Today, I imagine she has rethought that position, but I don’t know. One of my professors, a man I actually liked, voted for Trump. It has long been said that of the democracies on the planet, the USA has the lowest participation in the electoral process. If they are going to vote for Trump, I return to my default position on Democracy. As Plato stated, the best regime is that of the Philosopher King, or Queen, the beneficent dictator. Being a Philosopher King, or Queen, they are generally not interested. Then you get into the Noble Lie and all that mishegoss. In Skinner’s Walden II, they selected the leader by finding the person who least wanted the job. I find that reasonable because power-hungry people suffer from a glaring character defect, in my opinion. Plato’s point about political action was that we get involved so lesser men, or women, do not.
Nobody in particular
@Ksmiami:
I know of him. Never read him.
Nobody in particular
@Ksmiami: I was thinking… isn’t it possible to put a Federal Clinic in every state, to provide abortions? Eminent Domain? I bet the military bases have the ability. Fuck the states!
Subsole
@The Thin Black Duke: Hmmm. I definitely need to check it out. What parts of Herbert are missing? I don’t necessarily need high fidelity to the book.
Also? It always tickled me that some searingly spiritual words are tucked into a book warning about the power of Messianic figures.
dnfree
@Nobody in particular: IANAL, but I think the point of the Hyde amendment is that the federal government can’t do anything to support abortion.
Nobody in particular
@dnfree:
That’s funding. Block Grants. They can do what they damn well please anywhere federal jurisdiction is in effect. Unless I am mistaken, and that is entirely possible. States just have no jurisdiction over federal installations, like the mil.
The Thin Black Duke
@Subsole: Oh, Dune nails the visual aspects of the novel (desert is vast, worms are big, the Harkonnens ugly), but Herbert’s intellectual content is missing from Villeneuve’s adaptation. It’s clever, not smart. Think of a big-budget, big-screen PowerPoint presentation.
Nobody in particular
@Subsole:
By making it as ugly as possible, they, the right, are doing a multi-pronged approach to voter suppression. Until you understand the impact of Duverger’s Law, many LIVs will adopt the “a pox on both their houses” stance. They don’t get it.
Ksmiami
@Nobody in particular: https://isogg.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve
TheTruffle
@Morzer: Except the Obama era was followed by…well, you know.
Ksmiami
@Nobody in particular: absolutely. But first we nullify this Supreme Court
Subsole
@Nobody in particular: Thank you for clarifying. I am not very familiar with Plato. I read some of his Socratic dialogues, but that was well over a decade ago. Macchiavelli, I can kind of discuss.
His Florentine History certainly makes the point that enthusiasm alone is no remedy. It has to be tempered with intelligence. Enthisiastic voters enthusiastically chose very enthusiastic tyrants, all over Italy.
He also had enough experience with tyrants to know they never retain their benevolence, because they never retain their disinterest. He wrote The Prince and flattered the Medici, but his heart was always property of Rome and the Republic.
I always felt sorry for ol’ Nicko. He trusted the people, even after they kept letting him down, because all the other options were So. Much. Worse.
People are fickle.
And therein lies the hope. As well as the curse.
Nobody in particular
@The Thin Black Duke:
Nobody told me it was only Part 1. I felt cheated. Part 2 may or may not happen.
Subsole
@The Thin Black Duke: Thanks. Will definitely check it out.
Nobody in particular
@Subsole:
I’m familiar with Nicolo. The Machiavelli of Maryland, Edward Luttvak, was convinced the Trump dynasty would reign under the daughter. That picture looks like a Nazi wanted poster to me.
I’m not impressed. John Le Carre may have been, but he hasn’t done anything worthy since Smiley’s People.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mob-on-the-hill-was-far-from-a-coup-11610061914
Nobody in particular
@Subsole:
Plato is tricky when you’re young. But, The Republic is the manual for Republics. And damn few Americans have any idea what a republic actually is. Years ago, the troglodytes would say: “We are not a democracy! We are a Republic!” As if they had any idea what they were babbling about. I like Nicky, too.
Morzer
@Nobody in particular: John Le Carre’s dead, which might explain his recent lack of productivity.
Sam
Everyone is acting as if this whole process is sneaky and underhanded. Nobody should be surprised. Ok, McConnell stole some seats, but he was only able to do that because white women voted for Trump. They got what they wanted, I suppose. Plain fact of the matter is that the country is divided on abortion, there are many “right to life” single-issue voters, and those opposed to overturning Roe either weren’t as large a group as thought or were ineffective in holding the line. This was all in plain sight.
I say this as someone who strongly supports Roe, but, well, that doesn’t seem to matter much.
Nobody in particular
@Morzer:
I’ll remind you that frequently undiscovered works are often published posthumously. Art, Literature, even Music. But carry on with your truculently ostentatious prattle.
MikeSJ
@Kay:
I was hoping the Texas abortion snitch law would sway voters in Virginia to vote Democratic…we see how that worked out.
The 1% in Red States won’t be affected by ending RvW , nor the 10%, not even the 25%, just the poor and disenfranchised who don’t for all practical purposes count.
I hope I’m wrong but I’m afraid this won’t lead to any significant change in voting in Swing much less Red states.
Immanentize
@Nobody in particular: You are mistaken.
Meanwhile, I got no pie at Thanks giving
Kay
The Republican judges have already started stumping for the GOP in the midterms:
Politicians. Laying the groundwork for GOP candidates and incumbents to argue the radical Right wing agenda shouldn’t scare swing voters. Just another campaign event.
Nobody in Particular
@Immanentize:
Can’t be sure what you are saying here but I’m just sorry. States have no jurisdiction on or over federal territory. Any high school kid should know this, but they don’t. As long as the funding source is not Federal, and there are ways to do this, they can pound sand.
https://www.findlaw.com/litigation/legal-system/federal-vs-state-courts-key-differences.html
Nobody in particular
@Immanentize:
Consider poor Nevada. The state that got to test Nuclear Weapons and store the Plutonium. Did they have a choice?
Hyde requires federal Medicaid money to the states not be used for abortion. It was Planned Parenthood they went after.
https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/issues/abortion/federal-and-state-bans-and-restrictions-abortion/hyde-amendment
Immanentize
@Nobody in Particular: You are the epitome of:
“Often wrong, never uncertain.”
The pie is delicious, I’m gonna have me a slice (& I have literally never taken a piece of Cole’s pie before).
London Bye Ta Ta
Nobody in particular
Actually, yes, and no. If Roe goes, that’s all she wrote. What I was suggesting is happening already in VA hospitals and on reservations in any state that has them. Congress needs to pass a federal law guaranteeing any woman an abortion if they want. Then SCOTUS can pound sand. Most people are what you suggest. So I’m in good company. But I’ve checked with my Poli Sci prof and my reasoning is sound. It just won’t work if Roe is overturned.
Dave
@Kay: seriously does anyone know of a charity organization that is able to evacuate young women who need an abortion to a free state. This is going to be a long haul fight and the “underground railroad ” analogy is correct