Dana Milbank is a regular opinion writer for The Washington Post. As a native Texan, who still has strong emotional ties to the state, I found his analysis to be deeply upsetting. Since the Supreme Court’s decision not to overturn the Texas abortion ban, I can no longer buy anything from Texas, including Tito’s, my favorite vodka. When the anti-vaxxers show up at school board meetings proclaiming “My body, my choice,” I wonder why they don’t feel the same about women’s reproductive rights.
Texas this week showed us what a post-democracy America would look like. Thanks to a series of actions by the Texas legislature and governor, we now see exactly what the Trumpified Republican Party wants: to take us to an America where women cannot get abortions, even in cases of rape and incest; an America where almost everybody can openly carry a gun in public, without license, without permit, without safety training and without fingerprinting; and an America where law-abiding Black and Latino citizens are disproportionately denied the right to vote. This is where Texas and other red states are going, or have already gone. It is where the rest of America will go, unless those targeted by these new laws — women, people of color and all small “d” democrats — rise up.
On Wednesday, a Texas law went into effect that bans abortions later than six weeks, after the Supreme Court let pass a request to block the statute. Because 85 to 90 percent of women get abortions after six weeks, it amounts to a near-total ban. Already on the books in Texas is a “trigger” law that automatically bans all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest, if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. At least 10 other states have done likewise.
Also Wednesday, a new law went into effect in Texas, over the objections of law enforcement, allowing all Texans otherwise allowed to own guns to carry them in public, without a license and without training. Now, 20 states have blessed such “permitless carry.”
And on Tuesday, the Texas legislature passed the final version of the Republican voting bill that bans drive-through and 24-hour voting, both used disproportionately by voters of color; imposes new limits on voting by mail, blocks election officials from distributing mail-ballot applications unless specifically requested; gives partisan poll watchers more leeway to influence vote counting; and places new rules and paperwork requirements that deter people from helping others to vote or to register. At least 17 states have adopted similar restrictions.
All three of these actions are deeply antidemocratic. Texans overwhelmingly object to permitless carry. Fully 57 percent of Texas voters oppose such a law and only 36 percent support it, according to a June poll by the University of Texas and the Texas Tribune. The partnership’s April poll found that, by 46 percent to 20 percent, Texans want stricter gun laws — and support for tougher laws is 54 percent among women, 55 percent among Latinos and 65 percent among Black voters.
Texans also oppose banning all abortions if Roe is overturned, with 53 percent against a ban and 37 percent for one. Women oppose the ban, 58 percent to 33 percent. A narrow plurality (46 percent to 44 percent) oppose the six-week ban, too.
Furthermore, pluralities of Texans opposed the ban on drive-through voting and restrictions on early voting hours. The drive-through ban was particularly objectionable to Black voters (52 percent opposed to 30 percent in the April poll) and Latino voters (44 percent to 36 percent), as were the limits on early voting hours, opposed 52 percent to 28 percent among Black voters and 46 percent to 31 percent among Latino voters.
And that’s the whole point of such voter-suppression laws. Texas became a “majority minority” state more than 15 years ago — and the country as a whole will follow in about two decades. But White voters still dominate the electorate. Latinos are about 40 percent of the Texas population, but only 20 to 25 percent of the electorate.
Texas legislators aren’t answering to the people but rather to the White, male voters that put the Republicans in power. The new voting law, by suppressing non-White votes, aims to keep White voters dominant. As demographics turn more and more against Republicans in Texas, their antidemocratic actions will only get worse.
Bad things happen when leaders don’t reflect the will of the people. This is happening already in Texas and some other red states. It will be happening more nationally if Republicans get their way.
The most appalling and dangerous thing is that the Supreme Court is green lighting incentivizing citizens to inform one another in service of imposing imposing a religion-based, unconstitutional law. On top of gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Citizens United, and OKing voter suppression this is how democracy dies.
Thank you, Arthur, for your honesty in identifying religion as the source of the law. Way too many liberals contort to omit the steering role that conservative Catholics and evangelicals play in the laws, policies and judicial decisions against public schools and against abortion rights.
Tim Busch posted an article at his Napa Institute site ( D.C.- located
Catholic University of America named its School of Business after Busch). The article title is the Remarkable similarities between Catholicism and Charles Koch’s recent book.
A read of Napa Institute’s twitter feed shows the conjoining of religion and business interests for an agenda that includes student education and public policy. The tweet on July 7 announced that hosts of “watch parties” would get free Trinitas Cellars wine and cigars. Legatus, an organization of Catholic CEO’s, was also founded by Busch.
Trump in a recent meeting with religious leaders took credit for eliminating the Johnson Amendment, part of an IRS statute prohibiting religious organizations from endorsing political candidates. Trump’s executive order did not eliminate the statute but it diminished enforcement. Trump made it clear he thinks the religious vote, mentioning Catholics specifically, are critical to his run in 2024.
KathyIrwin, in the comment thread to Diane’s post about Bishop Sycamore h.s. in Ohio describes a plan that alumni of Notre Dame, Judge Barrett’s former employer, began in 2006 to change the University’s direction (and, hiring). Notre Dame’s ACE program activities, as they regard public education, should be of interest to public education’s defenders.
The primacy of religion in the outlawing of abortion notwithstanding, I don’t think most Republican leaders care two wits about religion. It’s about maintaining the power of a demographically dwindling minority. That requires pandering, promoting divisiveness, and suppression voting and dissent, and teaching inclusive history. That’s why the same people can champion “life” in the case of abortion and simultaneous refuse to protect life with respect to Covid-19 and gun-control, and ensuring adequate food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, and freedom from war and climate change. There are no morals or principles other than maintaining power and profit. That’s why pointing out hypocrisy or obvious lies falls on deaf ears. Unified, multiracial struggle is the only antidote.
The “unity” of evangelicals and conservative Catholics is working well for the GOP. How has the Democrats’ unity around silence about the religious axis, panned out in terms of advancement of the left’s agenda?
A couple of follow-up questions-
Do the political strategies advised for the Northeast translate effectively to the center of the nation? How many Republican governors and statehouses are located between the West Coast and the Northeast?
