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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: The Roe v Wade Anniversary

Open Thread: The Roe v Wade Anniversary

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From the minute Roe was overturned last June, our Administration fought to protect access to abortion where we could – including taking executive action to safeguard access to medication abortion and travel to access reproductive health care services.

Since then, anti-choice bills have cropped up in state houses across America, including proposals restricting access to contraception.

And in Congress, MAGA officials are touting a national ban with the goal of blocking women everywhere from making their own health care choices.

Let me be clear: a woman’s right to choose is non-negotiable.

I haven’t stopped fighting to protect women’s reproductive rights – and I never will.

Now, it’s time for Congress to pass legislation codifying the protections of Roe.

… It’s as though Captain Ahab suddenly harpooned Moby Dick and had to figure out his next step in life.

Dobbs triggered much celebration and self-congratulation among anti-abortion activists: Their decades-long strategy of undermining Roe via Supreme Court appointments by Republican presidents had finally borne fruit. But this development was obviously just a condition precedent to the movement’s ultimate goal of banning abortion entirely and everywhere. It raised a lot of new and difficult questions about where to move next and how quickly to do so while fundamentally changing the dynamics of the abortion debate.

Since the central legal battle has now been resolved, the most urgent task for anti-abortion activists is to rethink their alliance with the Republican politicians they rely on for further progress in ending reproductive rights. Yes, there have always been considerable differences of opinion within the anti-abortion ranks over strategy, tactics, and rhetoric. But intra-movement arguments that were largely theoretical when Roe was in place are suddenly very real, and their resolution must be coordinated with GOP elected officials, candidates, and opinion leaders. There is no question that while Dobbs led quickly to abortion bans wherever they were possible, it also produced a sea change in public opinion that has to be troubling to those for whom reversing Roe was just the starting point.

The Guttmacher Institute reports that, post-Dobbs, 24 states have enacted some sort of previously unconstitutional abortion ban. But at the same time, the abortion-rights side won every 2022 ballot test on abortion policy including three in the deep-red states of Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana and another in the key battleground state of Michigan. Perhaps of equal significance, candidates from a Republican Party that had maintained a steady partnership with the anti-abortion movement since at least 1980 ran away from the issue as quickly as it could in most competitive election contests. At the federal level, Republicans hid behind the ancient and entirely insincere pre-Dobbs claim that they wanted only to return the issue to the states. (If you think of fetuses as “babies” with an inalienable “right to life,” then that’s a contemptuous dodge; today, as in the antebellum era, “states’ rights” is just a veil for more absolute policy goals, whether it’s slavery or forced birth.) And in states where voters were allowed to weigh in, Republicans sometimes shrugged and deferred to the abortion-rights majority of public opinion.

So the challenge before anti-abortion activists isn’t just to reach internal consensus over short- and long-term goals and tactics; they also need to reimpose discipline on the GOP and its shifty politicians. Fortunately for these activists, they will have a lever via their influence on what looks to be a highly competitive 2024 GOP presidential nominating contest. Republican presidential candidates will find that support for a federal abortion ban is an absolute condition for the movement’s support. At the same time, Republicans at the state and local levels will be pressed to work toward the most extreme abortion policies that are politically viable wherever they run or hold office. If Republicans candidates stick with their impulse to avoid this sensitive issue, it could be deadly for the future of the “right to life” movement.

For all the post-Dobbs excitement over “babies being saved,” the anti-abortion movement needs to quickly make ground on public opinion or increase its control of GOP candidates. If it fails to do so, it could see the reemergence of pro-choice Republican candidates and elected officials, a nearly extinct species until now but one that could command some significant grassroots support within the party along with crossover appeal. If that happens, the nation’s abortion-rights majority will impose its will sooner or later, and reproductive rights may gain recognition nearly everywhere in law, if not in the Constitution.

Reader Interactions

133Comments

  3. 3.

    Martin

    It doesn’t feel like it, but this war is won. Democrats are united in favor of reproductive rights, and it’s becoming a wedge issue among the right. You still have captured institutions like the courts which will take years to get back in line, and you’ll have some states hold out to the bitter end, but as a national issue abortion is now a clearly losing issue for the GOP. Small comfort for those who want to exercise their rights now, but eventually this arc will turn the right way.

    A lot of that is due to medication abortion changing how people view abortion and how the levers of access can be controlled.

  4. 4.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Since it is OT: can I put in a request that some front-pager do a post on DOJ’s anti-trust lawsuit against Google?  I’ve tried reading a couple simplified Twitter threads but it still hurts my brain.  Or if any commenter wants to take a crack at it.  Business + Tech + Antitrust Law are three things that I don’t understand very well.  I assume the lawsuit is a good thing, but I’d love to have a better understanding of the chances of success and what a good result would look like.

  5. 5.

    Martin

    @UncleEbeneezer: Sure. The issue isn’t really about Google’s search business, but about how Google runs the ad exchange.

    Google offers a range of tools to make the ad market work – DoubleClick on the sell-side which is where websites tell the market that they have a slot to run an ad, Google Ads and Display & Video 360 on the buy-side which is where advertisers provide their ads, and they run Google AdExchange in the middle which is the market maker to match ads to ad opportunities.

    The problem is that Google’s market share on the sell-side is enormous – like 90%. On the buy side it’s almost that high for static ads and reasonably high (40%) for video ads. Those are the markets that the DOJ asserts that Google has built monopolies in. The abuse is AdExchange, the market maker because Google manipulates both sides of that market to maximize revenue.

    Part of the evidence behind this is a separate court case asserting collusion between Google and Meta over ad competition. Meta was going to enter Google’s market and extend their on-platform market to other websites, but Google effectively paid them off by offering them preferential treatment on the sell-side.

    DOJ wants Google to split up the ad business, and wants damages paid to the federal government for overcharging the federal government for ads.

    If they succeed here, expect them to go after Amazon next for their Amazon Marketplace/ad market which is similarly structured and in a lot of ways even more clear cut.

  6. 6.

    pat

    Lost my last comment about connecting my new desktop computer because my nym was not transferred.  Anyway, seems to be working now.  Got a new keyboard with it that is great for touch-typing.  I don’t know how anyone types on a phone……

    The lost comment was about the difficulty of passing the cables through the hole in the back of my desk, crawling on my hands and knees under the desk…  Maybe stick with laptops from now on?

    Fortunately I have a laptop so while the old computer was in the shop being scrapped, I could still access BJ. What would I do without you  guys?

