Charlie, why would you possibly think that the right wing would NOT try to eliminate gay marriage, birth control, and the like? Nobody thought Trump could win ... until he did. Nobody thought SCOTUS would overturn Roe . . . until they did (or will). It is no stretch at all to believe that drunk on their latest SCOTUS hijacking of national opinion on abortion remaining available to all Americans with certain safeguards, they intend to go for broke.
As a gay woman I'm sorry to say I don't agree with you regarding the potential threat to gay marriage. Just watch...very soon there will be bills introduced around the nation to ban same sex marriage. It will happen and given the apparent rationale for this anti-choice decision, there seems to be a clear path to allowing such discrimination to be declared "constitutional."
I know I'm in danger of sounding like an alarmist Lefty, but the Louisiana Senate just passed a bill out of committee categorizing abortion as homicide and making the mother liable for prosecution as a murderer.
"Republicans in the Louisiana House advanced a bill Wednesday that would classify abortion as homicide and allow prosecutors to criminally charge patients, with supporters citing a draft opinion leaked this week showing the Supreme Court ready to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The legislation, which passed through a committee on a 7-to-2 vote . . ."
It passed 7-2. It wasn't even close.
But Eric Swalwell and the rest of us are just being shrill.
The politics of the Deep South from the 1960s and 1970s has arrived in all-white rural Ohio in 2022.
These all-white regions are largely unaffected by issues like sky-high homicide rates or school desegregation, so the question is when and why exactly did they transition to segregationist politics.
Many of these voters voted for Obama, so something changed during the Obama administration. My guess is that it was when Obama, after campaigning as a moderate, began to appear to openly take the sides of criminals over the police. Obama refused to use the word Radical Islamic Terrorism while the U.S. was fighting the terrorists, and Obama refused to use the term illegal immigrants (saying "undocumented" instead). And gay marriage arrived and the Obama White House covered itself in rainbow colors.
Eight long years of economic decline in rural America under Obama stirred the rage of Americans who already resented Obama's overt enabling of lawbreakers and rule breakers while law-abiding working class Americans were overlooked.
Trump arrived and gave voice to their rage. Meanwhile the Democrats went into hyperdrive pushing trans rights, open borders, and defunding the police. Now in 2022, voters in all-white Midwestern counties vote along racial lines as if they lived in majority black counties in the Deep South.
The solution to this problem is in Texas. When Texas goes blue, presidential politics will be turned on its head, as Republicans' racial politics will henceforth prevent them from winning the White House.
What comes to mind to me is if we are FORCED to give up bodily autonomy/right to privacy then the following CAN be true depending on WHO is in power to ENFORCE it:
- If the government can FORCE one to NOT get an abortion then the government can FORCE one TO get an abortion. (hello china?)
I think Charlie is onto something here. Too often those on the left want to write off GOP politicians and supporters generically as kooks, cranks, and idiots rather than looking at what their motivations are, as well as how and why they so often are outflanking their frequently better educated, deeper-thinking, more virtuous opponents. Are they really so stupid just because we disagree with their agenda and their methodology?
In no way do I endorse or support them. But from where I sit you've got to call a spade a spade, and in that spirit of fundamental honesty it seems that many of them have been quite smart about how they've climbed the ladder and both gotten and embraced power -- their foremost goal. We may not like it, but to them it is about what it takes to win more than being right or consistent about the issues. We don't like Mitch McConnell and his methods, yet he largely has accomplished what he set out to do. Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham, and many others (including J.D. Vance) have been wise enough to play their voters and get them to forget their previous opposition to Trump in order to realize tremendous personal gain. That's not luck or stupidity. That's a game plan, and as much as it pains me to say it, they have executed it well. They understand that a good snake oil salesman thrives on a gullible audience, and they act accordingly.
Lamenting their pathway to power is normal but also counterproductive if it does not also focus on identifying an even smarter approach to take their gains back from them. They won't give that up willingly. We need to focus on cause no less than effect and put both the messaging and the right candidates in place to get that across, otherwise there will be many years to come of more of the same as we're seeing now. And worse.
So, Vance wins by giving voters what they want and Charlie goes off demeaning those voters with the common rhetorical divisiveness of the Democrat political script instead of writing critically about what it is that voters really want. Do we expect Democrats candidates to appeal to their voters by attempting to sell them what they don't want? Geesh.
This general election is going to be very interesting. I suspect that Vance will win.
On the one hand, Vance didn't get a majority of the vote. On the other hand, the #2 guy, Mandel, was worse in some ways, as he was also odious in substance, but performatively unhinged. Adding up the two, there was a clear majority for crazy.