Bellwether advised ed reformers to reach out to churches to achieve their agenda in the South. The first city to privatize all K-12 education was in the state of Louisiana, a state unique in the South for being predominantly Catholic.
What the Supreme Court has greenlighted is precisely the sort of thing that was “encouraged” in the Soviet Union and Satellite countries like East Germany under the Stasi in which neighbors and even parents and children were incentivized to turn each other in.
And Alexander Solzhenitsyn shared the story of someone who was imprisoned in the Soviet Gulag for telling an anti-Soviet joke. Another person in the room was also imprisoned – for NOT reporting the joke to the authorities. That’s how bad it can get. 25 years for a joke.
Solzhenitsyn was himself turned in by a “friend” and spent nearly a decade doing hard labor in a Gulag prison camp for making derogatory remarks about Stalin.
The way the Texas law has been constructed is truly frightening, not least of all because it makes turning people in very lucrative.
One has to wonder, how many completely innocent people will be turned in for the bounty, which is $10,000?
That the Supreme Court did not throw out such a truly dangerous law speaks volumes about their lack of respect for the US Constitution and the rule of law in general.
“One has to wonder, how many completely innocent people will be turned in for the bounty, which is $10,000?”
One only has to look to Guantanamo to see many innocent people who were turned in for a far less bounty.
I guess it makes sense, though, isn’t everything bigger in Texass?
Texanistan
Turn in
Turn in your mother!
Turn in your pal!
Turn in your sister!
Turn in your gal!
Turn in your exes!
Turn in , for pay!
Turn in in Texas!
Turn in today!
Coming soon to a Texas billboard near you
I can just imagine boyfriends purposefully getting their girlfriends pregnant in order to collect the bounty from abortion providers and/or the Uber driver who gave their girlfriend a ride .
Already saw a political cartoon with that very theme on FB a couple of days ago..
The “Abort01k Retirement plan”
All my neurons live in Texas.
on the other hand, our new world of social media and smart phone users isn’t passively lying down at their feet: if the powers that be plan to use tech to aid in their “informing” game the larger world of users will hardly let it stand unhacked and unscathed
Current GOP: American Taliban.
WOW…you are right, rwieck.
They are Taliban, all right.
But there is nothing “American” about these people.
They represent the very antithesis of everything our country is supposed to stand for
I agree totally with you, SomeDAM Poet.
Here’s a great article written by Pitts:
https://heraldcourier.com/opinion/columnists/pitts-jr-shame-on-texas-new-abortion-law-tramples-freedom/article_dca3a0cf-e3b6-5a37-858d-8f0e10e70ecf.html
Commentary
Shame on Texas
Can we first just say how bizarre it is? Yes, it’s invasive, and hypocritical, too, and we’ll get to that soon enough. But first, let us spare a moment for how purely, intensely and prodigiously strange it is.
As you’ve likely heard, Texas’ new anti-abortion law, which the Supreme Court refused to block on Wednesday night, bars termination of pregnancy after six weeks — long before a woman generally even knows she’s carrying — with no exception for incest or rape. But it imposes no criminal sanctions.
Rather, it deputizes ordinary citizens into a statewide anti-abortion posse. Henceforward, if “Joe” suspects someone has in any way helped a woman end a pregnancy, he can sue that person for $10,000. Doesn’t matter if Joe knows the woman or has any connection whatsoever. If Joe thinks a doctor performed an abortion, or a boyfriend paid for an abortion, or a neighbor simply gave a woman a ride to get an abortion, Joe can sue them — though not the woman herself — for 10,000 bucks.
Thus does Texas become a surveillance state. Thus is the right to privacy trampled into the mud. Thus is a woman’s bodily autonomy, a right enshrined into law in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, betrayed. Conservatives will tell you this is required out of reverence for “the sanctity of life.” Which, while it sounds like a noble principle, is actually a hypocritical one, something that becomes plain when you look for evidence of this “sanctity” elsewhere in state law.
It is, for instance, not found in Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order banning schools from requiring masks to stem the spread of COVID-19. This, in a state that has recorded 3.6 million cases of the disease and over 57,000 deaths, not to mention a daily death toll that spiked by a whopping 107% in the 14-day period ending on Sept. 1.
Nor is this reverence for the sanctity of life evident in gun laws that allow a Texan, without training or permit, to carry an AR-15 down a city sidewalk. This, in a state bloodied by gun massacres everywhere from Walmart to an Army base to a church. KTRK, an ABC affiliate in Houston, reported in July that mass shootings were up 65% this year.
Texas calls that “freedom”; Texas is big on freedom. Yet, the same people who happily endure disease and massacre in the name of that freedom, quail ostentatiously at respecting a woman’s freedom to make her own reproductive choices — or, as they prefer to characterize it with ponderous solemnity, “to murder her babies.”
In her 2019 novel, “A Spark of Light,” Jodi Picoult offers a clarifying retort to that characterization when a public defender confronts a prosecutor at the hospital bed of a teenage girl facing a 20year sentence for taking pills to induce an abortion. “If this hospital was burning down,” she says, “and you had to decide between saving a fertilized egg in the IVF lab or a baby in the maternity ward, which would you choose?”
The prosecutor can’t answer. Which is, of course, an answer. Indeed, even if there were no baby to prioritize, how many of us would rush into fire to save a fertilized egg? Would “Joe” in Texas do it? Not likely.
So the issue here is not the sanctity of life, but the punishment of sex. And shame on Texas, where the man with the AR-15 is free to stroll downtown and the man with the deadly virus is free to doff his mask, but a woman’s uterus is under public surveillance.
Anyone who thinks that’s freedom doesn’t know the meaning of the word.
—Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald. Contact him at lpitts@miamiherald.com.
Consider the Posse-bilities …
Citizens have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms, or so we’re told.
But any State so inclined can now pass a law enabling private citizens to sue anyone who keeps and bears arms or aids and abets another person doing so.
Turn-in-about is fair play …
If abortions beyond six weeks are banned, doesn’t that make Texas governor Abbott a violation?
That is an extremely dangerous proposal. Going down that road will lead us to anarchy and total chaos sooner than anything. Vigilantism should not be supported by anyone, however just the cause. It will sink you to their level and destroy what is left of democracy and order of law.
