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You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Saturday Morning Open Thread: The Only Way Forward Is Through

Saturday Morning Open Thread: The Only Way Forward Is Through

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The Friday Stealth Dump didn’t work:

Credit where due:


Kids won’t go hungry this summer, despite Young Prince Rand Paul:

And, small pleasures, female fans have a place to grab a burger and watch the women’s game…

… As the 50th anniversary of Title IX was commemorated this week, it was only natural that much of attention was on major advancements made by women athletes in the wake of the landmark legislation, countered by how much further they have to go to gain true equality with their male counterparts.

But let’s not forget smaller gestures that help advance the cause.

A single bar dedicated to women’s sports may not sound like much, yet it could be the catalyst for something far bigger. Nguyen is keenly aware that her mission goes beyond good food, tasty drinks and making sure the TVs are turned to the WNBA or the NCAA softball championship or a soccer match featuring the hometown Portland Thorns.

The communal nature of fandom has always been a huge factor in the success of men’s sports. There’s no reason it shouldn’t be that way for the games women play.

“When I first conceived of The Sports Bra, when I first started to do it, I had no idea it would be what it is,” Nguyen said. “But now I’m seeing it as part of the movement, a domino in a wave of dominos.

“It’s good business to invest in women,” she added. “It’s just a matter of time before people latch onto that and see that when a community is moving forward toward equity, everybody wins. Not just women. Equality is good for everybody.”…

Reader Interactions

168Comments

  1. 1.

    debbie

    I don’t think there was any way the Right could have buried Roe on a late Friday. But it might have been amusing to watch them try.

  3. 3.

    zhena gogolia

    I’m so angry. I’ve been feeling this anger simmering since Garland was denied a hearing. They stole the election (Russian help, I have absolutely no doubt) and stole three SCOTUS seats — four if you count Thomas, who like Kavanaugh was credibly accused of sexual misconduct and should never have been approved. AND THEY HAVE NO SHAME

  4. 4.

    zhena gogolia

    Whenever someone tries to talk about how good GHWB was, I have two words for them: Clarence Thomas. The cynicism of replacing Thurgood Marshall with Clarence Thomas erases any good he may have done.

  6. 6.

    Ivan X

    I disagree with the take about the Friday stealth dump. I think they wanted to overturn Roe and knew there would be white hot rage when they did. The purpose of the leak was to diffuse that rage by spacing it out and creating a sense of expectation and inevitability.

  13. 13.

    Dangerman

    @debbie: Yeah, pretty good chance people would have noticed.

    I wonder what is next; I think the 5 (or 6) are gonna go full bullshit in a China shop. Obamacare? EPA? Shit, why not go after the really big target like Social Security. In for a penny, in for a pound.

    They are really a self appointed super legislature that can do whatever they want. This is a problem.

  14. 14.

    rikyrah

    it was ALWAYS A FRAUD

     

     Bernie Sanders gave us this right-wing SCOTUS (@Needle_of_Arya) tweeted at 5:20 AM on Sat, Jun 25, 2022:
    Libertarianism also finally officially died on June 24, as the Libertarian Justice essentially said that only cishet religious-fundamentalist WM have a right to privacy & freedom from government intervention & interference, but the rest of us are now exposed to face the wolves.
    (https://twitter.com/Needle_of_Arya/status/1540641118274039808?t=VZkDFC4gniHvNEvLZgapIA&s=03)

  16. 16.

    rikyrah

    See no lie

     

     

    Bougie Black Girl (@BougieBlackGurl) tweeted at 6:28 AM on Sat, Jun 25, 2022:
    Y’all still not understanding. People see children as a punishment for women having sex. That’s why some folks say the solution for women since Roe has been overturned is to “close your legs.” Not once do they advocate men getting vasectomies or keeping their peens in their pants
    (https://twitter.com/BougieBlackGurl/status/1540658184309850112?t=GZOb_yBubqfafuVTiBRBKw&s=03)

  19. 19.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @zhena gogolia: Me, too. Thomas shouldn’t be sitting on the bench of a traffic court. His hearing should’ve resulted in disbarment, not a lifetime sinecure. They say absolute power corrupts absolutely. But what happens when the absolutely corrupt gain absolute power? So much worse. They are the worst of our species.

     

    ETA: your next comment on Bush I is spot on, too. And he committed many other transgressions, including fully participating in the October Surprise that got Reagan elected.

  20. 20.

    Anne Laurie

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Oh, it looks to me like the SC(R)OTUS Six were very much hoping that all the ‘serious media’ would be too busy chasing Jan. 6 Committee leads to notice Dobbs getting read into the record.

    They’ve gotten used to a two-tier system:  Every ‘chuze LYFE!’ maneuver is widely dissected within the Talibangelical community.  But in the wide world of ‘secular’ media, mere women’s issues are still a sub-bureau, something where ambitious interns ghostwrite ‘both sides’ stories to be buried in the Lifestyles / Fashion section, while Name Brand Pundits produce the occasional fact-free, adjective-heavy thumbsucker about ‘our coarsened modern dialogue.’

    Objectively, just looking at all the people on *both* sides standing outside the security fences at the Supreme Court, Dobbs was gonna be the news of the weekend — and more.  But the SC(R)OTUS Six have been able to ignore that rabble (even their own ‘allies’ in the rabble).  These are folks used to demanding, and getting, federal laws passed within a week when they feel ‘threatened’ by a handful of white suburbanites showing up in their neighborhoods with polite signs & canapes.

    It’s a mild form of social schizophrenia, IMO.

  23. 23.

    UncleEbeneezer

    For everyone who is rightfully terrified, outraged, sad etc., I highly recommend getting out to a protest, rally, vigil if you can. It always helps lift the spirits.

    Here are some pix from last night’s vigil at All Saints church in Pasadena (where I joined my wife to volunteer at the Planned Parenthood table).

    Maybe we can get a dedicated thread for commenter-submitted pics from events we attended?

    Anyways, to all the people this bullshit ruling targets: I’m so sorry you have to deal with this fuckery. I see you. I love you. And I promise, we’re gonna fight like hell for you, as long as it takes.

  26. 26.

    rikyrah

    @zhena gogolia:

     

    ’m so angry. I’ve been feeling this anger simmering since Garland was denied a hearing. They stole the election (Russian help, I have absolutely no doubt) and stole three SCOTUS seats

     

    Come sit by me.

  27. 27.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    I’ve been trying to think of how the post-Roe world is different than the pre-Roe world I remember.

    The biggest difference is that most people have lived with the right to abortion, and now that’s being taken away as opposed to never experienced.

    There’s better and more widely available birth control now.

    Ultrasound is routinely used, so fetal anomalies are much more likely to be detected.

