The Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v Wade has convulsed America. Protests have erupted across the country to denounce the ruling, while abortion opponents rejoice.
Their contrasting sentiments illustrate the prevailing national mood: the fury and frustration of the majority, subordinated by a hijacked democracy to the tyranny of the minority. A minority motivated by white Christian nationalism pursuing a holy war against the tide of demography and history.
How did we get here?
As President Joe Biden noted, the outcome didn’t happen by accident, and it didn’t happen overnight.
It began with Paul Weyrich, co-founder of The Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council, in the late 1970s. Weyrich and his backers didn’t care about abortion. What they cared about was building a political coalition that could gain power and implement their real agenda: an anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-worker economic revolution. Abortion was just one of many culture war catalysts, like guns, gays and race, that could be weaponised to motivate supporters and win elections.
Ronald Reagan delivered their revolution. The US and the world have been living under their neoliberal blueprint for more than 40 years. And yet for all that time, Roe endured. That’s the tell. The Republican establishment, and its middle America voters, accepted Roe. Polls have always confirmed this. They tolerated the zealots, because they were a means to an end.
Except the zealots never gave up. They found their own champion in Leonard Leo. Another faceless man who has laboured relentlessly to usher Roe’s repeal. Leo, networking via the Federalist Society and the Judicial Crisis Network, is the hidden hand that helped make opposition to abortion a litmus test for conservative judges. Working with Mitch McConnell and billionaire donors, he built the pipeline from classroom to courtroom to install reliable loyalists throughout the nation’s courts. His name will not be found on Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, but he is its silent author.
This leads to the larger reason behind Friday’s travesty: privileged apathy. Millions of women and men who support abortion rights voted for politicians and judges who don’t. They did so election after election. They did so because of political tribalism. They did so because they supported such candidates on other issues, and fooled themselves that while the zealots might chip away here and there at abortion access, they would remain unaffected. They would always have access to safe, legal abortions for their daughters and mistresses should the need arise.
They were wrong. As trigger laws shutter abortion clinics in red states, and legislators prepare harsher laws to criminalise anyone seeking or abetting an abortion, their wilful blindness has been exposed. American women are the collateral damage of their myopia.
The zealots who spent decades building to this moment have seized their greatest victory. They won’t stop now. Rights to contraception, IVF treatment, marriage equality, and consensual sex between adults — each protected by the same constitutional principles that sustained Roe — are all in their sights. They aim to ban them all. They intend to drive a stake through the Establishment Clause that separates state from religion, and impose their Christian theocracy on every American.
Many people think politics is boring, or doesn’t affect them. Many are cynical, and confuse this with being smart or superior. Many think they have more important things to worry about. Many have a “pox on both their houses” mentality. These attitudes are what the zealots count on. As Pericles warned 2500 years ago: “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”
Does this mark a breaking point or a tipping point for America? Will the majority resist this judicial coup, or will they submit? We will find out soon enough. Biden declared on Friday that “Roe is on the ballot” for the midterm elections in November.
If he’s right, Democrats will defy predictions and win. Should Democrats hold the House and pick up a couple of Senate seats, they can break the filibuster to enact the Women’s Health Protection Act. This would safeguard women’s access to abortion in every state. They could also clear the logjam that has blocked Biden’s agenda on other fronts, including voting rights, lower prescription drug prices, and universal childcare.
However, if inflation and gas prices matter more to Americans than their personal freedoms, then Republicans will win. And the zealots will march on. They have already signalled their intent to pass a national abortion ban. While they do, Republicans will continue their assault on regulation, and attacks on social security and Medicare.
The choice could not be clearer.
I think you also have to take into account the flawed nature of the US constitution which gives too much weight to sparsely populated states, the voting system which locks in a rigid two party system, the open gerrymanders and the tactics used to suppress the theoretical right to vote.
However this plays out it is not going to be pretty
A reminder that we adopted the imbalance in senate rperesentation directly from the US. So Tassie elects 12 senators and only 5 members of the House. NSW also elects only 12 senators. Unrepresentative swill.
Control of gerrymandering and independent AEC here thank goodness.