  7. 7.

    zhena gogolia

    @pat: My typing on a phone is so slow and creaky. I used to be a clerk-typist, so I need to be able to touch type too.

  9. 9.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Martin: Yes. In addition, terrible though it would be, the first woman who dies of miscarriage because of a state’s forced birth laws, will bring it home viscerally to even the most detached voter.

    TBC, I’m not wishing this at all. I am simply saying that health care denied for some, is potential death for all the group effected.

    This is a point not lost on anyone once a face and a name is given to the proposition.

    Oh, and the term ‘pro life’ should never ever be used to describe a policy which is properly described as femicide.

  11. 11.

    pat

    Since I’m loving my new keyboard (I took typing one summer in  high school so I am not that good…)

    I lost a great friend when trump was elected.  I was watching the returns in Austria and when the results were announced I emailed her that “I feel sick…”

    She emailed back that “It will be OK..”  I should not have been surprised because I knew that she and especially her husband were “evangelicals” but it was essentially the end of our relationship.  I often wonder how she and her two sons and two daughters are getting along….

     

    eta:  She emailed me her views on abortion and I have thankfully lost that email.  But she was a real “life at the moment of conception” believer..

  14. 14.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Baud: That’s what my Jill Stein voting friend her Trump voting husband said in Nov 2016. We weren’t friends by Feb of 2017

    She : He is better than HRC, we dodged a bullet there.
    He: Orange Error is just a regular northeast Republican he just says horrible things to get elected.

  17. 17.

    Martin

    @UncleEbeneezer: Regarding the likelihood of success, hard to say. Result would be good but not without consequence. You’d see a direct worsening of Google search and probably a lot of other ad-supported online services like YouTube and non-Google services. Google would lose a lot of revenue, which might affect other things they do. Pixel phones could either get a boost as a more important source of revenue or get cut as a distraction from what they perceive to be their core business. You’re seeing Apple already responding to the suit by exploring inhousing more of the services that Google offers. That’s not necessarily a measure of likelihood of this suit succeeding, but possibly a measure of the magnitude of impact if it would succeed. Apple gets $15B a year in payments from Google to be default search on iOS. Those payments probably at risk if this succeeds.

    My concern is that US courts have a terrible track record of understanding how markets operate, and really clear blind spots regarding who antitrust is designed to protect. This is even worse on the internet where conventional economic rules go out the window due to zero marginal cost markets and so on, and how natural markets form there – especially around social media. And the tools the courts feel they have at their disposal are ill suited to providing *good* remedies. And Google isn’t just a big US company, they are a dominant global company, so does the US want to weaken one of their bigger global stage players? Google is a big exporter of US tech dominance, culture, etc. Even if the thing they are doing is wrong, giving that up is hard.

    For consumers, my guess is things will feel worse. One of the problem the old ad market had (before these tools) was that the sell-side could create infinite demand. Cole could slap as many ad frames on this site as he wanted, and it was a race to the bottom, because every ad frame lowered the value of each ad, so you needed to add more, repeat. Ad prices were falling so quickly that it posed a threat to Google’s business. Google shored up the market through this manipulation – being no natural cost to increasing ad demand, and no marginal cost to delivering an ad, you have a denominator that naturally runs to infinity and no per-unit cost to provide a floor on ad prices, so you have an inherently unstable market. Google put artificial floors on both sides – on the sell-side and on the buy-side which stabilized the market. I don’t know how this market functions without that and if this is removed, yeah, the price of ads will go down, the number of ads will go up to compensate, everything will be choked with ads all over again. That doesn’t sound great. I could care less if advertisers are overcharged, which is who the case seeks relief for. But objectively, this is a market abuse, so DOJ isn’t wrong to be doing this.

    But we also know that market competition isn’t always desirable. We have market competition for health care. It sucks. It works *much* better if the government is the sole provider. The feds could regulate the ad market to stabilize it, but they won’t, mostly because I don’t think they can possibly understand the dynamic with the economic view of the kind of people that pass through the filters to get into government.

    So, weaker Google – take that however you want. Probably weaker monetization of user information as a result – that’s good. Less stable ad market – that feels bad.

  18. 18.

    pat

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Same here.  We kind of kept it up through the next year (she lived in another city and we didn’t meet often).   Sad, really.  As long as we could get together and play our flutes together, we got along great.  No mention of abortion or politics, just ignore all that stuff.  Impossible once trump was actually elected.

  20. 20.

    trollhattan

    Wish the veep would have rocked a pair of knee-high white paten leather boots. She could pull it off. Li’l Ron, not so much.

    Good idea taking the fight to Florida. Newsom has the right idea there.

  21. 21.

    trollhattan

    You hate to see it.

    January 25, 2023 at 5:55 pm EST By Taegan Goddard

    Yahoo News: “There’s no shortage of Democratic senators in danger of losing their seats in 2024. Joe Manchin in ruby-red West Virginia. Jon Tester in solidly Republican Montana. Sherrod Brown in ever-more-conservative Ohio. And their colleagues in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Michigan — four of the purplest places on the map.”

    “But if the latest polls are to be believed, no Senate incumbent is in as much trouble as Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema.”

  22. 22.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Martin: Meanwhile, in some places in the US, pregnant women who want to have a child can’t get timely obstetrics appointments because doctors don’t want to chance an intervention in case something goes awry…so much for pre-natal care. We’re number 1 of industrialized nations in maternal mortality rates and it’s almost 3x for POC. Red states are still advancing even more draconian restrictions after this was shown to be a losing issue.

    I guess I’m going to wait for a time when it’s not so dangerous to be a woman of child bearing years to declare any sort of victory. For now, it’s still a pyrrhic one.

  23. 23.

    stinger

    I do miss proofreaders.

    ETA: Guess I could explain myself. One example:

    “candidates from a Republican Party that had maintained a steady partnership with the anti-abortion movement since at least 1980 ran away from the issue as quickly as it could ”

    Who’s “it”?

  24. 24.

    Martin

    @trollhattan: Dems are going to have to work extremely hard to make sure no Dem votes for Sinema. Worried too about how much money the CA senate race will suck out of Dem coffers.

  25. 25.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Martin: My fairly-uninformed opinion is that this isn’t a particularly good complaint, compared to something like device-locked app stores, which have some pretty famous precedents. The result of rejiggering the Apple App Store and wouldn’t be nearly as dramatic as breaking up Google, but yeah, it’s not exactly clear why I, the end user, should care about Google being a little anticompetitive when it comes to serving ads via Google. The alternative, as you say, is likely to be worse. This feels mostly punitive–they’d love to whack Google over something users care about, but that would be harder.