    Not part of this line of thought but as Maddow said, I’m reeling that we are subject to people willing to do this. Even laying public opinion aside, the willingness to impose this on someone else is evil

  28. 28.

    evap

    @rikyrah:  Abortion became legal in Ireland (via public referendum) after a woman died of septicemia after being refused an abortion during a miscarriage.   There was no chance of the baby surviving, but the hospital refused because a doctor detected a heartbeat.  So they let both the mother and baby die.

  29. 29.

    Nicole

    @rikyrah:

    CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP

     

    Dr. Virgo (@DrVirgo1981) tweeted at 11:42 AM on Fri, Jun 24, 2022:
    I’m glad I’m a vagina voter. Im glad I vote for women and black excellence.

    WM voted for their rights for 250 years, and some of y’all were stupid enough to let them fool you to thinking your identity wasn’t important to your politics.
    (https://twitter.com/DrVirgo1981/status/1540374922580697089?t=tUKPGgV6vqduoNcooZqt0w&s=03)

    She’s right.  I don’t know how to get my fellow white women to understand we are forever and always women first (thousands of years of misogyny will do a lot to a mindset), but I think that’s the big hill to climb.  White men are only about a third of the population, after all (and 70% of suicides, so I would argue white patriarchy isn’t really working all that well for them, either, but they’re much too afraid to let go of it).

  31. 31.

    Suzanne

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    I’ve been trying to think of how the post-Roe world is different than the pre-Roe world I remember. 

    Lots of ways.
    1) Cheap and frequent air travel
    2) Smartphones and ease of connection to the whole world
    3) Medication abortion
    4) Less (but certainly not zero) social stigma against single parenting
    5) More social comfort with bisexuality and homosexuality in women
    6) Plan B
    7) More women going to college (and a lower percentage of men)
    8) More women used to making their own money and living independently of parents and husbands
    9) Later marriage on average
    10) Private, closed adoption is far less common
    11) Assortative mating
    12) Much lower birth rate

  32. 32.

    MisterDancer

    @UncleEbeneezer: Maybe we can get a dedicated thread for commenter-submitted pics from events we attended?

    I’ll look to create one around noon ET. I know my Brother is going to a protest; I can’t cope with people, right now.

    That said, I am recommending that if you’re protesting in a state hostile to Abortion Rights, you leave your phone at home.

  34. 34.

    Suzanne

    @Nicole: Honestly, I think a lot of white women lost the cultural memory of marginalization. It was never gone, but it was concealed enough that it has been easy to overlook how new and precarious our freedoms actually are.

    A lot of white women have never classified themselves as feminists, but consider their “equal rights” to be self-evident. In some respects, that’s a testament to the success of the movement. They have not been activated around their identity. That may change now.

  35. 35.

    Eolirin

    @Suzanne: If they think they can roll that all back with restrictive laws I think they’re sorely mistaken.

    They will do massive amounts of harm in the process of trying and I’m in a rage and sad about that. But they’re going to lose. One way or another.

  36. 36.

    Gvg

    @rikyrah: Bernie Sanders supporters are about 40 on a list of whom to blame. The republicans, all of them, who voted this issue for decades, who blaired save the babies when they really meant keep the sluts subservient are chiefly to blame.

    It’s not that I don’t think the Bernie purity left weren’t at best fools and at worst women hating liars…it’s that we have to win, and winning is building coalitions, which means we are going to have to make nice to a lot of the gullible idiots soon to keep their votes, along with other kinds of squishy unreliable allies to crush these repressive laws and the politicians that voted for them. So we can’t burn the bridges.

    It is also counter productive to focus fire on them instead of the all out enemy GOP. Bernie bros are a weaker target, but they aren’t the power behind this campaign. All they were was a tiny margin a few times. The main enemy is the GOP powerful. Target them first. IMO if the Bernie and Nader and other little jerks hadn’t happened….this day would have taken 10 years more maybe but still republicans wouldn’t have given up.

    Now we need to discredit these stupid ideas for a longer time and break some of the support structures. I don’t just want Roe codified, I want the ERA passed. I realize it doesn’t directly cover gay rights or trans, but I think that if it was the law, it would be easier to protect them too. And harder to make fetus trump womens lives.

    Congress could reactivate the amendment.

    Also when is that report Biden commissioned on reforming the courts due? This week would be a really good time for it to be revealed.

  37. 37.

    Ohio Mom

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I am a little younger than you and don’t remember as much of the Pre-Roe world as you do.

    I do remember my 6th grade BFF’s older brother getting his girlfriend pregnant and the girlfriend’s mother whisking her off to someplace in the Caribbean for an abortion. The overall reaction to that was Those poor parents, stuck with that expense.

    To a certain degree, I expect middle class parents to go back to digging into their retirement funds to send their pregnant daughters to places were abortions are available.

    Will that function as a release valve and lead to middle-class families not caring about abortion being illegal? Privilege can buy a lot of apathy.

    Yes, I live in a Red suburb filled with people with no empathy and no moral imagination.

  38. 38.

    MisterDancer

    @Suzanne: I keep coming back to the massive cultural differences that we live in.

    I mean, in the 1970s, my understanding is that so much shit happened in the post-WWII era that made the Reagan “Revolution” possible, and the cultural rollbacks “easy”. The backlash to the key movements was broad-based and appeared “normative”.

    The run-up to America’s Civil War was…well, let’s just say Abolition wasn’t as popular in the North as we like to think it was, as I understand it. It was easier to believe in a unbreakable Union. And there was a deep disinterest in full Integration and Equality, thus stuff like Lincoln’s ideas to ship my ancestors back to Africa en masse.

    I think that script has flipped from those above examples. I think the majority are actually OK with most of the changes, thus the need to gin up propaganda shit like Replacement Theory, and the many Fear Mongering efforts we’ve seen rise up out the the fetid Right-Wing swamp — not to mention Voter Suppression. I think people have seen that allowing people to live their authentic selves actually didn’t break America, and aren’t invested, on the whole, in rolling it back.

    I’ve no idea how all this plays out. But I think it’s a missing piece around the whole “we’re gonna split/have another Civil War” discussions — much less any idea what actually happens next, electorally or otherwise.

  40. 40.

    sdhays

    @Ohio Mom: But what about the women who have complications in a wanted pregnancy and need to get the dead fetus out right away? That can happen no matter how wealthy you are.

    Perhaps county coroners will find some way of “correcting” those deaths, just like they refused to registered COVID deaths.

  41. 41.

    Nicole

    @Suzanne: You may be right.  Though also, I don’t think a lot of white women have ever really thought about being marginalized; ever really took in the full extent of how being recognized as female by society is being, “othered.”  And to some extent, the white privilege minimizes it.  But a small cancer is still cancer.

  42. 42.

