On Roe, offer to compromise with Republicans, and vilify the conservative justices
It’s hard to focus as I struggle through my second round of Covid, but a few thoughts on Roe.
Compromise:
Josh Marshall has been advocating loudly for the Democrats to run this year on a pledge to restore Roe. Maybe this is their best strategy. But they should consider a compromise along the lines I suggested earlier – 15 weeks of unrestricted access, and then abortion available when things go awry (fetal defects, threat to health of the pregnant woman, etc.). Democrats need to expand their coalition; turning out more voters in blue states won’t do the trick. This means taking a deep breath and trying to work out a compromise that most voters can accept, and as I discussed previously second trimester abortions are in fact quite controversial when pregnancies are going smoothly.
Republicans know that they are in trouble on this issue. One Republican proposal is for a national cap at 15 weeks. Democrats should counter with a 15 week national standard coupled with reforms to guarantee access for low income women. Of course some Republicans will go for much stricter limits or outright bans out of personal conviction or to placate their primary voters. Democrats should take advantage of this by tacking to the middle – and endorsing a plan that could easily improve abortion access for the disadvantaged relative to the situation pre-Dobbs.
Vilify:
Manchin and Collins have taken a lot of heat for their (presumably feigned) surprise that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh would overturn Roe, given their blather about precedent during their confirmation hearings. But this is a strategic error.
It is critical to discredit the conservative Justices as they continue their war on individual rights, the regulatory state, and (most alarming in my view) the electoral foundations of American democracy. Instead of ridiculing Manchin and Collins, Democrats should be harping on the fact that conservative Justices perjured themselves during their confirmation hearings. And there should be no doubt that they did perjure themselves. Here is Paul Campos showing how to do this (ignore his sarcasm at the end):
When a judge says that a case is “settled precedent,” that has a fairly straightforward technical meaning in the American legal system, which is that the judge is indicating he or she won’t overturn the precedent, absent the development of presently unforeseen extraordinary factors. Otherwise the doctrine of stare decisis is essentially meaningless. Obviously no such factors are present here, so all these eminent jurists were simply lying under oath, which I realize somehow doesn’t count as perjury, because “everybody” knew they were lying at the time.
I’m sure telling Manchin to go fuck himself feels good, but who are we going to replace Manchin with? Plus, Manchin might even support a 15 week compromise bill. (I have no idea what Manchin is actually willing to support, but it’s a possibility.) Attacking Collins might make sense if she runs for re-election in 2026, but in the meantime can we please focus on 2022? And aim our fire at the conservative majority on the Court?
OK, I am going to go be miserable.
Your suggested compromise assumes that there is any Democrat who gives a rat’s butt about whether women have access to safe, legal abortions. The Democrats care about somehow holding onto their slim majorities in the House and Senate despite inflation, the stock market meltdown and the inability of airlines around the world to fly people where they want to go when they want to go. Why would they compromise and turn off the most radical members of their base and give independents and moderate members of both parties no reason to vote Democrat to restore abortion rights? Republicans also do not give a rat’s butt about abortion— it is all about winning primaries and to do that they have to supplicate themselves to the bat poop crazy wing of the party. Your compromise is a logical, common sense solution which no politician of either party would ever consider because they are politicians. I do agree about there being no upside in dumping on Manchin and Collins other than catharsis.
If GOP women vote in substantial numbers for pro-Choice candidates this fall, then maybe the GOP as a whole will be up for some compromising, but I doubt there will be much of that.
In Red states this November, particularly those House districts that have been gerrymandered to be GOP-dominated, it will be all the more interesting to see if Dem candidates do better than expected, even flipped.
Not even a concerned Susan Collins would codify abortion rights.
What I find funny about this abortion ruling is that for decades the court has been showing us the direction they are taking the country by rewriting the economic part of our constitution. Senator Whitehouse still can not get his party to wake up.
Now we see abortion rights gone based on a train of reasoning that can be used to undo all sorts of “rights” and still the Democratic Party is not making the connection. I read various blogs which see it but I’m not hearing a hint of the true broader change this abortion ruling represents.
Maybe with the next ruling to come that will hamper the EPA?
Wait, there will be a challenge to SS and MC coming. If it comes, if it gets into the pipeline to the Supreme Court it will be to late to stop it.
I hope enough people can see just what has been happening all along and will become the learned citizens we need to make this democracy work.
We can’t fix the abortion problem now without people understanding that what is being put in place is a government structured on, modeled on a religious hierarchy and understanding of life. We need to accept that the there are many people within the traditional religious authoritarian structure and this is how they have been raised, educated to understand life. Their numbers may be shrinking but they have been getting control of the power levers. The Hispanic immigrant is adding to their numbers as seen in their voting Republican.
As one person on the net noted, the reason Republicans are so easily grifted is because they have been all along by their church. It is a normal part of life for them.