    I’ve been meaning to write about this one but I really just do not feel like a great commenter, and am mid-move so I don’t have the time to become one.

    You know, if you’d like to draft something I’m happy to post it for you.

  27. 27.

    Geminid

    @Martin: I’m not sure Sinema will be on the ballot November, 2024. Many people assume she’ll run, but I think it is just as likely this will be a two person race, Ruben Gallego versus the Republican.

    We won’t know for sure for another year, though.

  28. 28.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Geminid: I think her strategy is to hope she polls second in a three-way race, after the Republican, thus pressuring Dems into supporting her. Unfortunately for her, she has no constituency and is likely to poll third. Unfortunately for us, the Republican is (IMO, far out obviously) likely to be polling first.

    Though since she wouldn’t mind a Republican victory, coming in third would let her pressure the Dem just as much, I suppose.

  31. 31.

    Eolirin

    @Martin: Maybe it’s time for ad based monetization to go away for online communities and services. There are other ways to make money if it’s not a viable option.

  34. 34.

    Citizen Alan

    @Baud: So is “compassionate conservative.” Doesn’t mean that Republicans won’t run on being pro-choice in blue states. Susan Collins claims to be pro-choice, but she was the mid-wife of Dobbs as much as anyone else by her support for Trump’s appointees.

  35. 35.

    Mike in NC

    Two things Republicans will never ever tire of: (1) trying to outlaw abortion, including contraception and (2) slashing the social safety net to pay for tax cuts for their donors and other rich people.

  36. 36.

    MikefromArlington

    Handmaids Tale should be required viewing for all to understand where the MAGA’s want to take us

  37. 37.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Martin: I understand what you are saying, but let’s not pretend this was not a defeat. People are going to fucking die.

  38. 38.

    Geminid

    @Major Major Major Major: Sinema’s not going to win a game of chicken. Arizona Democrats are going to nominate a strong candidate and back him to the hilt.

    Sinema will have to run as an Independent in a three way race, and last I saw polls show her coming in the low 20s or less in a three way matchup. I don’t see how she can turn that around. Sinema could be a spoiler, maybe, but she can’t win reelection.

  39. 39.

    Martin

    @Major Major Major Major: Regarding the App Store, that’s a good example of why I’m not optimistic on the result here.

    The feds may desire more competition to the App Store, but it’s not possible – at least in any meaningful way. It’s a natural monopoly, the most convenient retail space possible.  So while I can see the feds trying to force competition there, they won’t get the result they want. That’s not to say there shouldn’t be regulation there to prevent abuse – there absolutely should, but that kind of market regulation is basically inconceivable right now. I mean CNN had the courage to write this headline:

    Major railroad posts record earnings, spends more on share repurchases than on its employees

    The feds just fought that situation on behalf of workers. The outcome of this story is that government run services like Amtrak are worse. Another outcome is that is blocks progress on climate change, which the feds want. And with all that they can’t conceive of doing anything about it.

    This is why I’m pretty sure Liberalism is dead. The check and balance between democracy and capitalism has failed. Democracy can’t keep up and has gotten too corrupted in the process. We’re facing a choice – socialist democracy or fascism. It’s starting to feel as though any defense of capitalism is in practice a vote for fascism because capitalism is so fucking busted right now, that it’s almost impossible to mount any defense for it. Maybe I’m just salty because a few friends of mine got laid off by Google despite their $14B in profits last quarter. That’s not normal. Lots of things aren’t working as they should.

  40. 40.

    Citizen Alan

    @Martin: Years?!? It will take fucking decades to get the Courts back to even moderation let alone anything resembling liberalism. And with gerrymandering and the unequal distribution of population between red and blue states, I don’t think we’ll ever have more than threadbare control of the House and/or the Senate. Years ago, when that stupid book The Coming Democratic Majority had Democrats smugly crowing, I said then that the GOP could delay that Democratic majority for a long time by bringing back Jim Crow. And they could delay it for a very long time indeed if they successfully turned America into an Apartheid state, and quite a few US states are getting their. I’m not saying it’s hopeless (no matter how hopeless I feel at times), but the suggesting that because Dobbs, we’ve “won in the long term” or whatever is just a fucking stupid thing to say..

  42. 42.

    Citizen Alan

    @pat: I don’t want any Trump supporters in my life. I will hate them from beyond the grave. After I finally get a job and leave Mississippi, it is possible that I will never speak to my sister, my brother-in-law, or my older nephew again. Not certain; I still have a few people in Mississippi I care enough about to come home for a funeral. But very possible.

  43. 43.

    Martin

    @Omnes Omnibus: Oh, no question. But this is now something Dems can aggressively run on, and that should help speed things up – at least in various states, and probably win some state legislatures back, which should help with the House in time.

  44. 44.

    Martin

    @Eolirin: Yeah, and things like Patreon have really helped with that. That a lot of media communities and content creators can do pretty well through voluntary giving is pretty encouraging, actually.

  45. 45.

    Martin

    @Citizen Alan: I don’t think it’ll actually take that long. Yeah, getting *all* of them out of the courts will take decades, but their ability to meaningfully block things won’t last that long.

  47. 47.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Major Major Major Major: I was reminded the other day, I think in an old Michelle Goldberg column, that Sinema explicitly said she wanted to be John McCain during her first Senate campaign. She somehow missed that John McCain built his reputation, first and foremost, on his POW experience and military service, but he also spent a long time doing it. He was elected to the House in ’82 and he was a well known quantity in Washington by the time of the Straight Talk Express in 2000, when be-daddy-issued baby boomer pundits made him their small god of the Sunday morning chat shows. He cultivated a press that was already eating out of his hand, from the knowing “my base” joke to the tire swing. Didn’t hurt that the sumbitch could be genuinely funny. McCain-Feingold wasn’t much substantively, but he milked it for more than it was worth to build his reputation as a reformer. His blind support of Bush’s wars, Sarah Palin and the ’08 campaign were, in retrospect, mere bumps on the road, especially once he became the premier never-trumper. The famous thumbs-down she tried to emulate wasn’t about Obamacare– when did he ever give a shit about health care?– it was a middle finger to trump (and McConnell, who he also hated, and for longer).