    Eolirin

    @Dangerman: They might gut the EPA, but they had another chance at the ACA and still didn’t take it. That would be literal unambiguous suicide for the Republican party. There’s no way for them to survive it. Their own base started to revolt when they were credibly attacking it in 2017.

    I’m hoping stepping on abortion turns out to be suicide too, but it’s not as certain.

  43. 43.

    mali muso

    @sdhays: Yes, this.  Approximately 1 in 4 pregnancies ends in miscarriage.  I myself had 2 before being able to bring my (wanted) pregnancy to term.  Both of them needed a D&C to resolve.  Every miscarriage as a crime scene…it’s going to be ugly out there for a LOT of people very quickly.

  44. 44.

    oatler

    Now I saw how strong the rigid formations of our enemy appeared, rectangles that held machines as big as fortresses and a hundred thousand soldiers shoulder to shoulder. But on a screen in the center of the control panel I looked under the visors of their helmets, and all that rigidity, all that strength, melted into a kind of horror. There were old people and children in the infantry files, and some who seemed idiots. Nearly all had the mad, famished faces I had observed the day before and I  recalled the man who had broken from his square and thrown his spear into the air as he died. I turned away.

    Gene Wolfe, The Citadel of the Autarch.

    This is nihilism, not the Lebowski gag. I recall the  anti- masker who was carried off in restraints, begging officials to shoot her.  They found their Holy Grail of Christian fascism and  it means nothing to them, they just sit in front of Tucker and wait for orders.

  45. 45.

    Suzanne

    @Eolirin: I agree with you. That is too much social change to undo.

    It’s almost paradoxical: it’s been so much change in a relatively short amount of time that many women just accept it as totally normal and inevitable, and don’t see the decades of work it took to get here.

  46. 46.

    Feathers

    @Ohio Mom: I think people are seriously underestimating how our interconnected, electronic, data-driven surveillance capital world is going to change how the post Roe world will be different from the pre Roe one.

    The local prosecutors will be able to find out your search history, your bank records, the location records from your phone, all your credit and debit card purchases. And there won’t be a statute of limitations. So have an abortion in 2023, and they can decide to haul you off to jail in 2030, when you have two young children. Do you think they won’t?

  47. 47.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Suzanne: I think a lot of white women never consider themselves marginalized, because they feel they benefit by obliviously supporting it. I know my late MIL and my 2 SiL do not consider themselves marginalized. They’re quite content with their “status.”

    In other more simple words: They never even think about it.

    ” That’s just how it is.”

  48. 48.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    @zhena gogolia: ​

    I’m so angry. I’ve been feeling this anger simmering since Garland was denied a hearing.

    I know what you mean. I’ve had that same feeling since SCOTUS selected W. for President.

  49. 49.

    Suzanne

    @Nicole:

    Though also, I don’t think a lot of white women have ever really thought about being marginalized; ever really took in the full extent of how being recognized as female by society is being, “othered.” 

    I also think that many men were okay with all of the social changes I listed above until women started, essentially, outperforming and outcompeting them. It’s no accident that we’re seeing defunding of higher education when women start doing better than men at it, and only wanting to date/marry/socialize with men who want to college. They were okay with the idea of equality but not once it threatened their own social status.

  50. 50.

    Suzanne

    @MagdaInBlack: I agree with you. Lots of white women have always considered themselves fully liberated. I think that’s a delusion of patriarchy, but no one is exempt from being navel-gaze-y.

  51. 51.

    Starfish

    @rikyrah: Part of this is that people understand how broken the system is. We have a lot of gerrymandering, a party that refuses to recognize the outcomes of elections that they lose, and a political system where the majority are held to rules set by minorities that live in states that contain fewer people. We are not going to be able to vote our way out of that.

  52. 52.

    Nicole

    @Suzanne:

    I also think that many men were okay with all of the social changes I listed above until women started, essentially, outperforming and outcompeting them.

    I think you’re right.  How many articles have I seen, despairing about boys’ struggles in school?

  53. 53.

    Ohio Mom

    @sdhays: Yes, there will still be pregnancies that turn into acute emergencies and result in the pregnant person’s death.

    Looking around at my neighbors though, I am not sure even that happening to a loved one will get them off their asses.

  54. 54.

    New Deal democrat

    This is worth repeating from Talking Points Memo’s “The Weekender” newsletter today:

    “This Court is taking us into uncharted waters. There are no checks and balances on our robed overlords. Many states that will ban or heavily restrict abortion are hopelessly gerrymandered; with Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) still supporting the filibuster, any federal abortion protections are dead on arrival. 

    “There are solutions to our current crisis, and measures like expanding the Court may gain popularity as its legitimacy plummets and it curtails people’s rights. A few more Democratic senators would render Sinema and Manchin irrelevant, and the chamber could pass protections.

     

    “Everything comes down to how people respond.”

    To repeat again: *There are no checks and balances on our robed overlords.* That is why anti-Federalist Brutus was correct in 1787 in opposing the creation of this Supreme Court, and why we must start the job of fundamental Constitutional reform of the Court now, even if it will take years or even decades for it to succeed.

    Also to reiterate: even before yesterday, Gallup found respect for the Supreme Court at an all time low of 25%. I suspect that public support for expanding the Court is going to rise sharply.

    Unfortunately, yesterday Biden said that he is against expanding the Supreme Court. Since that would mean decades of opinions like this week before there is hope of flipping the Court back, I sincerely hope that somebody who has his ear is capable of moving him on this topic.

    We have a road map. We must have the single-minded determination to follow it.

  55. 55.

    Josie

    @Lacuna Synecdoche:

    There have been only two times that I have cried at hearing political news–when President Kennedy was killed and when the Supreme Court stopped the vote count in Florida. Each time I knew it would lead to irreversible change. The decision to hand the presidency to Bush proved that the court was willing to step outside the bounds of the law to obtain what they wanted. Some of us have seen this coming a long way off.

  57. 57.

    Ohio Mom

    @Feathers: There has always been a fair amount of discretion about who gets arrested and charged. I would doubt my neighbors will get charged but of course would look forward to it.

  59. 59.

    JML

    @Feathers: I think they’ll be going after the doctors that provide abortion and related services; that’s been the primary tactic before this: make it impossible for someone to get an abortion by putting up so many barriers in the process. I think the tactic will continue, but rather than target women who actually manage to get an abortion they’re going to go after the doctors. There’s already a shortage of physicians willing to do the work, and it’ll only get worse if they can manage to toss anyone in prison for providing healthcare.

    It’s pretty horrifying.

  60. 60.

    Suzanne

    @Nicole: This ruling is not just meant to “protect life”. It is part of an attempt to remove women from the public sphere and send them back to the domain of the home. Where they will depend on the largesse of men to select them as wives/mothers and then maintain their lifestyle.