Charlie, I wouldn't consider Swallwell's rhetoric waaay over the top. I don't remember any Republicans condemning this garbage from my home state senator...
BTW - it's absolutely batshit crazy to think this SCOTUS would allow anyone to ban interracial marriage with Thomas on the court.... Anything else might be on the table, but I don't think even the States want to go up against Thomas on this one....
We keep reading (including in your post of this morning) about polls suggesting that because the majority of Americans does not want to see Roe overturned, this will somehow be bad politics for Republicans.
But how many times in recent years have we seen GOP voters demonstrate that there's little or no causal connection between the ideas and policies we claim to support, and how we vote? Because, you know, Team Red. We no longer vote our beliefs, we vote for the jersey.
There was a time when we thought ideas drive behaviors. In today's politics, it's the other way around. In the end, I suspect we'll see that the Roe decision didn't have much election impact one way or the other.
Re. attacks on interracial/gay marriage not being "imminent". Charlie agrees that it will probably happen, just is not imminent.
Re. Climate Catastrophists needing to chill - Mona at least agrees climate change is real and bad. Who cares if communities suffer and enter species go extinct? At least some of us will survive
I've realized that with most folks who run Bulwark, you need to sometimes (well often) look at the silver lining and ignore the clouds. Not like their former(?) side has been having crazy ideas/thoughts only since recently. But they deluded themselves long enough and in the process gave credence and support to the crazies, much like they deluding themselves now into thinking Larry Hogan will swoop in like an angel and rescue their party. Trump exposed this crowd as much as he did the base. I suspect they support a lot of what the base demands, except they want a smoother version of TFG to execute it for them, so they can pretend to be "fair & balanced"
I think an attempt on interracial marriage specifically is unlikely, though I could see Loving being caught up in other rulings being thrown out, with the excuse that it's covered elsewhere. Gay marriage is definitely on the table, though I don't think Gorsch and maybe Kavanaugh would go for it.
Charlie, why would you possibly think that the right wing would NOT try to eliminate gay marriage, birth control, and the like? Nobody thought Trump could win ... until he did. Nobody thought SCOTUS would overturn Roe . . . until they did (or will). It is no stretch at all to believe that drunk on their latest SCOTUS hijacking of national opinion on abortion remaining available to all Americans with certain safeguards, they intend to go for broke.
I makes me sad, but I think COVID broke Rep. Swalwell's brain.
As a gay woman I'm sorry to say I don't agree with you regarding the potential threat to gay marriage. Just watch...very soon there will be bills introduced around the nation to ban same sex marriage. It will happen and given the apparent rationale for this anti-choice decision, there seems to be a clear path to allowing such discrimination to be declared "constitutional."
I know I'm in danger of sounding like an alarmist Lefty, but the Louisiana Senate just passed a bill out of committee categorizing abortion as homicide and making the mother liable for prosecution as a murderer.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/05/louisiana-republicans-advance-bill-that-would-charge-abortion-homicide/
"Republicans in the Louisiana House advanced a bill Wednesday that would classify abortion as homicide and allow prosecutors to criminally charge patients, with supporters citing a draft opinion leaked this week showing the Supreme Court ready to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The legislation, which passed through a committee on a 7-to-2 vote . . ."
It passed 7-2. It wasn't even close.
But Eric Swalwell and the rest of us are just being shrill.
The politics of the Deep South from the 1960s and 1970s has arrived in all-white rural Ohio in 2022.
These all-white regions are largely unaffected by issues like sky-high homicide rates or school desegregation, so the question is when and why exactly did they transition to segregationist politics.
Many of these voters voted for Obama, so something changed during the Obama administration. My guess is that it was when Obama, after campaigning as a moderate, began to appear to openly take the sides of criminals over the police. Obama refused to use the word Radical Islamic Terrorism while the U.S. was fighting the terrorists, and Obama refused to use the term illegal immigrants (saying "undocumented" instead). And gay marriage arrived and the Obama White House covered itself in rainbow colors.
Eight long years of economic decline in rural America under Obama stirred the rage of Americans who already resented Obama's overt enabling of lawbreakers and rule breakers while law-abiding working class Americans were overlooked.
Trump arrived and gave voice to their rage. Meanwhile the Democrats went into hyperdrive pushing trans rights, open borders, and defunding the police. Now in 2022, voters in all-white Midwestern counties vote along racial lines as if they lived in majority black counties in the Deep South.