    Sinema thought she could step into his shoes after three years in the Senate, running from the press as much as her own constituents, and wearing neon wigs and denim vests in place of having a personality, likable or otherwise, or any notable legislative achievement. She overplayed a weak hand, and everybody saw her thumbs-down for the middle finger it was, to her own party.

    That said, I have no idea what will happen in that race.

  48. 48.

    Citizen Alan

    @Martin: Clarence Thomas, the oldest Justice, is only 2 years past the average life expectancy for black men in America, and he is entitled to the absolute best health care that can be gotten in this country. I don’t think any of the Sinister Six will step down in at least the next 10 years unless Thomas or Alito step down while a Republican is President. At 53, I genuinely don’t think I’ll live to see a liberal majority and probably won’t live to see even a 5-4 conservative majority again. And if you think the after affects of Dodds are horrific, wait until they bring back Lochner (which I am 100% certain they will do the minute the right case comes along). What are a Dem Congress and President supposed to do when the whole fucking regulatory state is struck down as unconstitutional.

    (Jesus, I think I’m gonna go take a Klonopin and then start slugging gin for a while.)

  49. 49.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Citizen Alan:

    What are a Dem Congress and President supposed to do when the whole fucking regulatory state is struck down as unconstitutional.

    Ignore the Supreme Court

  50. 50.

    Ohio Mom

    @Martin: I’ve thought since Dobbs that a few well-publicized grisly deaths of white, middle class women who needed abortion care and could not get it — our own American “Savita Halappanavar”s — will have the effect Halappanavar’s death had in Ireland and lead, one way or another, to the re-legalization of abortion.

    But the thought that we have to wait for funerals and camera shots of sobbing families is infuriating in so many ways.

  51. 51.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    That is the best summation of Sinema’s preferred affect and ultimate political vacuousness I have ever read.

    I enjoyed it, because I don’t think I have despised a politician in a ‘democracy’ more that I despise  her. I hope and pray the Dems win that election more than any other on the map.

  53. 53.

    different-church-lady

    I am told at the “other blog” that here on this other blog we have “right-leaning posters” who have been making excuses for inaction on mass shootings. Or something. Is this an actual thing that has occurred?​

  55. 55.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    But that cuts both ways. Ignoring a decision of a Court is a serious decision in a democracy, no matter how flawed.

    Civil disobedience is the usual ‘go to’ in such a circumstance, but the Right will simply bring guns and violence, particularly in the US.

    The best way to defeat the overweening power mad USSC is to legislate more, and litigate less as a way to justice for everyone. The desire to rush to a Court at every turn, even if sometimes the decision is favourable, has corrupted the ability of ordinary democratic politics to do its work.

  58. 58.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Aussie Sheila:

    True. It was an extreme solution to an extreme hypothetical. At that point, I’m not sure what other solution would be possible. Hopefully it will never come to that

  60. 60.

    Suzanne

    @Ohio Mom: I think what is more likely is a gradual expansion of abortion rights, state by state. Maybe not even enshrined in law, but authorities will look the other way for medication abortions, etc. It’ll become like smoking weed: an open secret.

    The brain drain in shithole states will impact it.

  61. 61.

    Martin

    @Ohio Mom: Not convinced that will matter. Didn’t do a fucking thing when someone gunned down 20 first graders. The white christian nationalists are dug in.

    The demographic is shifting, and attitudes with it. People dying or not dying won’t change attitudes. But it might change how many people are around to vote, though.

  62. 62.

    Kent

    @Baud:Pro-choice Republicans seems like a fantasy.  Just elect Dems.

    Exactly.  What good did Susan Collins ever do?  She….

    First went along with obstructing Merrick Garland’s nomination

    Second went along with abandoning the filibuster for SCOTUS to put all 3 of Trump’s nominees in place

    Third, went along with rushing Barrett into place right before the election.

    She didn’t have to do any of those things.  All were necessary for the repeal of Roe.

  63. 63.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Saw on Reddit that Manchin is trying to go after EV tax credits or something (he thinks they’re too generous I think)? Speculation was that he’d have leverage with the debt ceiling? Do you guys think this is credible?

  64. 64.

    Martin

    @Aussie Sheila: Personally, I don’t think there’s any avoiding having to bring our own guns and violence. The right isn’t bringing that just to acts of civil disobedience but to statehouses and Congress itself. The GOP has made it clear they aren’t going to accept a legislative or cultural loss.

  65. 65.

    Kent

    @Suzanne: @Ohio Mom: I think what is more likely is a gradual expansion of abortion rights, state by state. Maybe not even enshrined in law, but authorities will look the other way for medication abortions, etc. It’ll become like smoking weed: an open secret.

    The brain drain in shithole states will impact it.

    My guess?  This will play out like the drug war.  First, there isn’t all that much they can really do to catch medication abortions from medication shipped in from pharmacies in other states.  We are living in an Amazon world with overnight delivery everywhere.

    So they will selectively enforce the law based on race just like they do with drug law enforcement.  They will look the other way when white middle class women do medical abortions but they will catch and jail the occasional poor women of color to make an “example” out of them.  And just basically create an environment of fear and criminalization of Black life like they did with the drug war.  Even at the height of the drug war, only a small percentage of users were ever prosecuted.  It will be the same here.

  66. 66.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Kent: Exactly. Give no quarter. The Dems must embrace women’s freedoms and right to life against a murderous republican party. Make.Them.Own.It.

  67. 67.

    Martin

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I think the EV tax credits are dumb too, but not the spending in general – I’d just steer it in a very different direction. Not sure why Manchin thinks there is anything to negotiate here.

  68. 68.

    New Deal democrat

    I am currently reading David A. Kaplan’s “The Most Dangerous Branch” about the modern Supreme Court.

    Discussing the Justices’ cloistered cluelessness and imperiousness, he repeats the following anecdote from Linda Greenhouse, who was the NYT’s Supreme Court reporter in the late 1970s:

    “Justice Potter Stewart and an aide were driving from the Court to the White House for a swearing in ceremony. The day was anniversary of Roe a few years before. Spotting a noisy demonstration, Stewart asked what was up. The aide explained those were pro-life activists on the way to the Court. Stewart was clueless. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said, ‘We decided that.’”

    The Justices are as tin-eared now as they were then.

  69. 69.