  63. 63.

    Another Scott

    Guttmacher.org (from June 15):

    In 2020, there were 930,160 abortions in the United States, an 8% increase from 862,320 abortions in 2017.

    The pandemic and RWNJ restrictions before Alito’s gutting of Roe and Casey were already making access to abortion difficult. Even with those difficulties, a lot of abortions were reported (but it’s probably an undercount of the full need).

    Roughly 330M * 0.51 = 168.3M females in the USA

    On average, 0.93/168.3 = 0.6% of all US females got an abortion in 2020.

    For comparison, total US COVID: 1.01 M deaths / 86.8 M cases = 1.2%, but that’s over 2.5 years, so 1.2/2.5 = 0.47%/year.  For comparison, 1.01M COVID deaths over 2.5 years, so on average more annual abortions than COVID deaths per year.

    So, annual abortion in the USA is more common than COVID death. (It’s even more common if one (sensibly) makes the denominator females only those who have had at least one period, and those who have not reached menopause.)

    So, and here’s the point – for everyone who thinks they don’t know of anyone who has had an abortion, but knows someone who died of COVID, their ignorance doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. Abortion is essential health care, it’s not unusual, it’s not rare, and any state that claims to respect human dignity is lying if they attempt to force people to reproduce or elevate the value of a collection of cells that cannot live on its own above the value of women. The need will not go away.

    We need to enlarge the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and codify abortion and contraceptive rights in federal law. We have to persist longer than the monsters.

    Eyes on the prizes.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  65. 65.

    Suzanne

    @Nicole:

    How many articles have I seen, despairing about boys’ struggles in school? 

    There seems to be this sense that we need to provide white boys — and only white boys — a defined path to success or at least stability.

  69. 69.

    Starfish

    @JML: With the mergers of health care systems and with so many doctors working for hospitals, the rules that the hospitals put in place, so they will not get sued, will change how the doctors practice.

  70. 70.

    gene108

    @rikyrah:

    I tried explaining to people on Twitter yesterday that we wouldn’t be here, if Democrats got more votes in 2002 and 2014 to retain control of the Senate, and won the presidency in 2000 and 2016.

    I don’t know if I got through to anybody that needed it.

    The inability to understand that Republicans did this because they won elections, which Democrats did not win is a denial of reality that has truly hurt us.

  72. 72.

    Nicole

    @Suzanne:

    There seems to be this sense that we need to provide white boys — and only white boys — a defined path to success or at least stability.

    100%!  Black boys just aren’t working hard enough.  White boys?  Oh, it must the fault of the education system that they aren’t doing their homework.

  73. 73.

    Kay

    They’re probably not going to use criminal laws to target women. For one thing, criminal liability has the highest standard of proof.

    They’ll use something like a civil commitment process – only a crazy lady would seek an abortion, so she needs re-education on a locked ward or they’ll use the hybrid criminal/civil legal schemes – something like what we use for abuse, neglect and dependency for children but with women in the child’s role.

    They could draft and put in a whole new sanctions scheme to punish women who attempt abortion that is not “criminal” at all, but involves forced detention and state process to punish them.

    Liberal lawyers and activists need to get much more imaginative, and fast. This is not going to look like anything you have seen before. We desperately, desperately need fewer conventional thinkers and people who are less invested in traditional legal norms and institutions. We are going to have to get smarter and more nimble and scrappier.

  75. 75.

    Suzanne

    @Nicole: And girls don’t get a defined path to success, either. Again, defunding of higher education just suspiciously correlates with women surpassing men at it. The social order they want puts women back in the home, under the financial control of men.

    Wah wah wah “wHy WoN’t WoMeN dAtE a PlUmBeR?!”.

  76. 76.

    UncleEbeneezer

    If i may offer a piece of advice: Do not engage with Anti-choice or Incel Twitter. just don’t do it at all. ignore them entirely. They are on the prowl. If you’re a large account, change your filters so you only get notifications from people who you follow or who follow you.

  78. 78.

    Kay

    Cast a wide fucking net for ideas. WIDE. If we’re going to continue to rely on the same 1500 liberal legal analysts and thinkers who got us here with their cramped, conventional views on what is “possible” we are not thinking enough.

    Criminal law is just one tool to control people. There are others in existence now and others can be invented. There will be whole state codes devoted to ways to track and find and process women who attempt abortion. They can write a whole new chapter if they want.

  79. 79.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @gene108: I was glad that multiple speakers at the vigil I attended last night, emphasized this point.  They urged lots of other stuff too, but kept returning to the fact that voting (not-voting) is what allowed this all to happen and we need to all put our energy to GOTV in November.

  80. 80.

    Another Scott

    @Suzanne: Alito and the others have opened a box that endangers us all, but especially women.

    The right for women to vote isn’t “deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions” either.  Neither is women having their own independent financial lives.  Neither is equal participation in the workplace, or education, or other trappings of modern life.  Neither is Social Security or clean air and clean water or federal labor laws.

    They ignore the plain language of the Constitution when it suits them.

    If they can use this reasoning to take away the right to privacy, they can take away anything from any of us.

    They are a minority.  We can defeat them.  But we have to do the work to win every election – there’s no respite.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  81. 81.

    Suzanne

    @Kay:

    We desperately, desperately need fewer conventional thinkers and people who are less invested in traditional legal norms and institutions. 

    Thank you thank you thank you.
    I am so sick of our unbending adherence to following rules, as if the rules in and of themselves were respectable and not just tools meant to serve a higher purpose.

  83. 83.

    Jinchi

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Overturning Roe is not something that could be buried

    Agreed. But leaking the opinion before it actually became official meant Roberts lost control of the reaction. Post leak the anger was directed at the legitimacy of the court. Now the focus is on protecting womens fundamental rights.

    Without the leak, the shock of the decision would have been overwhelming.

    Roberts wanted to skip over the months of people mulling over ending life tenure or packing the court.

  84. 84.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Another Scott: That’s where Thomas is going with his opinion. He thinks we need to correct a lot of “errors.”

    His marriage didn’t seem to cross his mind, for some reason.

  85. 85.

    Another Scott

    @Suzanne: I think the attacks on public education are more:

    1. Property taxes are the main funders of public schools.  The RWNJs hate taxes, especially property taxes for schools when their kids aren’t in them any more.
    2. They hate the idea of teachers telling their kids things that undercut the patriarchy and USA Uber Alles and White Jesus.

    I think it’s much, much more #1 (remember Proposition 13 in California in 1978), but certainly #2 is part of it.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  86. 86.

    MisterDancer

    @narya: Also: remove location data from any photo.

    Very easy if you don’t have a phone to take photos with, to begin with, at the protest. Thus why I said it, that way.