The SCOTUS will remain right wing/conservative for a long time thanks to the GOP and the Trumpers. And I do heap a pile of blame/shame on the holier-than-thou lefties who would not vote for Hillary because they claimed she was satan or whatever. I voted for Hillary because she would NOT have appointed conservatives to the SCOTUS and the puritans mocked me for voting for a supposed war monger. The GQP is a lost cause, the only choice is to vote Democratic. Biden is fighting the abortion ban in Texas. It’s looking very bleak as regards abortion, the right wingers are winning because so many of the courts are loaded up with right wingers. Why do Texans keep voting for these GOP ghouls?
Yes, if the democrat had won in 2016, the judicial system – from Supreme Court down – would have made it much easier for progressive legislation to get done, even if a Republican president won in 2020.
That’s what I never understood. Some people – not all, not even most, but enough to give Trump the election – fell for the right wing propaganda that was directed at them about how there was no difference between the two parties.
The only way progressive legislation will happen is if the Republicans are soundly defeated. The fact that some people believed the propaganda that the only way progressive legislation will happen is if the Democrats are soundly defeated is simply proof of the old adage that you can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time. I got fooled when I refused to vote for Carter over Reagan, because I was certain “there was no difference”. I was at fault for being the patsy of the right wing and I didn’t make the same mistake again. So I have no sympathy for those who got fooled in 2016 and whine that “it’s not their fault”. The election of 2016 was a lot closer than the election of 1980, and I don’t whine “it’s not my fault”. I recognize my mistake. Jimmy Carter wasn’t perfect, but he wasn’t the caricature of corruption and evil I believed, and I was wrong to help the right wing amplify that false view of Carter when I talked about Carter. Carter wasn’t preventing progressive legislation, and electing Reagan just set the progressive movement back decades.
The rest of that old adage — but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Unfortunately, when the US loses its democracy, it doesn’t matter whether people are fooled or not, because their vote will no longer matter.
Republicans need to soundly defeated because without a democracy, progressives don’t have a chance.
“That’s what I never understood. Some people – not all, not even most, but enough to give Trump the election – fell for the right wing propaganda that was directed at them about how there was no difference between the two parties.”
I’m not sure how you arrived at this conclusion. Do we know that for a fact? Folks trying to parse this out have not, as far as I know, figured it out. They tend to focus on the 70k votes in the rust-belt area that [given electoral college reality] swung the election. Folks sat home because media said Hillary was going to win, they weren’t gung-ho, ‘what have Dems done for me lately,’ etc.
I think you’re onto something as far as “there was no difference between the two parties,” but that’s not necessarily just some rw propaganda that rust-belt on-the-fencers bought into in 2016 due to “rw propaganda.”
From where I sit [&I’m very liberal], my QOL started heading south under Reagan/ HWBush [12 yrs], & it was not improved by 8 yrs of Clinton, 8 yrs of GWBush, nor 8 yrs of Obama. [With 1 major exception: Obamacare helped my kids—didn’t help me & hubby, tho.] What I’m talking about here is the neoliberal turn in Dem party which made them little different from Rep party during those years. McGovern was the last ‘real’ Dem pres candidate in my book. For proof, look at the huge turn-out for progressive Bernie which rivaled Trump rallies. Everybody was looking for something different.
But don’t get me wrong, I like Joe Jersey voted for Hillary. I didn’t “hate” her; I thought of her as ‘sigh, another neoliberal’. I thought she was a good Sec’y of State altho I was a bit worried about her hawkishness. And thought she maybe had some better thoughts on ed than Obama. I was not as perspicacious: didn’t think ahead (as Joe J did) about who she would appoint to SCOTUS.
And frankly, never imagined Trump would end up siding with the far rwnj fringe. But I knew him, as a longtime NYC denizen who watched him, ’75-’95: was appalled that he got the nomination, knew him to be a shallow, sleazy, racist & worse conman with nothing to support his political positions but hot air & gas– & would have voted for anyone running against him. As far as I was concerned he had nothing to do with Rep party principles & would have run the same con if running as a Dem.
The GOP’s central message to voters in 2016 highlighted the impact of SCOTUS appointments. Rhetorically, why weren’t the prospective appointments, the target of Democratic messaging?
Now that is a damn good question.
Rally turn out?
Bernie Sanders lost the primary because he didn’t get the votes of the majority of African-American voters in the Democratic primaries. Do you blame Bernie’s “elitist white staff” for that? Should their votes not count because of “rally turn out”?
I have had my primary candidate lose in a presidential election. But only in 1980 was I fool enough to believe the false narrative that there was no difference between Carter and Reagan and only in 1980 was I fool enough to think that not voting for Carter would send a message that would make this country more progressive.
But if, after Reagan won, everyone kept pandering to me and telling me I was right and it was all Jimmy Carter’s fault for not having a good enough message and telling me how corrupt and pro-business and anti-progressive Jimmy Carter was, I would still believe that the most important thing is never voting for any imperfect Democrats like Jimmy Carter and “she who must not be named”.
nycpsp (9/7 pm comment)– « Bernie Sanders lost the primary because he didn’t get the votes of the majority of African-American voters in the Democratic primaries.” I must have read that back then, but I guess it didn’t sink in. All 4 of my family voted for Bernie in the 2016 primary. My husband and I had that niggling thought, could a progressive defeat a Republican?, but I was greatly encouraged by the turnout at rallies in swing, “pink,” even a couple of red states. [I found a 2016 article analyzing why this doesn’t necessarily translate to primary votes https://www.npr.org/2016/04/26/475681237/campaign-mystery-why-dont-bernie-sanders-big-rallies-lead-to-big-wins ]
I don’t know what you mean about blaming Bernie’s ‘elite white staffers’ or suggesting black votes shouldn’t count cuz, rally turnout. But your comment spurred me to educate myself on why blacks didn’t support Sanders in 2016 or 2020. I found a pretty good summary here: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/12/opinions/bernie-sanders-black-voters-opinion-martin/index.html Probably not news to you 😉 but thanks for raising the bar for me: I am now better informed.
bethree5,
Thanks for reading up on it.