    Sister Golden Bear

    Speaking on controlling people, DeSantis’ LGBTQ+ ethnic cleaning of Florida is working according to a recent survey:

    • More than half of LGBTQ+  parents surveyed have considered leaving the state, with 16.5 percent had taken steps toward this.
    • Almost one-quarter of parents said they feared harassment by neighbors because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
    • One-fifth said they’re now less out in their community.
    • LGBTQ+ parents who expressed the greatest concern had school-aged children in public schools.
  70. 70.

    prostratedragon

    @Kent: ​ Not to challenge you, but to brainstorm, how would they do this where everyone has access to the same commercial networks? For instance with respect to cocaine, a divide was created between blow and crack, where the latter was supposed to be so much more destructive (in the long run I doubt it) and was also cheaper and more readily available in Black neighborhoods while the former became a carriage trade thing for a while. On-line ordering would make those discriminations harder, unless … ? …

  71. 71.

    Kent

    @Martin:

    It doesn’t feel like it, but this war is won. Democrats are united in favor of reproductive rights, and it’s becoming a wedge issue among the right. You still have captured institutions like the courts which will take years to get back in line, and you’ll have some states hold out to the bitter end, but as a national issue abortion is now a clearly losing issue for the GOP. Small comfort for those who want to exercise their rights now, but eventually this arc will turn the right way.

    A lot of that is due to medication abortion changing how people view abortion and how the levers of access can be controlled.

    I think you are wrong.

    Medication abortion along with better birth control is going to minimize the need for most surgical abortions among the privileged (white middle and upper classes, etc.).  Women like my daughters who are going to be more vigilant than previous generations of young educated women.

    But that does nothing for poor women, women of color, etc. who are stuck in difficult situations, many of them already married with kids, or already single parents, who lack good access to reproductive care because of the war on all reproductive care in red states.  They aren’t necessarily going to have IUDs or Nexplanon because of refusal to expand Medicare in red states and the war on Planned Parenthood.  And they won’t have easy access to medical abortions either since that will cost money and need to come from out of state.  And many will be slow to act because of difficult life circumstances.

    Also none of it will help women in red states who have normal pregnancies that need to be terminated for emergency health reasons and there is no longer any medical infrastructure to contemplate that in red state hospitals because of liability and legal fears.

    So no, the war is not won.  Not by a long shot.

  72. 72.

    Geminid

    @Aussie Sheila: I am encouraged by the early polling in Arizona. One showed Ruben Gallego losing to Kari Lake by one point in a three way race, and winning by a point in a two way race. Another showed Lake winning by 3 in a two way race. I did not think that was so bad since, having just run statewide, Lake has good name recognition while Gallego is not yet well known outside his congressional district. He will be though.

    The three polls I’ve glanced at all show Sinema trailing badly in a three way race, at 20% or less. One even showed her at 13%! That one was by Data for Progress though, and I do not trust them.

    That doesn’t neccesarily mean she’ll pass on the Senate race and just plan the next phase of her life. She doesn’t seem to relish retail politics or have a well defined cause to motivate her, though. Sinema also strikes me as kind of lazy, and campaigns are a lot of work.

    But it’s hard to figure out what goes on in that woman’s head, so I’m just going to  wait and see what she does. Gallego will run his campaign the same way whether or not she runs, I think.

    Have you checked out Ruben Gallego? I bet you’ll like him. If he wins he’ll be the second youngest person in the  Senate, after Jon Ossoff.

  74. 74.

    New Deal democrat

    @Aussie Sheila: “The best way to defeat the overweening power mad USSC is to legislate more.”

     

    Here’s your problem: what to do when the Court ignores or strikes down that legislation. Just for example, how Roberts eat al enacted from the bench the 1982 amendments to the Voting Rights Act that they specially lost in Congress at the time.

  75. 75.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Martin: I understand your fears and frustration but a response of like with like will get many innocent and vulnerable people killed.

    I honestly don’t know how a democracy can survive in the face of threats of lethal violence. It is terrible, and that is why I put ‘democracy’ in quotes. No polity can survive when a state loses its monopoly on violence. I hate state violence, and no properly democratic state is violent towards its own citizens. But the US has the worst of both worlds. An armed and dangerous section of the citizenry, and a state that is used to meeting out violence to its own working class with relative impunity.

    Truly frightening.

  76. 76.

    Kent

    @prostratedragon:@Kent: ​ Not to challenge you, but to brainstorm, how would they do this where everyone has access to the same commercial networks? For instance with respect to cocaine, a divide was created between blow and crack, where the latter was supposed to be so much more destructive (in the long run I doubt it) and was also cheaper and more readily available in Black neighborhoods while the former became a carriage trade thing for a while. On-line ordering would make those discriminations harder, unless … ? …

    I’m not talking about access.  I’m talking about selective enforcement.  I taught HS science for a decade in Waco Texas and I saw first-hand how selective enforcement of drug laws meant that if you were a White kid caught at a White teenage party with pot the cop might call your dad to come pick you up and all that would happen is that you would get a “talking to”.  But if you were a Black kid caught at a Black HS party you would wind up handcuffed in a squad car and processed into the system which automatically destroys your life, even if you don’ serve time.  A drug conviction means no college financial aid so college is out, and it means most jobs are off limits because they will screen for convictions.  So all that is left is falling deeper into a life of crime.

    Medical abortions will be enforced exactly the same way.  Count on it. Because racism is always just right below the surface.  They won’t catch every abortion and they won’t even want to or try.  But they will catch enough so that racist prosecutors will always have the odd abortion case to prosecute to make examples out of people.   And they will catch them because people talk.

  77. 77.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Geminid: I checked out his campaign ad launch. I thought it was very good, and likely to appeal to the voters he needs. But I am not the target audience unfortunately. If I was, he wouldn’t have to spend a cent. I’d crawl over broken glass to vote for him.

  78. 78.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Sister Golden Bear: Meanwhile, eight anti-trans bills were being heard in Missouri yesterday. North Dakota has hearings for three bills tomorrow.

    Two separate bills in Oklahoma and South Carolina banning gender affirming care up to age 26 are called the “Millstone Act.” It’s a reference to Matthew 18:6 — “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” They aren’t being subtle about it anymore.

    Mississippi’s house passed a ban on gender affirming care for trans youth. A new bill would raise the age to 21, define as child abuse, and ban consenting to it. It would be “felony gender disfigurement” with five-year terms.