  87. 87.

    gwangung

    @evap: That’s not going to happen here. The Right Is so marinated in their bigotry and hatred, no number of deaths (particularly of POC women) will change their minds.

  88. 88.

    different-church-lady

    @Dangerman: Honestly, I think they’ll overturn emancipation if they get half a chance. They’re just a pack of wolves with flesh in their mouths at this point.

  89. 89.

    livewyre

    @Suzanne: IMO, that implies it’s on us to protect elections – and the concept of elections – just as much as to participate in them. It may not be a guarantee, but that’s why it’s a fight.

    I’m committed to the United States. America is up for definition.

  90. 90.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Suzanne: That’s a purpose of patriarchy/authoritarianism, isnt it? The following of rules is ingrained.

    Some of us are incapable/terrified of thinking outside the box.

  92. 92.

    Rented Dentures

    @MagdaInBlack: 

    If the left’s donor class had any killer instinct, they’d already have a case teed up seeking to overturn Loving using Thomas’ concurrence as its basis. Make him eat the dish he cooked.

  94. 94.

    MisterDancer

    @UncleEbeneezer: Do not engage with Anti-choice or Incel Twitter. just don’t do it at all. ignore them entirely.

    SECONDED. If you’re on Twitter, a couple of tools to help with that:

    • BotSentinel: Identifies Bot activity and helps you avoid it
    • MegaBlock: Automatically block an asshole AND all the people who like their asinine Tweet.
  95. 95.

    Starfish

    Supporting court expansion would at least be a path forward. Right now the message from the party leadership is “we have lost and we oppose every means of fixing the problem, our plan is to continue losing for at least a generation and probably longer.”
    — Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) June 25, 2022

  96. 96.

    Another Scott

    @New Deal democrat:

    Unfortunately, yesterday Biden said that he is against expanding the Supreme Court.

    I wouldn’t read too much into that, myself.

    I think the question is: Would he veto a SCOTUS expansion/reform bill? Of course not.

    If he said he was for expanding the SCOTUS now, the stories would all be about how feckless, weak Biden can’t get the Democratic Congress to do what he wants, yada yada yada.

    He said that Roe is on the ballot this fall. If, as expected, the SCOTUS next guts the ability of the EPA and the rest of the federal government to issue and enforce regulations, then that will be even more evidence that the SCOTUS must be changed.

    With a large enough Democratic majority, all things are possible.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  97. 97.

    Kay

    @Suzanne:

    Instead of asking “what crminal laws could they put in targeting women?” ask a much bigger question- “what would be possible to do across all areas of law to target women AND what legal schemes could they invent to target women?”

    We just saw this, right? With the laws where you snitch on your neighbor and report them to the newly deputized abortion monitors?

  99. 99.

    Baud

    @gwangung:

    Exactly.  Anything might not be sufficient. Does that mean do nothing. Of course not. (And I know doing nothing is not what Suzzane is suggesting).

  100. 100.

    different-church-lady

    @rikyrah:

    People see children as a punishment for women having sex.

    DING DING DING DING DING DING CORRECT ANSWER!!!

    There’s gonna be plenty of abortion in this country. It just isn’t going to be available to the proles.

  101. 101.

    Suzanne

    @Another Scott: Disagree. These people have been wanting to send women back to the kitchen to be barefoot and pregnant FOR YEARS. Women know this and that education is a key component of liberation, even if it’s just to protect their economic security if their husbands die.

  104. 104.

    livewyre

    @Another Scott: That’s a thought for sure. When I saw that I wondered if it was setting up for an “evolution” – i.e. feint. Times like this call for at least good old-fashioned two-dimensional chess. Just like before, it doesn’t have to look good as long as it gets done.

  105. 105.

    Jinchi

    @Kay: They’re probably not going to use criminal laws to target women.

    Didn’t they already arrest a Texas woman for having a miscarriage?

    My concern is that women will get the worst of both worlds. Charging a doctor with murder while exempting the woman who asked for it implies women are children.

  107. 107.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Jinchi: Yes. They think of us a children (at best). You didn’t know that?

    Eta: and we know they don’t think much of children.

  108. 108.

    different-church-lady

    @Eolirin:

    they had another chance at the ACA and still didn’t take it.

    That was a different court. That was the court of the Before-Times.

    That would be literal unambiguous suicide for the Republican party.

    They. Don’t. CARE.

  111. 111.

    Another Scott

    “Guys if you codify abortion rights then SCOTUS can’t take them away”

    Clarence Thomas: “As the Thirty Years War teaches us, the Founding Fathers believed that codifying things was unconstitutional and likely a form of witchcraft”

    — Comirnaty By Nature (@canderaid) June 25, 2022

    (via EclecticBrotha)

    Yeah, that’s a problem. ;-)

    But saying there’s a counter to everything good that sensible people try to do is not a sensible reason for inaction, of course. We have to act to move things forward, even when the monsters try to thwart us. And we have to vote the monsters out (and restrict the powers of the monsters than are not subject to elections).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  113. 113.

    Steeplejack

    @zhena gogolia:

    Thanks. I need a dramatis personae, like at the beginning of a Russian novel. Say, our timeline is starting to resemble a Russian novel.

  114. 114.

    Mike E

    @debbie: This brings to mind the defeated villains’ words at the end of a Scooby Doo episode: “… And we would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids!”

    @rikyrah: Brings to mind the amazing/devastating documentary A Walk to Beautiful where African teens look to get life changing restorative surgery to correct fistulas caused by near-fatal childhood pregnancies. I recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it already.

  115. 115.

    Fair Economist

    @Gvg:

    Bernie Sanders supporters are about 40 on a list of whom to blame. The republicans, all of them, who voted this issue for decades, who blaired save the babies when they really meant keep the sluts subservient are chiefly to blame.

    It’s not that I don’t think the Bernie purity left weren’t at best fools and at worst women hating liars…it’s that we have to win, and winning is building coalitions, which means we are going to have to make nice to a lot of the gullible idiots soon to keep their votes, along with other kinds of squishy unreliable allies to crush these repressive laws and the politicians that voted for them. So we can’t burn the bridges.

    Yeah, just like always, we have to make coalitions and work with people we don’t like. The approach I like is to go after the obvious bad faith actors like Susan Sarandon for lying to people in 2016 and implicitly let the Sanders supporters off the hook. If we can spread the (accurate) narrative that bad faith operatives manipulated hard lefties into not voting for Hillary in the general, then it will be much easier to get hard lefties to vote sensibly *for their own interests* in the future. And that’s all we need, because as long as we face fascist takeover, a moderate left-hard left coalition is reasonable, honest, and genuine.