I think we both probably agree that there are generally a lot of factors involved with why a candidate wins or loses an election. But I do think the way that the media helps drive dishonest narratives so that they morph from being something only the right wing believes to what is accepted fact has a lot to do with it. And what I have seen is that the media absolutely cannot drive those narratives if the only people amplifying those narratives are on the far right and everyone else can only be quoted on how fact-free the right wing narrative is. But the media will amplify those narratives and legitimize them as soon as people who are moderates or left repeat them. That happened with Dukakis, with Gore, with Kerry and with “she who may not be named”. But – because of a much too late realization of how terrible their reporting was — the media didn’t do that in 1992 nor in 2008.
“On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency” was written in the 1980s — this isn’t new.
But I have never seen it work if the right wing attempts to character-assassinate democrats and progressives are only repeated by the right wing and not given legitimacy by the left or moderates either by their silence or their joining in.
Biden got destroyed by a right wing driven absolutely false narrative about Afghanistan. I really expected a loud defense from those who have been advocating this for many years, and heard nothing. It reminded me of how de Blasio was the first NYC Mayor in 20 years to fight charter schools (keeping one of his campaign promises in his first month in office) and when he got attacked by the anti-public school people, there was silence from the people who should have been loudly supporting him and preventing the media from legitimizing the false narrative that limiting charter expansion was bad. Instead all I heard was “de Blasio tried to fight charter expansion the wrong way”, which I was reminded of when the massive criticism of Biden’s Afghanistan pull out was “he did it the wrong way” – implying there was some different way that it could have been done that would have resulted in joy, peace and happiness forever.
I joined in the character assassination of Jimmy Carter in 1980 and helped amplify it. I got fooled. And in 1980, a typical defense of Jimmy Carter I heard went something like “sure you are right that Jimmy Carter is anti-progressive and has done terrible things but at least he’s better than Reagan”. No wonder I voted for John Anderson believing that the way to a progressive future was to get rid of Jimmy Carter at all costs, instead of understanding that the way to a progressive future was to marginalize Reaganism instead of empowering it.
nycpsp– I don’t count Biden as destroyed by the Afghanistan withdrawal at all. The political spin may sound convincing today, but both sides are relieved that we’re out of there, which means the hoop-la will run out of gas.
Right now, it sounds like Benghazi, which eventually became a laughing-stock similar to “b-b-but, Hillary’s emails!” In Benghazi’s immediate aftermath, there was silence on the left too– everyone was in shock contemplating the reality of a revered ambassador and colleague trapped and killed in an embassy under attack (plus two CIA contractors in a related attack). Months of multiple after-the-fact investigations got nowhere trying to find improper actions by admin. We’ll be in for that again; and Reps will line up against Biden despite McConnell, Rubio et al warnings about TFG’s drawdown last year.
There’s a good summary of the withdrawal timeline here: https://www.factcheck.org/2021/08/timeline-of-u-s-withdrawal-from-afghanistan/ Throughout the reduction from 25k troops to 2500 under TFG’s watch, DOD kept informing admin & Congress that Taliban was ratcheting up the violence, making deals with Al Queda, et al violations of Taliban/TFG agreement. Nobody paused/ stopped the drawdown or even demanded verification of Taliban adherence to agreement. That was the situation handed Biden. TFG left Biden no option for ‘orderly w/dwl’ short of ratcheting troops back up—political suicide, with little likelihood of recouping ‘orderly w/dwl.’ Rep investigations will get nowhere, tho they’ll try to string out the issue long enough to affect midterms.
As to lack of full-throated defense of Biden by left MSM at this moment? How do you even voice ‘yay, thanks Biden’ while folks are still trapped, & Taliban is sweeping up? Give it a little time: it’s too fresh.
bethree5,
I want you to be right. But I also wanted everyone to be right in 2016 when they kept trying to silence those who tried to point out the harm their amplification of the right wing narrative was causing, telling them they were worrying for nothing.
I see a repeat of that going on right now. Biden’s progressive agenda is being hurt, right now, because the Afghanistan attacks about Biden’s “failure” and “debacle” were allowed to be the only narrative that was amplified. I find it especially appalling because what happened was about the best case scenario without escalating the war. And yet every poll shows that most people now view it as a failure of execution, even if they supported the withdrawal. That is very bad for the progressive agenda and simply empowers Manchin to defy any pressure from Biden. That didn’t have to be the case.
“How do you even voice ‘yay, thanks Biden’ while folks are still trapped, & Taliban is sweeping up?” Um, given that “folks being trapped, & Taliban is sweeping up” was always the guaranteed end result of the withdrawal that progressives knew about, saying “yay, thanks Biden and actually explaining that this result (evacuating 120,000 people) is better than anyone could have imagined was possible is exactly what the obligation of progressive leaders should have been. Their silence reinforces the narrative that there was “a better way” and I was extremely disappointed with the entire progressive Congressional delegation about their silence and complicity in allowing the right wing narrative to be prevalent. I expected a loud defense and a lot of praise for the successful evacuation of over 120,000 people and what I heard was some mealy mouthed words from the progressive delegation about how we had to take more refugees. Something that was never discussed when the left was yelling “get out troops out of Afghanistan now”. I don’t blame Obama for not ending the war in Afghanistan as the attacks on Biden and the silence from the left just proves that Obama did the politically smart thing.
Biden – and the entire progressive agenda – will pay a price for the silence of progressives — and many moderate Democrats, too — to defend the withdrawal. They are complicit in reinforcing the false narrative of the far right that anything Biden proposes will be executed terribly and become a “debacle”. The right wing is already at it, reminding Americans that “even the left” admits that Biden has no idea how to execute any policy and telling voters that these proposals Biden supports will end up just as much of a debacle and disaster as the Afghanistan withdrawal was.
The silence on Afghanistan is giving cover to Joe Manchin. He’s not blocking a competent president who knows how to execute a great progressive policy. Manchin is simply agreeing with the left that anything Joe Biden touches will be a disaster since he is so inept. Instead of making it hard for Manchin to thwart Biden, the silence of the left gave Manchin cover and made it easy for him.