    Arkansas’ senate passed a bill to classify drag performances as “adult-oriented businesses” and ban them from taking place on public property, as well as other locations where children and teenagers are present.  A Pennsylvania Republican plans to introduce a similar bill which would ban drag performances in public as well — which just coincidentally would effectively ban Pride celebrations. Both bills are (intentionally) so loosely written that they can — and undoubtedly will — be used to harass and arrested LGBTQ+ people. In decades past there was a long, sordid history of using “three pieces of ‘gender appropriate’ clothing” laws to do just that.

    At what point do we start calling what Republicans are doing by its proper name: ethnic cleansing, if not outright genocide against LGBTQ+ people?

  79. 79.

    ETtheLibrarian

    Getting rid of Roe was never going to do what the forced birthers thought it was.

    There weren’t going to be great wave of healthy white babies ready to be adopted by worthy white families.

    Women/girls weren’t all going to be moved out of the workforce and into the home to take care of their children.

    Getting rid of Roe was not some magical incantation or wand to wave that world make they wanted. The future will come anyway. Some of it they will like, some of it they won’t. Like it has always been.

  80. 80.

    New Deal democrat

    @Citizen Alan: The *relatively* easiest way to deal with the Court is to expand its membership to 13, one for each Circuit (I’m in favor of term limits, but that would take a Constitutional Amendment.)

     

    But first, of course, you need a Democratic majority in the Senate willing to nuke the filibuster to do so. And to do that, you have to lay the groundwork (e.g., passing Voting Rights statutes that the Court inevitably strikes down because it *really* doesn’t like the 15th Amendment).

  82. 82.

    Kent

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):Saw on Reddit that Manchin is trying to go after EV tax credits or something (he thinks they’re too generous I think)? Speculation was that he’d have leverage with the debt ceiling? Do you guys think this is credible?

    No.  Stop with the hand-wringing.

    First the Debt ceiling is entirely a House GOP issue.  The Democratic Senate isn’t going to be doing any debt ceiling legislation.   Second, Democrats are not going to negotiate.  This isn’t going to be some massive omnibus where 6 different funding bills get piled together into a 5,000 page bill that you can tweak here there.

  83. 83.

    Aussie Sheila

    @New Deal democrat: I am no expert in US election law, but didn’t the Court strike it down because of the outdated list of states and districts that required pre clearance?

    If the argument rested on the unconstitutionality of pre clearance per se, could not a law be passed that simply required that federal elections must meet the standard of ‘free and equal’ franchise, where free and equal is defined closely so as to render moot gerrymandering, unequal access to polling stations and the like?

    Just spitballing here. I know it is impossible to do if there is no Senate majority, and even then one must overcome the likes of Chris Coons who I now think was the one hiding behind Sinema and Manchin’s skirts. Possibly not the only one either.

    God help me the Dems need more, and better Senators.

  84. 84.

    Ruckus

    @pat:

    Sat next to a guy on a plane a couple of decades ago who could touch type on a BlackBerry phone at what I estimate was at least 40 words a minute. Look up BlackBerry phones if you don’t remember what they were. They had an actual keyboard rather than a display so I’d bet that was easier, but still, my fat fingers would never have been able to do that and I’m touch typing this on my computer and have been doing that for quite a few decades. Before that plane ride.

  86. 86.

    Citizen Alan

    @Sister Golden Bear: I am so relieved that I didn’t get offered the Tallahassee job. I don’t think I had it in me to turn down a career clerkship even if it meant moving to DeSatan’s Capital. Fear of unemployment is too ingrained in me. When I got a very nice email saying I’d made it to the final two but the judge was going with the other candidate, I actually let out a sigh of relief.

  87. 87.

    Geminid

    @Aussie Sheila: Registration and participation among Arizona’s Latino voters has been catching up with that of Anglos, but there is still ground to make up. A dynamic candidate like Gallego may help close that gap.

    I think one big question will be Gallego’s appeal to Independents. They still hold the balance of power in the state. Joe Biden and Mark Kelly apparently carried a majority of Independents in 2020, but it couldn’t have been a big majority because they barely won.

    Gallego will motivate Democrats, and Joe Biden should be on the ticket and that will help. It will still be a close and hard fought election. .

  89. 89.

    prostratedragon

    @Kent: A racist system knows where to look for that Black kid. What would happen with a much more anonymous system like mail order? Mind, I don’t think things like selective surveillance of mail is beyond some folks, certainly not beyond their desires, just wondering how that wedge realistically could be driven. ​

  90. 90.

    Kent

    @prostratedragon: @Kent:  I guess you mean Medicaid; those of us on Medicare aren’t much at issue here. So far, only 16 States will pay through Medicaid for the usual protocol. The linked article gives a rundown of what’s available.

    Yes, of course I meant Medicaid. And I was talking about birth control not abortions.  Stuff like IUDs and Nexplanon implants that cost $$ and require a doctor visit to install/implant.  If are poor and have no health insurance those are out of range, compared to for young women like my daughters who are college bound.

    In other words, more diligent sex ed and access to passive birth control will make abortion less prevalent among the more privileged classes.  But not for those who lack access to passive birth control because they are poor and live in red states and the twin policies of not expanding Medicaid and driving Planned Parenthood and other forms of reproductive care out of the state mean passive birth control is still out of reach for millions.

  91. 91.

    caphilldcne

    I’m sorry but what is the so-called “other blog” and why are we speaking in code?  I just casually follow along here. If it’s some doom scrolling blog like LGM I can just say that the activism of balloon juicers including funding GOTV and all that is far more attractive than constant warnings of apocalypse. Anyway I’m having a lot of trouble following this conversation.

  92. 92.

    New Deal democrat

    @Aussie Sheila: You are thinking of Shelby County, in which the Court invented a new doctrine never heard of before or since to strike down pre-clearance.

     

    I am referring to the case this past term about racial intent, Milligan v. Alabama:

    ”After the Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that voting rights advocates had to prove intentional discrimination in order to invalidate an electoral system, Congress amended the law to make clear that minority voters only have to prove a discriminatory result — a considerably easier thing to do than proving intentional discrimination. Discriminatory result has been the standard since then, upheld by the Supreme Court and enforced by the lower courts.”

    Roberts and Alito were both Congressional aides at the time, and argued against the 1982 amendments. They lost then, so they simply re-interpreted the law from the SCOTUS as if they had won.

  93. 93.

    Kent

    @Aussie Sheila: @New Deal democrat: I am no expert in US election law, but didn’t the Court strike it down because of the outdated list of states and districts that required pre clearance?