The solution to this problem is in Texas. When Texas goes blue, presidential politics will be turned on its head, as Republicans' racial politics will henceforth prevent them from winning the White House.
What comes to mind to me is if we are FORCED to give up bodily autonomy/right to privacy then the following CAN be true depending on WHO is in power to ENFORCE it:
- If the government can FORCE one to NOT get an abortion then the government can FORCE one TO get an abortion. (hello china?)
I’m not sure Swalwell is overstating. Anyone see what’s happening in Louisiana today???
I think Charlie is onto something here. Too often those on the left want to write off GOP politicians and supporters generically as kooks, cranks, and idiots rather than looking at what their motivations are, as well as how and why they so often are outflanking their frequently better educated, deeper-thinking, more virtuous opponents. Are they really so stupid just because we disagree with their agenda and their methodology?
In no way do I endorse or support them. But from where I sit you've got to call a spade a spade, and in that spirit of fundamental honesty it seems that many of them have been quite smart about how they've climbed the ladder and both gotten and embraced power -- their foremost goal. We may not like it, but to them it is about what it takes to win more than being right or consistent about the issues. We don't like Mitch McConnell and his methods, yet he largely has accomplished what he set out to do. Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham, and many others (including J.D. Vance) have been wise enough to play their voters and get them to forget their previous opposition to Trump in order to realize tremendous personal gain. That's not luck or stupidity. That's a game plan, and as much as it pains me to say it, they have executed it well. They understand that a good snake oil salesman thrives on a gullible audience, and they act accordingly.
Lamenting their pathway to power is normal but also counterproductive if it does not also focus on identifying an even smarter approach to take their gains back from them. They won't give that up willingly. We need to focus on cause no less than effect and put both the messaging and the right candidates in place to get that across, otherwise there will be many years to come of more of the same as we're seeing now. And worse.
So, Vance wins by giving voters what they want and Charlie goes off demeaning those voters with the common rhetorical divisiveness of the Democrat political script instead of writing critically about what it is that voters really want. Do we expect Democrats candidates to appeal to their voters by attempting to sell them what they don't want? Geesh.
This general election is going to be very interesting. I suspect that Vance will win.
On the one hand, Vance didn't get a majority of the vote. On the other hand, the #2 guy, Mandel, was worse in some ways, as he was also odious in substance, but performatively unhinged. Adding up the two, there was a clear majority for crazy.
Charlie, I wouldn't consider Swallwell's rhetoric waaay over the top. I don't remember any Republicans condemning this garbage from my home state senator...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.indystar.com/amp/7138541001
BTW - it's absolutely batshit crazy to think this SCOTUS would allow anyone to ban interracial marriage with Thomas on the court.... Anything else might be on the table, but I don't think even the States want to go up against Thomas on this one....
Charlie,
We keep reading (including in your post of this morning) about polls suggesting that because the majority of Americans does not want to see Roe overturned, this will somehow be bad politics for Republicans.
But how many times in recent years have we seen GOP voters demonstrate that there's little or no causal connection between the ideas and policies we claim to support, and how we vote? Because, you know, Team Red. We no longer vote our beliefs, we vote for the jersey.
There was a time when we thought ideas drive behaviors. In today's politics, it's the other way around. In the end, I suspect we'll see that the Roe decision didn't have much election impact one way or the other.
Folks, you are all over-reacting.
Re. attacks on interracial/gay marriage not being "imminent". Charlie agrees that it will probably happen, just is not imminent.
Re. Climate Catastrophists needing to chill - Mona at least agrees climate change is real and bad. Who cares if communities suffer and enter species go extinct? At least some of us will survive
I've realized that with most folks who run Bulwark, you need to sometimes (well often) look at the silver lining and ignore the clouds. Not like their former(?) side has been having crazy ideas/thoughts only since recently. But they deluded themselves long enough and in the process gave credence and support to the crazies, much like they deluding themselves now into thinking Larry Hogan will swoop in like an angel and rescue their party. Trump exposed this crowd as much as he did the base. I suspect they support a lot of what the base demands, except they want a smoother version of TFG to execute it for them, so they can pretend to be "fair & balanced"
"And some of the rhetoric has been waaaaaay over the top".
Yes, it *should* be over the top. The problem is that the last several years cast doubt. I haven't yet seen the floor on Trumpism...have you?
I think an attempt on interracial marriage specifically is unlikely, though I could see Loving being caught up in other rulings being thrown out, with the excuse that it's covered elsewhere. Gay marriage is definitely on the table, though I don't think Gorsch and maybe Kavanaugh would go for it.