All very well, but if the founding fathers in the Australian context had NOT adopted an equal number of senators for each state, there would be no Commonwealth of Australia. The smaller states would have walked away from Federation for the simple reason that all of their citizens would have been ‘ruled’ by the one or two states with greater population levels. As someone who lives in a ‘smaller populated state’, that is the worst outcome I can imagine.
Mind you…it would be good if Senators went back to doing what they are supposed to be doing: advocating for the interests of their own states. The Constitution doesn’t even mention political parties!!
Yes and more besides. The Senate should be going back to doing what it does best and what it was set up to – represent State’s interest and be a House of Review. The latter moreso. This equal State’s representation was a carrot to get the smaller States like Tasmania and WA into the Commonwealth. There were other peculiar anomalies with our constitution. A referendum had to get a majority of voters and States for it to pass. The US has limited referenda. Alcohol ban of 1920 when thousands of troops were still on ships was one example. Result – Al Capone. Gangland crime. Bootlegging. The US has a collegiate system. All governments have voting and electoral systems to decide government. As I said on previous threads, Trump lost in 2016 (he got less votes overall) the same way Menzies lost in 1954 and 1961 and Gorton lost in 1969. Terrible isn’t it?
In 2016 many more people voted for a candidate other than Trump, in fact close to 9 million.
Results of the U.S. presidential election, 2016
Party. Votes. Electoral College
Democratic 65, 844,969 227
Republican 62, 979,984. 304
Libertarian 4,492,919. 0
Green 449,3700
Other 1,684,9087
https://ballotpedia.org/Presidential_candidates,_201
Here DownUnder we had and still have the inmates on the Sky After Dark Comedy Show, The Moloch’s Australian version of FauxNews, carrying on in a continued deluded maniacal fashion about the fraud in the 2020 US Election.*
The 2020 election was when Trump lost both the Electoral College and the Popular Vote.
The Electoral College by almost the same number as he won in 2016…306 to 232…which Trump claimed was a “landslide” in 2016!
The Popular Vote by a 7,052,033 , almost twice the number that Clinton received in 2016.
If the other popular votes from the 2020 election are added they amount to another 2,995,551, which means that over 10 million voted for someone other that Trump
Presidential candidates, 2020 – Ballotpedia
* a question that they refuse to acknowledge
is…If the Democratic Party ran such a fraudulent election, how come it both lost seats in the House and only gained a majority in the Senate following the Georgia runoff?
Currently the US has a tyranny of the minority…mainly thanks to a Senate that was put in place by a minority, the Founding Fathers …
To ensure that the real control of the country did not pass too easily to the masses was the real concern of many of the attendees at the Constitutional Convention.
The Constitution was framed to protect the landed and wealthy of the then original 13 Colonies. It was written by the Founding Fathers to ensure that such landholdings, which in then what what was to become the USA were the wealth of the country, would be left in the hands of those already owning such. In fact many of the Founding Fathers were those very people.
One was Elbridge Gerry, from Massachusetts and the creator of the Gerrymander a significant political tool in the USA. Used by both parties but much more evident now in its use by the GOP, together with voter disenfranchisement and suppression.
Gerry contended that “the commercial and monied interest would be more secure in the hands of the State Legislature than of the people at large”
Then there is John Dickinson, from Delaware, said at one time to be possibly then the richest man in the former Colonies. He contended that senators should be “distinguished for their rank in life and their weight of property” and “such characters more likely to be selected by the State Legislatures, than in any other mode”
The staggering of Senators terms would also ensure that “popular clamors” as it was phrased would not turn into Senate majorities.
Another way keep hoi polloi out was by wealth. Charles Pinckney, from South Carolina believed no salary should be allowed to Senators, as the Senate “was meant to represent the wealth of the Country.
Now here is something that will be a shock to those in the US who do not know their own history.
For who do you think made a statement along the lines of ensuring that all government service should be voluntary to guarantee the election of independently wealthy men to every office?
Alexander Hamilton*, in an address that lasted the good part of a day brought up the divide between ” mass of the people” and “the rich and well born” Interesting as he was in fact of illegitimate birth. though striving to join the rich.
But he knew on which side his bread was buttered. He argued that government needed to strike a balance between these two classes. Since “the people seldom judge or determine right” it was especially important to keep them in check.