    If the argument rested on the unconstitutionality of pre clearance per se, could not a law be passed that simply required that federal elections must meet the standard of ‘free and equal’ franchise, where free and equal is defined closely so as to render moot gerrymandering, unequal access to polling stations and the like?

    Just spitballing here. I know it is impossible to do if there is no Senate majority, and even then one must overcome the likes of Chris Coons who I now think was the one hiding behind Sinema and Manchin’s skirts. Possibly not the only one either.

    God help me the Dems need more, and better Senators.

    First, they struck down the law because they could and they wanted to and whatever fig leaf argument they used is irrelevant.  They could have come up with any other specious argument.

    Second, legislating a new voting rights act is not so easy.  It was a big priority last session and Manchin/Sinema blocked it because they could.  And they recently high-fived about it at Davos.  It may be years and years until we have a trifecta like that again.  Go back in the past and see how often we had it, not often.

  96. 96.

    pat

    @Ruckus: ​
     
    I finally got myself a smartphone and I can use one of those little keypads but somehow searching for the keys is not that easy…yet. I see others who must be using it to send long messages (all those emails we hear about, must have been typed on smartphones, right?) but it just doesn’t come easy to us olds…..

    I always wondered about the Blackberry that Obama refused to give up as President.

  98. 98.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Geminid: Yes. It is one I will be watching. More power to everyone’s elbow. BTW, it has occurred to me that the US Greens might try some fuckery in AZ. Didn’t Sinema used to be a Green?

  100. 100.

    Geminid

    @caphilldcne: That might have been a reference to the Daily Kos.Those folks take their collective “progressivism” very seriously.

    It doesn’t seem likely to have come from LGM. The people there don’t seem to take much seriously besides their own intellects.

  101. 101.

    FelonyGovt

    @Sister Golden Bear: I’m glad you’ve mentioned these proposed laws. They are horrifying. Denying gender affirming care until age 21 or 26???? (are you fucking kidding me) is what’s abusive.

  103. 103.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Kent: Yes I saw that disgusting display in Davos. I didn’t think I could hate her more, but there you go. I drew on my unlimited reserves of spleen for anti democratic fucks who despise the people who worked so hard for them.

    My spleen reserves are at over 100% for her and her stupid corrupt friend. Where I come from we call them ‘rats’ and there is no greater political insult.

    Abolishing the filibuster in order to secure civil and political  rights should be the VRA of the 21st century. I would make it a litmus test for every Dem seeking preselection going forward. I don’t care if the Repubs would do it as well. Does anybody think they would get general support for their terrible social and economic policies?

    Let the electorate see what reactionary A holes they are. Stop trying with the ‘all people of good will’. Not you obviously, but the sentiment.

    Sunshine is not just a disinfectant. It is more importantly, both heat and light.

  104. 104.

    prostratedragon

    @Aussie Sheila:  Yes she was. I haven’t noticed anything constructive from the US Greens in, like, ever, but here in Chicago they’re more of an irrelevance than nuisance. However as long as the apparatus is there it can be seized for mischief.

  106. 106.

    Geminid

    @Aussie Sheila: Sinema was was a Green. But she first ran for the Arizona legislature as a Democrat and when she entered Congress in 2013 Sinema became a Blue Dog Caucus Democrat.

    The US Greens seem to be dwindling in numbers now. They still try to put up spoiler candidates in some places, but they get little traction.

  107. 107.

    Citizen Alan

    @Geminid: I had assumed that the Greens had all morphed into the DSA, which is also an irrelevance that exists only to undermine Dems and help Republicans win.

  111. 111.

    caphilldcne

    @zhena gogolia: trapped on the devil’s horns!  Honestly I’d go on vacation with John. He seems like a hoot!  Plus I’m betting my sleep apnea would bug him more than his would bug me!

  112. 112.

    Kent

    @Geminid:

    @Aussie Sheila: Sinema was was a Green. But she first ran for the Arizona legislature as a Democrat and when she entered Congress in 2013 Sinema became a Blue Dog Caucus Democrat.

    The US Greens seem to be dwindling in numbers now. They still try to put up spoiler candidates in some places, but they get little traction.

    Which shows you how unserious the greens always have been.  Sinema is just the most notable example.  But they are all unserious about actual governing and accomplishing anything at all.  It is mostly about performance.

  113. 113.

    Aussie Sheila

    @New Deal democrat: Ok I understand now. They are truly terrible aren’t they. I still think that a well crafted civil and political rights Bill, properly supported by wide democratic mobilisation might make it a bit harder for even this SC to knock back. And if they did, a broadly supported civil rights campaign might make some difference in how some states proceeded re election law.

    It looks like the civil rights era is back with a vengeance.  Twenty years ago I couldn’t imagine such a thing. But it has brought home to me how every political and civil right has to be guarded and fought for at every turn.

    Last year our very terrible conservative government tried to introduce voter id laws. They were rejected by our Senate, which didn’t have a progressive majority at the time. The press and popular opinion was resolutely against it, on the grounds that it sought to do here what the USSC had done in the America.

    People were very much awake to what was afoot. Now I see that the UK government has introduced voter id requirements there. The reactionary right is working at every level in every country to turn back the clock.
    I worry that the UK Labour Party won’t be as resolute as ours in seeing off such undemocratic antics. They are very deferential to Tory power there in a way that our Irish inflected ALP is not and never will be.

  114. 114.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Geminid: They are worse than a distraction imo. I think the US Greens are a vector for Russian influence and money. At the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 I noticed a few US Greens decrying US support for Ukraine on twitter under the BS excuse of opposing the MIC. It didn’t and doesn’t fool me for a minute, but I worry it might fool just enough young Dems or independents to make a difference in a tight race.

    I would watch out for them particularly as Gallegho has a military background. Just saying, is all.

  115. 115.

    Gvg

    @Aussie Sheila: I think it must already have happened multiple times and was happening before Roe fell caused by how difficult access was in Red states. The problem is people don’t know about it because of medical privacy laws. It is not getting in the news like it once would have with reporters interviewing grieving families right away. This was also IMO a part of the reason many people don’t believe Covid was really that deadly. The destruction of most of our local news sources and few real reporters or people all watching the 6 o clock news also contribute.

    It is going to take some massive lawsuits and publicity to get through, organized and purposeful, and more than once. As planned as the Birmingham bus boycott.

  116. 116.