  116. 116.

    lowtechcyclist

    @rikyrah: ​
     

    Bernie Sanders gave us this right-wing SCOTUS (@Needle_of_Arya) tweeted at 7:38 AM on Sat, Jun 25, 2022:

    I get so tired of this. You know how many Justices Hillary would have been able to put on the Supreme Court? ZERO. We all know that, Mitch said so. Just like he blocked Merrick Garland, he’d have blocked any of Hillary’s nominees.

    When Trump got elected in 2020 after Hillary got crucified in the media for America’s having to suffer 30-40K Covid deaths, he’d be replacing Scalia, RBG, and Anthony Kennedy just like he did. The main difference is, it might have taken SCOTUS another year or two to dismantle Roe.

    Bernie’s too-little, too-late support for Hillary in 2016 enraged me too. But it’s totally unrealistic to assume a Hillary win in 2016 would have somehow saved us from all this.

  117. 117.

    different-church-lady

    @lowtechcyclist: Waddaya think the odds would have been of dems getting control of the Senate if Mr. Race-Never-Plays-Into-It hadn’t told everyone democrats suck, I’m the only one you can trust?

  118. 118.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Teri Kanefield has a good sub stack post about the history of rape laws in the US, with regards to Dobbs.  It’s all about controlling women!

    “Of course. It’s all about controlling women.

    I will not write about the history of laws governing abortion and access to contraception. I just can’t go there now.

    This is a history of rape laws.

    Then I will get to what we do, now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned.

    You see, laws reflect cultural biases, and for most of world history, laws were mostly about keeping women in their place.

    For much of world history, rape was a property crime. An unmarried girl was her father’s property. A married woman was her husband’s property. If a virgin was raped, the property damage was to her father. If she was married, the damage was to her husband.

    If she wasn’t a virgin and wasn’t married, there was no crime (because the property was already damaged). A man couldn’t rape his wife (his own property) and rape of enslaved women wasn’t a crime. Even after the Civil War, the rape of a black woman wasn’t recognized as a crime.

    The law was intended to protect (white) men from false accusations; not to protect women from attack.

    The social hierarchy in the United States prior to the twentieth century determined how rape was treated.

    Black men were lynched if accused by a white woman.

    A poor white woman who accused a more powerful man was not believed.

    …”

  120. 120.

    J R in WV

    @mali muso:

    Every miscarriage as a crime scene…it’s going to be ugly out there for a LOT of people very quickly.

    Not just miscarriages, but also ectopic pregnancies, and In Vitro Fertilization work will potentially become illegal in many states. Many problem pregnancies including fetal abnormalities and genetic disasters will be potentially lethal to the pregnant women.

    These pro-birth people are so bone-headed ignorant of medical realities surrounding pregnancy that they are still totally unaware of the problems they have created in all the theocratic “christian” states. Their wives and daughters will pay for this malpractice  in death and misery.

  121. 121.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Bernie twitter has seized on the lie that Tim Kaine (100% NARAL rating) was anti-choice to justify their stupidity in 2016

  122. 122.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Voting is necessary, but may not be sufficient.

    The toolbox is large; consider every one of the tools.

    such as?

  123. 123.

    MagdaInBlack

    @J R in WV:  They don’t care. It is god’s will these things happen. Women are expendable. We are livestock. If one dies, they’ll just “get another.”

  125. 125.

    James E Powell

    @lowtechcyclist:

    Maybe, maybe not. But there is no maybe about the fact that we gain nothing from continuing arguments from 2016 or 2000. The task is always in front of us.

    In the last 24 hours, I’ve been contacted by several of my friends who are barely connected to politics. Not dullards or dolts, these are manager-class people who don’t watch the news, don’t talk about politics, can’t name their senators or congresspersons, but definitely vote.

    First, this may come as a surprise to us here, but Roe being overruled came as a surprise to them. As I said, they do not pay attention to developing stories.

    Second, when I explain that this happened because not enough people vote for Democrats in every election, they refuse to accept this. I mean, to us it is beyond argument. You change 2000 & 2016 and a handful of senate elections over the last 20 years and none of this happens, none of this is even discussed as possible. But they don’t want to hear it.

    The task or rather the tasks are in front of us. And one of them is somehow convincing people that voting for Democrats isn’t about whether you like a woman’s laugh or think she feels entitled, but is really about what kind of people that Democrat will appoint to courts & federal positions and what kind they will never appoint.

  126. 126.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @James E Powell:

    First, this may come as a surprise to us here, but Roe being overruled came as a surprise to them. As I said, they do not pay attention to developing stories.

    One thing that it’s hard for people like us to grasp (absolutely including myself) is how unusual we are for being so engaged in politics.

    One thing I’ll be watching is to see if this ruling moves polls in Florida and North Carolina.

  127. 127.

    Tony G

    @zhena gogolia: GHWB was a terrible president and a lousy human being.  The fact that media consensus now is to remember him fondly only shows how low the bar has been set since the elections of his son and of Trump.

  130. 130.

    Tony G

    @James E Powell: Yeah, I had an otherwise-intelligent acquaintance tell me yesterday afternoon now shocked she was to hear on the radio that Roe had been overturned.  I constantly have to remind myself that there are plenty of intelligent, decent people out there who follow politics about as closely as I follow ice hockey — that is, hardly at all.

  132. 132.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Tony G: Oh hell, the son is now that amiable fellow who paints strange pictures, and of course he wasn’t very bright, but bless his heart, he tried. Damn shame about that Iraq thing, but these things just sort of happen, don’t they?

    Some day, when Nicolle Wallace, in all her convert’s zeal, starts with her ‘do Democrats get that democracy is on the line?’ schtick, one of her guests is going to say, “Where’s your old boss and his brother? Ignoring, again, clear threats to the country because they want to repeat their oedipal loop-de-loop with yet another generation?” Some day that will happen.

    (and yes I stole that oedipal loop-de-loop from Maureen Dowd, but as useless as she is, I think she always had insight into the Bush family and their psycho-political daddy issues)

  134. 134.

    Jinchi

    @MagdaInBlack: It’s not what they think of women thats important. It’s what the law thinks.

    If laws are written that a doctor is guilty of murder for providing an abortion, but the woman who requested it is innocent, then she is legally not an adult responsible for her own actions.

  136. 136.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @germy shoemangler:

    Democrats codified voting rights and the Roberts court overturned them. Democrats codified campaign finance reform and the Roberts court overturned it. Dems codified laws regulating guns and this court overturned them. Following this pattern, if Dems had somehow found 60 votes to codify reproduction rights this court would have overturned them. Codifying doesn’t save a policy from a right wing activist court.

    good point, people now using “DEMS DIDN’T CODIFY ROE!” as an excuse to not support Democrats (how many of them have ever spoken or typed the word “codify” before yesterday, one wonders) fail to grasp that they’re really talking about a Constitutional amendment. Conservatives have controlled the USSC, with varying degrees of control and conservatism, since (I believe?) 1986, when Rehnquist replaced Burger and Scalia was put on the Court.