Too many on the left are uncompromising as you point out. There is no perfect politician. Unity is important for those of us that believe in democracy since the right is becoming “fascist authoritarians.” With all the voter suppression, gerrymandering and right wing court appointees, the left must show up to vote in the midterms. Historically, there is a lower turn out in the midterms in both parties, but it is significantly lower among Democrats.
Frankly, given the fact that our party has been pushed to the left by increasingly WAY-right-wing trend in Reps over the last 10 yrs, I am delighted that we seem to have only two outliers [Senators Manchin and Sinema]. We have a motley group led by elderly somewhat-centrist boomers Pelosi and Schumer that includes radical lefties like AOC & co, & Bernie. We could have been split and rendered useless. Happy that Biden is mostly leaning toward the left these days.
It’s funny …in a perverse kind of way. A fair number of northeastern Democrats recognize midwesterners as a different demographic. For example, we see it when they label them stupid for voting GOP (a point about which I agree). But, then, those same northeasters think the midwest demographic will respond favorably to political messages and strategies crafted for the “smart” voters of the northeast.
Hillary’s campaign dispensed with local Democratic organizations in favor of her own campaign teams which were dispatched to county headquarters. Hillary’s campaign chair for Ohio was a Washington guy who had attended the most expensive private high school in Cincinnati, son of a venture capitalist. He and his wife became Washingtonians when they were given government appointments after campaigning for Obama.
Sometimes, voters get tired of politicians, both beltway/Northeast GOP and Democrats who reward their wealthy friends at the public’s expense. Politicians who do it right to the faces of midwesterners may not be be that politically savvy.
Linda,
Sorry, but I strongly disagree. If “voters get tired” of politicians who reward their wealthy friends, they would certainly not have voted to re-elect Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania and Ron Johnson (over Russ Feingold) in Wisconsin.
I was born and grew up in the midwest and I have family and friends there. The idea that anyone knew or cared who the campaign chair for Ohio was is part of what I mean by pushing the false narratives about how “elitist” or “co-opted” the democrats are. That is exactly what the Republicans have been pushing.
But in fact, what I saw with the friends and family I knew is that a shockingly high number of people who were Republicans who believed in small government, etc. were some of the most rabidly anti-Trump people because they saw him for what he was. And I also saw lots of long time traditional democrats — some of them in their 70s and 80s — who also liked the Democrat a lot and didn’t buy into the false narrative because they were old enough to remember her real history – not the carefully curated examples that some of the left believed were all that mattered.
And the people I saw posting pro-Trump memes were also posting racist, right wing memes, too. They didn’t respond to arguments — even when their good friends who were also conservative made them. It was almost as if they were brainwashed. And it had nothing to do with who the campaign chair was.
They believed white people were under attack, and progressives wanted to take away their private property and give it to the “other” and pandering to that just convinces them they are right.
I don’t want the Democrats to try to appeal to people who respond to racism and fear and hatred of the “other”. They don’t have to. Why pander to them?
But there are other people and it is time for them to come to their own reckoning. Those are the people who did what I did when I helped defeat Jimmy Carter and usher in 8 years of Reaganism. It was easy for me to cherry pick a few times Jimmy Carter did something that I believed was very dangerous to the future of progressivism, instead of looking at the whole picture. That’s what too many people did in 2016.
Those people need to recognize their mistake, not be empowered to believe that they didn’t make a mistake. No one pandered to me when I helped push the false narrative of Jimmy Carter’s neocon, pro-corporate, anti-progressive agenda. They didn’t keep telling me I was right, and it is all the fault of Jimmy Carter for being such a lousy campaigner and not doing enough to convince me to vote for him. The truth is that it wasn’t Jimmy Carter’s fault, it was my error. I had agency and I chose to use it to listen to misleading rhetoric (and ignore those trying to tell me the truth) and I helped defeat Carter instead of help defeat Reagan.
(Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders understand this. )
Sherrod Brown – despite being rather a sell-out on supporting public education – never ran in an election where progressives helped his right wing Republican opponent smear him as an out of touch elitist who was no better than a Democrat. That’s how Democrats win, even when they are far from perfect progressive candidates. Having more Sherrod Brown’s in the Senate would absolutely result in more progressive legislation being passed. Despite Sherrod Brown’s many failings as a progressive politician.
I gather what you’re saying is that Hillary could have managed a better presidential campaign had she worked with locals in the Midwest and tried harder to understand their POV and connect her policies to their needs– instead she brought in DC-beltway campaigners who were out of touch and merely reinforced Midwesterners’ sense that she couldn’t authentically represent their views. I will just have to trust you know what you’re talking about. Have to admit that this matches for me intuitively what I always sensed as her Achilles heel: a general difficulty with relating to others, & communicating to them how her principles & vision could help them attain their goals.
Hillary won three million more votes than Trump, which means nothing because of our antiquated electoral system. Unlike poor loser Trump, she didn’t demand recounts in states where the vote was close.
Ah, thanks for the reality check, Diane! Hillary won the popular election by 2.15%… But 0.05% of the voters in a couple of areas of a couple of rust-belt states won the election for Trump. Makes perfect sense [rolls eyes]
I agree with both NYC and Bethree.
My comment was indirectly provoked by Northeast Democratic influencers who choose to ignore the role conservative religion has played in advancing the GOP. (Several years ago, Christopher Rufo, who is behind CRT opposition, interviewed Pat Buchanan about politics and religion. Judge Scalia’s appointment was cited- the interview is posted at Buchanan’s site).
Attempts to break the ties that bind the nation’s two major religions and directing messaging to those voters who believe in separation of church and state, is a strategy that is purposely ignored. Since the money for Democratic campaigns comes mainly from the northeast (and, west coast) and PR and advertising development is mostly located in N.Y. and D.C., I presume decisions that call for unity i.e. pretending the leaders of one of the two conservative religions aren’t an enemy of the left’s agenda, is based on a subculture that exists in the northeast where the power of one of the two conspirators is negligible.
bethree5,
Your comment is the opposite of what I said.
Blaming operatives? I just told you that my friends and relatives who paid attention were absolutely clear about their support for “she who could not be named” and that I did not know anyone who had reservations about voting for her. I did see people I grew up with who believed she was the embodiment of evil and repeated almost word for word the same false characterizations of her that I heard coming from people on the left on this very blog.