Your analysis is right on but I think the deal was not to fight the economic restructuring— Citizens United notwithstanding— because the court had not overturned Roe and decided Oberfell. Hard to get real worked up about a decision upholding a decision not to punish a corporation for anti union activity. Sort of like not nuking the filibuster to protect the right to vote. Manchin and Sinema are not so stupid to think that McConnell will not end it the first time he can and it suits his purpose. Speaking of that steaming pile of excrement, I suspect he is the unhappiest Republican out there. He packs SCOTUS to promote the oligarchs and they turn around and give him an issue which just might give the Dems control of the Senate without Manchin and Sinema.
” Senator Whitehouse still can not get his party to wake up.”
Trump’s three SC judges got 2 Dem votes. Both by Manchin.
“And aim our fire at the conservative majority on the Court?”
Well, the young are getting it.
This happened at Glastonbury: https://crooksandliars.com/2022/06/olivia-rodrigo-sings-fck-you-supreme-court
Very heart warming.
Impeaching the justices for perjury would be a good start. A nominee for the Supreme Court of all people should know that telling a lie under oath is a problem. If they can impeach Bill Clinton over what exactly constitutes “sex” they can certainly impeach up to 5 of the current SCOTUS for using words in ways that are contrary to the commonly understood meaning. Not to mention the outright factual falsehoods. Even if intent matters, the rapid “change of opinion” made by the nominees after they were confirmed would tend to show that they did intend to deceive.
Becker
you had me on your side when you recognized the folly of making this a narrow issue abut abortion. it is about a right to privacy.
but you lost me when you decided to gratuitously poke “religion” in the eye. the religious right is quite wrong about what Jesus would do. You understand absolutely nothing about the human condition if you think religion is the problem. [please note, that is not meant as an insult. it is meant to be as close to a simple statement of fact as any opinion can ever be.]
“You understand absolutely nothing about the human condition if you think religion is the problem.”
Not withstanding: please note, that is not meant as an insult.
Please go back and reread: modeled on a religious hierarchy and understanding of life. We need to accept that the there are many people within the traditional religious authoritarian structure…
I referred to a specific structure. Note: …on ‘a’ religious hierarchy.
I don’t know how it is you can have been reading what I have written here at AB and make such a judgement of: You understand absolutely nothing about the human condition…
Then again, I could say the same about you if you do not understand the role religion is playing within the Republican, conservative ideology and the current rulings the Court has been making.
Becker
likei said, it was not meant as an insult. let it ride a while. i’ll try to explain it better when i have time to choose my words more carefully.
for now, just consider that blaming religion is a very popular, and useless, trope among the left.
i don’t think the “religious right” has anything to do with religion. except of course, the religion of hate which has been around since the beginning. note, i offer this as a possible insight into why i sat things like i did that have you upset with me… not as proof or even evidence.
in the same vain, i think that religion, good or bad, has been something people feel a need for… even people who think they hate religion, and people whose “science” is just another religion.
anyway, like i said, to myself, let it ride. consider the possibility i may not mean what you think i mean. but just as a political matter, we, on the left, do ourselves no good by blaming religion: it makes people think we are taking away their last hope.
funny thing; “if you read everything i wrote…” was exactly the argument Chomsky used against me when i disagreed with him on some point. up to that point i had agreed with him about just about everything.
typo watch
in the same vain was not a typo.
Becker,
looks like i won’t get back to you in a reasonable amount of time. i hope you can imagine a universe in which my comment about “understanding nothing about the human condition” is not an insult but an invitation to stop and think about what you understand and why you think you understand it. you write about “religion” as if you mean that all the bad or misinformed people who claim to be religious are what “religion” is. In some respect you might be right about that. Those people are misinfomed, like the rest of us. They are easy to fool by people who use their deeper feelings about “religion” to persuade them that those deeper, “existential”?, beliefs are under attack. This is not so very different from what those of us of the “scientific” persuasion lead ourselves to believe about the “scientific” nature of our beliefs. Sorry if this all sounds like nonsense to you.
Coberly, I know you believe you are talking to me or with me. Oh well.
well, that was pretty mysterious. actually I haven’t believed i was talking to anybody since this whole thing started. it’s more like taking notes in case it’s going to be on the test.
You are addressing me by name in your comments but you don’t know you are talking to somebody.
Oh well!
Becker
this is most mysterious. i thought your first comment on this thread was more insightful than most. i said that. but i also said your gratuitous blaming of “religion” for the beliefs that you (and mostly I) don’t like was not good politics and suggested–to me– that you did not know much about “the human condition.”
your response was better than most of the responses i get when i challenge someone’s beiefs, so I tried to get you to understand at least that i might not be trying to insult you. but that it would take me some time to try to choose words that would not further make you feel like you were being attacked. then i realized that by the time i wrote those words, you would no longer be waiting to hear them.
after that you seem to be telling me that i am not writing to you, or that you are not really there or something else that i can’t claim to understand.
in any case there does not seem to be much point in either of us pursuing this.