  137. 137.

    James E Powell

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    @Tony G:

    The bad news is that there are so many people who would almost certainly vote D if they weren’t so disconnected from the political world. The good news is that reaching these people is something we can do. In fact, only we can do it.

    They aren’t going to be reached by Democratic messaging or political theater. They can be reached by their friends & families. I am not talking about our FOX-ified friends, I’m talking about potential allies who just need gentle but persistent engagement.

    Just think, if every engaged D could bring one or two friends. I think of Jesse Jackson’s “Rocks, just laying around” speech from 1984.

  138. 138.

    New Deal democrat

    @different-church-lady:
    “ What makes us think Manchin won’t oppose expanding the court?”

    He would. Hence, why the material I quoted stated, “ rights. A few more Democratic senators would render Sinema and Manchin irrelevant,”

    Hope that helps.

  139. 139.

    Another Scott

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: If people refuse to follow the law and the norms, then an Amendment won’t help either.

    Why isn’t Privacy and all it entails under the 9th Amendment??

    Ultimately, it’s the people in positions of authority that matter, not the written text somewhere.  The RWNJs on the SCOTUS have shown that they’re liars, that they only value raw power, and they will do what they want and dare the Congress and the rest of us to stop them.  Such people won’t be constrained by some new Amendment.  They will only be constrained by losing their positions or by no longer being in the majority.

    Fight for 15!!

    [eta:] Someone years ago did a timeline that showed that the SCOTUS has always been conservative/reactionary, except for the time between the New Deal and the mid-late 1970s.  But we don’t have to accept that should be the case for time going forward, of course.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  140. 140.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    They’re still doing “Biden needs to give us a reason…”

    John @stgwi

    How does he expect to get the votes if he won’t give voters a reason to turn out this fall? He’s been in office for two years and shown a pathological unwillingness to rock the boat

    As ever, tell me what “rocking the boat” looks like

  141. 141.

    New Deal democrat

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: “Democrats codified voting rights and the Roberts court overturned them.[etc]… Codifying doesn’t save a policy from a right wing activist court.
     
    “ they’re really talking about a Constitutional amendment.”
     
    As Shelby County showed, even an explicit Constitutional Amendment can be set aside by an activist Court, inventing a doctrine out of thin air, nowhere mentioned in the Constitution, that the Founders explicitly addressed via the creation of the Senate to begin with.
     
    It is the Supreme Court itself which must be reformed.

  142. 142.

    Geminid

    @Fair Economist: Right now Democrats have a coalition of moderates and liberals, both voters and politicians. The House Democratic Caucus has 95 Progressive Caucus members, and a slightly greater number of New Democrat Coalition and Blue Dog Caucus members. And these are not that polarized; a graph of members by policy and ideology would show a fat bell curve, and the ones in the middle might be of either caucuses because their affiliations are in part branding, based on the makeup of their particular districts.

    What could the “hard left” offer the party? They are small in number, for all the noise they make. They despise half our Representatives and the voters who elect them. They disparage Sharice Davids, Val Demings, Tim Ryan and many other good Democrats as “Corporate Democrats,” because they caucus with the New Democrat Coalition. They accuse Progressive Caucus members like Jimmy Panneta, Ted Lieu and Hakeem Jeffries of being PINOs, Progressives In Name Only.

    These people are nothing but trouble. I think of them as pirates and parasites; forming an alliance with them would be like voluntarily ingesting so many tapeworms.

  146. 146.

    lowtechcyclist

    @different-church-lady:

    @lowtechcyclist: Waddaya think the odds would have been of dems getting control of the Senate if Mr. Race-Never-Plays-Into-It hadn’t told everyone democrats suck, I’m the only one you can trust?

    I don’t know, but remember that the filibuster was still in place for SCOTUS nominees.  The GOP of course ditched it at the very first moment it was in their way.  Would the Dems have had 50 votes to get rid of the SCOTUS filibuster in 2017 or 2018, even if they had 50+ Senators?

    It’s not the way to bet.  Even now, when the need is much more clear and we’ve had an extra 4-5 years to mobilize on the issue, it still isn’t very clear how many Dem Senators are hiding behind Manchin and Sinema on this issue, only with Roe or voting rights in place of SCOTUS.  Where are Feinstein and Warner even now?  Back then, we’d be lucky to only have a half-dozen Senators putting the filibuster ahead of the SCOTUS nominee.

    Then of course, we lose seats in November 2018 (the usual second-year effect, especially after being able to accomplish very little), and it’s all downhill from there.

  147. 147.

    frosty

    @Another Scott: The Ninth Amendment was supposed to guarantee the people’s enumerated rights. Like the right to vote and the right to privacy, right? This court doesn’t think that amendment is part of the Constitution?

  148. 148.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Geminid: ​
     

    What could the “hard left” offer the party? They are small in number, for all the noise they make. They despise half our Representatives and the voters who elect them. They disparage Sharice Davids, Val Demings, Tim Ryan and many other good Democrats as “Corporate Democrats,” because they caucus with the New Democrat Coalition. They accuse Progressive Caucus members like Jimmy Panneta, Ted Lieu and Hakeem Jeffries of being PINOs, Progressives In Name Only.

    These people are nothing but trouble. I think of them as pirates and parasites; forming an alliance with them would be like voluntarily ingesting so many tapeworms.

    An excellent summary.

    Seriously, fuck these people. Tell them that however disappointing they find the Democratic Party, it’s the Republicans that just axed Roe, and that’s likely just an appetizer.

    I don’t know whether there’s daylight between the current GOP and plain old fascism, but if there’s any, it damned sure isn’t much. We’re getting a foretaste right now of what they’re about, and it’s clear that if they ever get full control of the government again, it’s Katy bar the door.

    If that isn’t enough reason for them to vote Dem, then fuck ’em.

  149. 149.

    Geminid

    @lowtechcyclist: (I know you meant 2022) I don’t accept the conventional wisdom that we will lose the House and/or the Senate. I rate our chances of holding the House at 50-50 right now, with the outcome coming down to 20 or fewer close races. I think our chances to keep the Senate and even add to our majority are greater than that.

    I also think about the 1946 midterms, when Republicans did very well. Two years later Harry Truman ran against a “Do Nothing Congress” and won, even with Democrats Henry Wallace and Strom Thurmond running to his left and right as third party candidates.

  150. 150.

    lowtechcyclist

    @frosty: This court doesn’t think that amendment is part of the Constitution?

    They don’t think the Ninth Amendment means anything.  IIRC, Thomas flat-out said so decades ago.