Trump won by significant depressing turnout among traditional Democratic voters. That was done by intentionally disenfranchising many voters, but it was also done by pushing false narratives to mischaracterize the candidate.
“had she worked with locals in the Midwest and tried harder to understand their POV and connect her policies to their needs– instead she brought in DC-beltway campaigners who were out of touch and merely reinforced Midwesterners’ sense that she couldn’t authentically represent their views.”
That’s the kind of false narrative I mean. As my friends and relatives in the midwest clearly knew, she was connecting her policies to their needs and she did understand their POV — if anything she understood it more than even Bernie did because that was her background, too.
She got smeared, and the kind of comments like yours helped that happen. If anything, that “deplorables” speech was all about addressing the needs of people in the midwest and how they had been left behind. But the media – with help from the left – helped amplify the right wing narrative about how that speech “proved” she didn’t understand.
The way that the left so often help undermine their own interests does shock me sometimes.
I expected a full-throated defense of Biden’s pull out in Afghanistan and successful evacuation of 120,000 people, at least from the left. And I heard silence while the right wing narrative — which was 100% false — that there was a “better way” that would have not escalated the war but would have been sunshine and flowers used to completely destroy Biden.
That’s going to hurt the chances of Biden’s progressive policies happening. Imagine if there had been a strong defense of Afghanistan by the left, and Biden was going into the fall budget negotiations as one of the most popular presidents in history for extracting the country from Afghanistan AND rescuing more than 120,000 people to boot. It would have been a lot harder politically for Manchin to go up against him.
Nycpsp, I am surprised you jump all over “comments like mine” [helped Hillary get smeared??]. If you read carefully, you’ll see that I was paraphrasing Linda’s comment to make sure I grasped it, then [tactfully] questioned its validity [“I will just have to trust you know what you’re talking about.”] In other words, her narrative may or may not be accurate. Your experience with obviously principled, thoughtful friends/ relatives with excellent radar for bs is good to know & doesn’t surprise me. I don’t categorize “Midwesterners.”
I stand by the rest of what I wrote there: I do feel that Hillary has never been good at conveying—in user-friendly terms– where she stands. Smart voters look at her record and history, and figure it out. She also too often dodges chances to clearly enunciate what policies she can whole-heartedly get behind. I see that as the lawyer in her. I’ve always just listened carefully: she does give clues, and I was encouraged during that campaign. I think a problem she’s always had to deal with is the unfair assumption she’s equivocating and underneath it is just like her husband (a bait-and-switch neoliberal). They always seemed quite different to me, and folks had plenty of time with her as Senator then Sec’y of State to get a clue.
Bethree
Effective political messaging is tailored based on characteristics unique to the segment (categorization). Trump uses the marketing principle of targeted segments in order to get votes like those from the conservative religious community. To get GOP votes, Mitch McConnell admits to using the strategy of tribalism (includes tactics in the same ballpark as segmentation). McConnell learned about the process at a harvard seminar.
Democratic messaging, by design, avoids any challenge to conservative religion’s activities to gain GOP votes. I think it’s a mistake in light of the the loss of Democratic governors and legislators in regions of the country between the east and west coasts.
A different tangent but of interest, Harvard’s new chaplain is a humanist instead of a Christian, Muslim, etc. The school said the person was selected to represent 40% of the student population who are atheists.
BUT HER EMAILS
Perhaps most disturbing, a majority of white women voted for Trump.
Conservative religion creates and fosters notions of women as 2nd class citizens. The religion steers its female members to GOP voting.
Women buy into the scam for promises of eternal salvation and for the assurances of an orderly society.
Rhetorically, how many men would join and support churches that denied them leadership roles solely because they were men?
It’s fascinating to me that only Arthur Camins, in this thread, stated the obvious about the source of the abortion law. There is a massive front in America to hide the role that the American Catholic hierarchy and the church’s conservative members have played recently in destroying the nation’s democracy, to advance their religion. Commenters at this blog and in media call out a Jerry Falwell, Pat Buchanan, Franklin Graham,…but, who has called out Leonard Leo and Trump’s Catholic WH staff who selected and promoted the conservative SCOTUS jurists and other federal judges?
An interview of Pat Buchanan written by Christopher Rufo posted at Buchanan’s site explains the political reasons that Judge Scalia was chosen for the Court. It’s worth a read.
Well as usual Linda you’re saying Catholics are even more and far more influential—more moneyed, more politically-connected– in the anti-abortion debate than Evangelical Christians. What the heck is the diff? What are you looking for? It irks you that MSM doesn’t publicize this? Actually, now that SCOTUS added Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney-Barrett, I think the public is starting to get the drift. OK we got it: between the Evangelicals and the Catholics, that’s 40-50% of US self-identified Christians who are pushing to outlaw abortion [et al Sharia].
Bethree
The public getting the drift…uhh… the Barrett hearings didn’t affirm that view, despite Barrett’s clear prior statements that should have provoked questions about her religion.
Articles in mainstream media have appeared to adopt the spin that fails to label the SCOTUS conservative judges as Catholic in favor of “conservative Christians” which even Pope Francis’ close allies interpret as protestant.
In this post thread, how many were willing to connect the abortion law in Texas with religion or the subsequent SCOTUS decision with the Jurists’ religion?
Are there equal numbers of Americans who know the religion of Leonard Leo, Robert P. George and Paul Weyrich (the co-founder of Koch-backed ALEC, Heritage Foundation and the religious right) as know the religion of Pat Buchanan, Jerry Falwell, Franklin Graham?
Does the average Democrat view Liberty University ‘s social and political influence in a doctrinal category substantially different than that of the Catholic University of America located in D.C. which has a board cozy with Charles Koch?
If Judge Barrett worked for Liberty University (and, was part of a group there like People of Praise, a group which some describe as a cult) what would you assess the level of northeaster Democratic outrage to be? And, do you think it would have been greater than if she’d been a product of Notre Dame?
Footnote-
SCOTUS decisions in Biel and Espinosa.
Why is this disturbing? Why is it our responsibility? Why do you fail to understand that this comment is inherently sexist?
Why isn’t it more disturbing that so many white men voted for Trump? Why isn’t it more disturbing that many Hispanics voted for Trump? Why isn’t it more disturbing that so many people don’t bother to vote at all?