    El Muneco

    @Geminid: I’m constantly amused at how BJ, LGM, and DKos exemplify the “circular firing squad” stereotype. I read all three regularly, and comment more or less so. There is a lot of overlap among the commentariat, as well – not to mention people who show up in e.g. Fred Clark’s “Slacktivist”.

    The tone is different, but the content, motivation and intention really isn’t.

    Focusing our disgust on allies isn’t helpful.

  118. 118.

    Tony G

    @schrodingers_cat: I imagine that a lot of Jill Stein voters in 2016 believed that Trump was better than HRC.  Has the Green Party ever been good for anything?  Not since Saint Nader in 2000 it hasn’t been.

  120. 120.

    prostratedragon

    @Gvg: “As planned as the Birmingham bus boycott.”
    What I’m really getting at. You have to know how it’s going to go so you can plan to counter and defeat it.

  122. 122.

    Kent

    @Aussie Sheila:

    @Geminid: They are worse than a distraction imo. I think the US Greens are a vector for Russian influence and money. At the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 I noticed a few US Greens decrying US support for Ukraine on twitter under the BS excuse of opposing the MIC. It didn’t and doesn’t fool me for a minute, but I worry it might fool just enough young Dems or independents to make a difference in a tight race.

    I would watch out for them particularly as Gallegho has a military background. Just saying, is all.

    Yes of course they are a vector for Russian influence.

    But the actual greens are just dipshit Americans who are generally unserious or naive about actual politics.  All the Russians are doing it boosting the people who are already there and using social media to amplify their existing positions or push them into a pro-Russian direction.

    It wouldn’t mean anything there wasn’t already a cadre of Americans susceptible to that line of thinking.  Often it morphs from the legitimate belief that America is a bad actor in the 3rd world into a belief that anyone who opposes American interests (i.e. the Russians) are by default good.  When the actual truth is that you are comparing bad versus worse

    And that is how you get to the absurd belief that Russia is an anti-imperial force when in point of fact, they are by far the most imperial force of all.

  123. 123.

    RevRick

    I

    @zhena gogolia:  I’m not sure what you mean about the esoteric direction of the thread, but I do see it focusing on tactics rather than the substance of the debate.

    The problem with the abortion debate, as I see it, is that the question is framed solely in terms of the status of the fetus. But that  framing completely erases the woman.

    As a clergy person I must insist that that framing is morally dishonest. The fact is if the fetus is a person, then a woman is not. If the state can hijack a woman’s body and life, disregarding her wishes, aspirations, and needs, for any reason, then she ceases to be a person. She is reduced to livestock.

    For me, that means the only moral answer is to leave the decision in the hands of the woman.

  124. 124.

    Kay

    Travel ban on women – running for United States Senate:

    We knew this was coming: An Indiana Republican running for U.S. Senate wants to institute a travel ban on women. In a radio interview last week, U.S. Rep. Jim Banks indicated that he would support legislation that stopped women from leaving the state for abortion. When host Pat Miller complained that “a young lady can hop in a car in Fort Wayne and in an hour and a half she can be in a place in Michigan,” the four-term GOP congressman replied, “That’s exactly right.” Rep. Banks continued by promising, “I’m for federal legislation, I’m for stronger laws at the state level, whatever we can do, to save lives, to protect babies. That’s what this fight is all about.”

    It’s much, much more than abortion.

  125. 125.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Kay: Yes it is. It’s about rolling back women’s freedom and autonomy and about ‘restoring’ to males their ‘privilege’.
    This is a real phenomenon across the world. I don’t want to hear another word about the Muslim world until this real and visceral political impulse is called out everywhere.

    The struggle for women’s freedom and autonomy it appears is never done. It is still shocking however to see how fragile the US political zeitgeist is on this issue. Christ, it’s even behind Ireland.

    Nothing less than a new civil rights movement will turn this around. And this time, the rights of women and all minorities should be joined up in the struggle for civil and political rights.

  126. 126.

    Geminid

     

     

    @El Muneco: I joke a lot, and you should not take my characterizations of those other blogs and their followers too seriously. I have no particular animus towards them.

    I do have a lot of animus towards their threaded comment format, but that’s another story.

  127. 127.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ruckus: I have bias here because I used to work for the company that made the OS, but the best phone keyboard ever was the one on the T-Mobile Sidekick, which for a while had this odd niche market as the Blackberry for teenagers. That was a device that was years ahead of its time; basically did all the major things we expect of a smartphone and made them easy to do. But I got really good at two-thumb typing at speed on that keyboard.

    The one problem with it was that the experience of using it as a phone was not great, since it had no touchscreen (the pointing device was a scroll wheel or, on later models, a tiny trackball) and opening it up to expose the keyboard just to dial the phone was awkward. But the idea that its phone functionality was secondary was, itself, ahead of its time. The youth market was OK with that.

  128. 128.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Martin:

    It doesn’t feel like it, but this war is won. Democrats are united in favor of reproductive rights, and it’s becoming a wedge issue among the right.

    I was going to write something much more dramatic, but I’ll just say that this feels… way too blithe to me. It’s a “heighten the contradictions” situation: if we’re winning the war it’s by losing. The Republicans actually got the prize they had been promising to seize for fifty years. It’s nice that we have all the political juice–but they have force on their side now, and force is important. Force is what kills.

  129. 129.

    Matt McIrvin

    I was just reading this Rolling Stone article on the antivax movement’s current incarnation, and I have a few observations:

    It still drives me nuts that every single Rolling Stone article about antivaxxerism doesn’t have a sidebar acknowledging Rolling Stone’s complicity in supercharging this movement by giving Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a platform in the pre-COVID days.

    The new right-wing line seems to be “even the liberals are doubting the vaccines now”, and their go-to “even the liberal” figures are… Elon Musk and Scott Adams!!! It boggles the mind that these two notorious MAGA wingnuts can still present as “I’m a lifelong liberal, but…” types within the subculture.

    Almost everything in here can really be boiled down to a consequence of Elon Musk buying Twitter.

  131. 131.

    Kay

    @Aussie Sheila:

    Yes it is. It’s about rolling back women’s freedom and autonomy

    I think there’s complacency about that and a kind of willful blindness of the profundity and reach of it, even among liberals. They won’t make the liberty, freedom, agency argument because they don’t see it themselves. Instead we get arguments like “women should be permitted to purchase birth control because it’s sometimes prescribed for painful periods”. We get weak, pleading defensive arguments that assume women need permission for everything.
    Some get it. Obama got it. He always made the big argument.

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