  151. 151.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Centrism Fan Acct  @Wilson__Valdez 42m
    I get that everyone is fishing around for One Magic Trick that will reverse this but the sad reality is that there just isn’t one. No amount of ‘codifying’ or whatever will change this. We missed our shot in 2016. The GOP never stopped capitalizing.

    I know that’s not what people want to hear. I get it. It’s extremely deflating. All there really is to do on the federal level is build for the long term. Keep winning elections. Make sure the GOP doesn’t get even more power. We’re on defense now.

    The state level is now where the action is. Where Dems have control, they will need to expand access to deal with all the influx from the GOP states. All the races become pivotal. Here in PA, if the GOP wins the governor’s race, we’ll get the same anti-abortion laws as MS or AL

    My boldface– this cannot be emphasized enough. Too many on the left are too focused on top-down politics “Biden needs to….!” Governors, Secretaries of State, attorneys general, state legislatures are all that much more important now than they were 48 hours ago, and they were pretty goddam important then.

  152. 152.

    bluefoot

    @rikyrah: ​
      OMG, this. As if white cis-het men don’t vote their identity, or don’t work maintain and expand their hold on power. But it’s “identity politics” when the rest of us work toward equality.

  153. 153.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Geminid: ​
     

    @lowtechcyclist: (I know you meant 2022) I don’t accept the conventional wisdom that we will lose the House and/or the Senate.

    No, actually this was about the 2018 midterms in the hypothetical “Hillary wins in 2016” timeline. Basically saying that even if the Dems won WH and Senate in 2016, they’d have to be willing to kill the filibuster on SCOTUS nominees before the 2018 midterms.

    I’m at least hopeful for 2022 because the stakes are so clear. And also because our nakedly partisan SCOTUS to some extent takes away from the usual “if things are crappy, vote against the incumbent” reflex by practically trumpeting that they’re the real incumbent in this election.

  154. 154.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: ​
     

    My boldface– this cannot be emphasized enough. Too many on the left are too focused on top-down politics “Biden needs to….!” Governors, Secretaries of State, attorneys general, state legislatures are all that much more important now than they were 48 hours ago, and they were pretty goddam important then.

    Agreed. Right now, I’d love some good info on state legislatures: which ones are on the edge of us either gaining or losing control, and which are on the edge of either party gaining or losing a supermajority (which means different things in different states).

    IOW, if I was going to send fifty bucks each to 20 Dem state legislature candidates anywhere in the country, which ones should I consider? Where might it make the most difference?

  155. 155.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: just listening to the podcast of last night’s Hayes program, because I consider myself to be a nerd, and Melissa Murray made a great point about the conservative approach to politics that relates to this: When the Rs went after ObamaCare, they couldn’t do it through the political process, even when that deck is so heavily stacked in their favor, so they went to a friendly court to begin a long process of hacking away at it. They use all levers and levels of power ruthlessly and constantly. The Left, meanwhile, declares that it’s insulting to be asked to vote every two years.

  157. 157.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: I would add that as far as Senate races go, Democratic unity and Republican disunity may make the difference. In both Ohio and Michigan, Republicans nominated candidates who only got 33% of the primary vote, and a lot of the other Republicans found them objionable. I think the weaker candidates won these nominations. In Georgia, Trump forced a candidate on Republicans that many opposed. I think he will prove to be a weak candidate as well. In Arizona, Republicans are spending a lot of their money tearing each other down while Mark Kelly is banking his.

    Democrats are as motivated and unified now as I have ever seen them. Republicans have some real divisions. They might be able to paper them over for this election, but if they can’t they could face a stinging disappointment, especially if they don’t win the House. And then the fat will be in the fire.

  160. 160.

    Leslie

     

    @Another Scott:

    To climb briefly onto a tangential soapbox, using property taxes to fund schools is another way of locking in inequality. The richest neighborhoods automatically have the best schools. It needs to change. A fight for another day, but a need I’m always aware of.

    On topic, I hope a lot of the (privileged white) folks who find it so easy to ignore politics are shocked out of their complacency.

  161. 161.

    Another Scott

    @lowtechcyclist: Read BobbyBigWheel.  This is his wheelhouse.

    https://twitter.com/bobbybigwheel

    State legislatures have never been more important yet their campaigns cost just 3% of a Senate race. So we found the candidates across the country that could use your donations right now more than any others. If you're going to give, Give Smart https://t.co/80bRafSlBv

    — Aaron (@BobbyBigWheel) May 31, 2022

    Michigan and Maine are good investments.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  164. 164.

    Bill Arnold

    @lowtechcyclist:

    You know how many Justices Hillary would have been able to put on the Supreme Court? ZERO. We all know that, Mitch said so. Just like he blocked Merrick Garland, he’d have blocked any of Hillary’s nominees.

    In this alt reality, what would have been the outcome of the 2018 Senate elections after 2 years of total Republican obstruction?

  165. 165.

    Bill Arnold

    @mali muso:

    Every miscarriage as a crime scene…it’s going to be ugly out there for a LOT of people very quickly.

    Worse than that. Every irregularity in a woman’s menstrual cycle that doesn’t result in a live birth is a potential crime scene, with no statute of limitations. And the consensual technological panopticon that we freely allow ourselves to live in will make data mining for evidence of such crimes against Christian Supremacy possible.

  166. 166.

    J R in WV

    @frosty: ​
     

    When you said :

    The Ninth Amendment was supposed to guarantee the people’s enumerated rights. Like the right to vote and the right to privacy, right? This court doesn’t think that amendment is part of the Constitution?

    You were wrong. Here’s the text of the 9th amendment, which protects rights NOT enumerated in the constitution:

    The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

    Like Privacy, Reproductive Rights, etc, etc. Even the right to travel from one state to another, as in from TX to Illinois for heath care, which some people probably intend to make illegal ASAP. We need to indict a bunch of RWNJ “justices” for perjury, they all swore on a Bible to uphold and defend Row V Wade in their testimony before the Senate before they were approved to the Supremes.

    And Beer Boy needs to have his tax and banking records reviewed with a very fine tooth comb, I would believe someone owns his ass financially, and there’s some skullduggery there worth an indictment on top of the perjury indictments.

  167. 167.

    Bill Arnold

    @Rented Dentures:

    If the left’s donor class had any killer instinct, they’d already have a case teed up seeking to overturn Loving using Thomas’ concurrence as its basis. Make him eat the dish he cooked.

    This is kinda dumb.
    But it might make sense to have a small cadre of quite quirky US Federal judges like the Republicans do, who occasionally issue rulings based on non-normative but Democrat-friendly readings of the constitution that will be reviewed by a friendly appeals court so that the SCOTUS will feel the need to address them.
    E.g. Marbury v Madison is wrongly decided, or a rights ruling involving the 9th Amendment.

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