It is time to stop scapegoating white women for this country’s problems. We are not a receptacle for this country’s anger, fear and anxiety. ENOUGH.
It shouldn’t surprise any thinking person that there are women who show unfounded bias against other women. From childhood, society teaches girls and boys what the norms are. Few girls will get a secondary set of empowering rules that are repeatedly reinforced.
How much blame is it fair to assign to wives like Josh Duggar’s who are homeschooled, have limited social interactions outside of their circle and who are brought up in a conservative religion? Obedience is what they know.
The oft-stated claim that Republican men tell their wives how to vote is warranted based on fact. It’s not true of all GOP husbands but, it’s true for a portion.
How much blame is it fair to assign to a woman who raises her children in a church that discriminates against gay people and women when she is told and believes that she and her children will be damned to hell if she doesn’t?
I am in Colombia now and everywhere i look i see masks. and no one complains. Why are there so many ignorant people in my country acting like fools. thus keeping the virus going
Columbians are obviously trying to hide something.
How smart they are, maybe?
Colombians
Sorry.
As America continues to become more non white, much of white America is going to turn this country into apartheid South Africa and the short lived Southern Rhodesia, white minority rule. White America would rather burn its own house down than see it become more politically pluralistic. I think one reason why these largely white mostly male legislators and their white supremacist religious allies are anti abortion is because they worry that not enough white babies are being born. (There was forced sterilization of black women in the past). They want more guns around to protect themselves from the “colored hordes” and ignore police brutality because they see it as keeping POCs in check. Jan 6 taught us how scared much of white America is of a changing America and will enact a scorched earth policy to maintain their hold on power. I think in the very long run they’ll loose because changing demographics are beyond their’s or anyone’s control and much of corporate America knows that racial and gender identity is better for their bottom line in globalized interconnected economy, but they will try. Remember Southern whites invited destruction of their states in order to defend slavery in the 1860s Now white bigots across America would rather destroy democracy than share it.
Thanks for your perspective. “Bigots across America would rather destroy democracy than share it.” Unfortunately, you may be right. Your “colored hordes” comment reminded me of the St. Louis couple that stood in front of their home with their guns out because there was a BLM protest on their street.
harlem… is correct.
Conservative, religious, white men boast of the number of kids they have (if it’s 5 or more) as bona fide for jobs in the private sector or for government jobs when they assume hiring or voters are right wing.
If black men did the same, it would be the death knell for jobs.
Traitor Trump and/or his traitorous minions are directing his elected Republican stooges to keep creating more chaos in the states they control. The more chaos there is in the U.S. and the world, the happier Traitor Trump will be. His goal is obvious, to cause so much chaos in the U.S. that the justice system never has a chance to find him guilty of all of his crimes. To stay wealthy and out of prison, Traitor Trump is willing to destroy this country by tearing it apart. But the only way he can achieve this is because he has enablers that support him.
During the early years of Traitor Trump’s presidency, I left a comment here that every day I woke up hoping the news would report Trump was dead. I was chastised by other comments and warned to stop saying such things.
Well, I’m still waking up hoping to read the news that Traitor Trump is dead, and I don’t care how he dies. Just because I want that traitor dead doesn’t mean I’m willing to be the one that caused his death.
Unfortunately, even after that traitor is in hell roasting, his enablers are not going to go away. We are now stuck with Traitor Trump’s dangerous, mindless, hate-filled MAGA mob.
The sooner that traitor is gone, the better off most of us will be even if the improvement is insignificant.
Short list addition- Charles Koch
The new Texas law says that fetuses can’t be aborted in Texas after a fetal heartbeat is detected.
But most of the fetuses that will eventually become Texas governors can be aborted any time before birth because they never develop a heart and hence the fetal heartbeat criterion never applies.
Ann Richards was a rare exception who actually had a heart.
There are lots of good people in Texas, but most of them are not in politics.
Ann Richards was one of a kind.
There’s talk that Beto may run for Governor of Texas.
The ed reform echo chamber are all pushing “learning pods” whch they claim are “local community organizations”, but this company they are promoting is not “local” or a “community organization”, it’s a national for profit that sells learning pods to replace public schools:
“Programs like the new Great Hearts self-organized microschools, or the virtual learning pod program launched by KaiPods provide further examples of efforts to build intentional small learning communities into the future—and seed ideas for school districts that want to find new ways of supporting students who continue with virtual learning options.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/student-learning-pods-crisis-response-150100806.htm
https://www.kaipodlearning.com/why-kaipod
Kaipod is specifically marketed as replacing public schools. I mean, obviously the plan is to fund these for profit “learning centers” with public funds.
So now they’re all proudly promoting replacing public schools with these various for-profit contractors? Not only can we no longer have public schools we also must have for -profit K-12 education companies replacing public schools? So much for “public education”. Good to see that was jettisoned somewhere along the way when we “reinvented”.
I guess that’s what the huge ed reform push for vouchers was about. Let a thousand for profit, publicly funded contractors bloom. We won’t have public schools or “public education” but we’ll have an entire new for-profit sector where public schools used to be.
We went from ed reformers claiming charters would be non profit, to ed reformers lobbying for federal funding of for-profit charter schools, to ed reformers promoting any for-profit contractor that makes any claim of “education” at all.
Is there any point where any of these people question any of it, or does the last public school have to close before any of them breaks ranks and asks why they’re destroying existing public systems and replacing them with a list of products, and whether there will be consequences for conducting this huge privatization experiment on a public who are continually being told this ISN’T privatization when it absolutely, 100% IS privatization?
I think they’ll notice when their public schools are gone. They’re going to figure this out. They’ll know this entire “movement” completely misled them.
Though we naturally react when our values are undermined locally it’s equally important to stay vigilant over attempts to extinguish democracy around the world. Putin has learned from his puppet Trump’s failed coup which is why Balsinaro in Brazil is now trying to force tech companies to publish Kremlin disinformation. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-58470093.amp
Stunning what we are allowing these mendacious fascists to normalize.
“What Americans allow”
In the past couple of years, Catholic Vote posted an article for its American audience that praised Hungary’s Orban. In 2016, 60% of white Catholics voted for Trump.
(1) Taxpayers have positioned Catholic organizations as the nation’s 3rd largest employer. (2) Lax enforcement of the IRS statute (Johnson Amendment) under Trump’s executive order made endorsement of political candidates by religious organizations possible. (3) The influential midwestern Bishop Hebda prohibited his priests from voting in the 2020 Democratic primary citing as his authority the state Catholic Conference.(4) The editor of the Boston Globe, a newspaper that advocates for school privatizing, created a website, Crux. for a Catholic audience. The editor described it as a “noble mission” which he assumed would find financial support from Catholic organizations. (5) Religious schools -Catholic K-12 schools being the majority- are tax-funded while they have been made exempt from civil rights employment law. (6) The Federalist Society under the direction of Leonard Leo has had great success in the appointment of conservative judges. Leo received an award for his work from a Catholic organization as did William Barr. (7) GOP backer, Charles Koch, funded the work of Paul Weyrich who was the co- founder of ALEC, the religious right and the Heritage Foundation which has links to Clarence Thomas’ wife- more than $600,000 income unreported by Clarence on his SCOTUS forms. Weyrich’s training manual is posted at Theocracy Watch.
Jefferson- in every country, in every century, the priest aligns with the despot.
Jason Miller who was part of the recent Brazil CPAC meeting, boasted about his role on Steve Bannon’s podcast. A few years ago, Steve Bannon geofenced Catholic Churches to deliver GOP messaging.
“including Tito’s, my favorite vodka”
For a better vodka at half the price may I suggest Luksusowa.
How to get to Texas:
Go West until you smell it, then South until you step in it.
And if you cross the Rio Grand, keep going!
Don’t even think about turning around.
Opinion | In the Dead of Night, the Supreme Court Proved It Has Too Much Power – The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/03/opinion/texas-roe-supreme-court.html?referringSource=articleSharev
The Supreme Court’s recent reliance on the so-called shadow docket to make major rulings — on display, this week, in its decision to let Texas end legal abortion after six weeks, at least for now — throws the problem of judicial power in a representative democracy into sharp relief.
First, some background. The shadow docket refers to emergency orders and decisions made outside of the court’s regular docket of cases, usually without oral arguments. The term was coined six years ago by William Baude, a law professor at the University of Chicago, but the division between regular cases and this more specialized set has been around for decades. All it takes to get on the docket is to appeal to one justice, who then decides whether to forward the matter to the rest of the court.
Many of these orders are minor and procedural, but others deal with high-stakes issues of national concern. In recent years, and especially during the Trump administration, the court has relied on the shadow docket to make consequential decisions on a wide range of issues. Often, the court issues its decisions from the shadow docket without signed opinions or detailed explanations of the kind you would find in an argued case.
In the past five months, the Supreme Court has used the shadow docket to strike down Covid restrictions on group religious activities in private homes, force President Biden to reinstate the Trump-era “remain in Mexico” policy for asylum seekers from Central America and block the extension of an emergency federal ban on evictions, putting countless Americans at risk of homelessness.
The vote on the Texas abortion law came on Wednesday, in the dead of night, when a narrow majority of the court declined to stop Texas from instituting a new ban on abortions past the sixth week of pregnancy, which is often before many women even know they are pregnant. Under the law, Texans can sue anyone who assists in the procurement of an abortion, from the doctor who performed the procedure to the taxi driver who delivered the patient to the clinic to the family member who gave her the cash to go. Successful plaintiffs are eligible for a $10,000 bounty, plus legal fees.
The law is a flagrant violation of Roe v. Wade. But because Texas has deputized private citizens to enforce the ban rather than rely on executive authority — a deliberate choice meant to prevent federal courts from blocking the law — the court has declined to act against the ban, citing the “complex and novel antecedent procedural questions” of the case. For Justice Sonia Sotomayor, this is nonsense. “The court,” she wrote in her dissent, “has rewarded the state’s effort to delay federal review of a plainly unconstitutional statute, enacted in disregard of the court’s precedents, through procedural entanglements of the state’s own creation.”
Abortion rights are a dead letter in Texas, at least temporarily. And Republican lawmakers in other parts of the country now have a clear road map for making the same thing happen in their own states. Republican legislative leaders in Florida, for example, have already said they are working on a similar law.
Another way to put this is that the court has essentially nullified the constitutional rights of millions of American women without so much as an argument. It has shaken the constitutional landscape — refusing to apply the law as it was decided in previous cases — while shielding itself from the scrutiny that might come under normal circumstances. The court has transformed the constitutional status quo under cover of night. This isn’t judicial review as much as it is a raw exercise of judicial power.
It is common enough knowledge that the Supreme Court’s power to shape American society is a function not so much of its formal power under the Constitution as it is of its popular legitimacy. And much of that legitimacy rests on the idea that the court is acting fairly, transparently and in good faith. It rests, as well, on the idea of the court as a partner in governance and a safeguard for the rights of the American people. Or, as Franklin Roosevelt said in a 1937 “fireside chat” on his plan to restructure the Supreme Court in response to the intransigence of conservative justices: “We want a Supreme Court which will do justice under the Constitution and not over it. In our courts we want a government of laws and not of men.”
The court’s abuse of the shadow docket is in that category: actions that threaten to place the rule of men over the rule of law. It’s not that the court is political — that is to be expected — but that its conservative majority is acting in arbitrary, secretive ways, with hardly any justification other than its own power to do so. Antifederalist opponents of the Constitution feared that the judiciary’s expansive power would consume all others: “This power in the judicial will enable them to mould the government into almost any shape they please,” wrote “Brutus” in a January 1788 essay. The majority in the Texas case, three-fifths of it appointed by President Donald Trump, seems intent on proving Brutus’s point. (The Antifederalists, for what it’s worth, often had a point.)
One last thing. In his first Inaugural Address, delivered almost four years to the day after the court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford, Abraham Lincoln warned that “if the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court,” then the people “will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”
The shadow docket aside, the extent to which political outcomes in America rest on the opaque machinations of a cloistered, nine-member clique is the clearest possible sign that we’ve given too much power to this institution. We can have self-government or we can have rule by judge, but we cannot have both.