Hamilton’s plan was to have the President and the Senate initially elected, but then to serve life terms. He wanted a system more than somewhat similar to that in the UK albeit with an initially elected monarch and an initially elected House of Lords. Interesting to think what US history would have been like if that plan had got up. There would probably have been another Revolution at some time.
*That is why I am not interested in “Hamilton the Musical”, as it fails to portray Hamilton as the nasty piece of work that he really was!
Then there is James Madison and his views on the need for the US Senate specifically concerning the landed and wealthy.
“They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.”
“Mr. MADISON. We are now to determine whether the republican form shall be the basis of our government. -I admit there is weight in the objection of the gentleman from South Carolina; but no plan can steer clear of objections. That great powers are to be given, there is no doubt; and that those powers may be abused is equally true. It is also probable that members may lose their attachments to the States which sent them-Yet the first branch will control them in many of their abuses. But we are now forming a body on whose wisdom we mean to rely, and their permanency in office secures a proper field in which they may exert their firmness and knowledge. Democratic communities may be unsteady, and be led to action by the impulse of the moment. -Like individuals, they may be sensible of their own weakness, and may desire the counsels and checks of friends to guard them against the turbulency and weakness of unruly passions. Such are the various pursuits of this life, that in all civilized countries, the interest of a community will be divided. There will be debtors and creditors, and an unequal possession of property, and hence arises different views and different objects in government. This indeed is the ground-work of aristocracy; and we find it blended in every government, both ancient and modern. Even where titles have survived property, we discover the noble beggar haughty and assuming.
The man who is possessed of wealth, who lolls on his sofa, or rolls in his carriage, cannot judge of the wants or feelings of the day laborer. The government we mean to erect is intended to last for ages. The landed interest, at present, is prevalent; but in process of time, when we approximate to the states and kingdoms of Europe; when the number of landholders shall be comparatively small, through the various means of trade and manufactures, will not the landed interest be overbalanced in future elections, and unless wisely provided against, what will become of your government? In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be jsut, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability. Various have been the propositions; but my opinion is, the longer they continue in office, the better will these views be answered.
*Statement (1787-06-26) as quoted in Notes of the Secret Debates of the Federal Convention of 1787 by Robert Yates.
That was the Senate then there was the Electoral College…
An Electoral College which was constituted to give citizens in less populated and economically unproductive rural states with as many as four times the votes as those as those in more populous and economically productive urban ones, thereby violating the fundamental democratic principle of “one person, one vote;” It can also be alleged that the college was originally instituted and continues to be maintained for explicitly racist and anti-democratic purposes.
The loser of the popular vote has won the electoral college only five times before 2000. The last time such happened was in the mid 1800’s, long before the universal franchise came to the USA.
Now it’s happened twice in 16 years and has enabled, inarguably, the two worst presidents in modern American history, both Republican. Dubya, The Faux Texan, and as the Scots have it, The Radge Orange Bampot!
As Keir suggests, this could begin the destruction of the current Republican party.
If this ruling and the suggestion that other recent liberal wins are in the firing line does not galvanise the Democrats to vote, then nothing will.
The November elections could well be the Democrats last chance. Republican States are already busy creating laws to overthrow election results that they do not like.
If they can trash democracy to suit themselves, they will not care about rights and individual freedom.
The Handmaids Tale is getting ever closer.
“Begin the destruction”? I think they started on that path with Trump. Reason and ethics went out the door with that man and his unholy backers. Agree with you about the Handmaid’s Tale. When I read it in the late ’80’s it seemed far-fetched, but now it looks as prescient as anything by Orwell, Bradbury or Gibson.
It goes further back than that to The Southern Strategy where GOP politicians, when presidential candidates, Nixon and Goldwater, developed strategies that successfully contributed to the political realignment of those who had traditionally supported the Democratic Party.
GOP leaders consciously appealed to many white Southerners’ racial grievances in order to gain their support. This leading to many white, conservative voters helping to push the Republican Party much more to the right relative to the 1950s.
Then along came Lee Atwater who used aggressive campaign tactics by utilising the Southern Strategy. He was a strategist for the GOP and chairman of the GOP National Committee was an adviser to both President Regan and President Bush 1.
This agressivness was later ramped by The Poisonous Newt….serial adulterer and Congressional ethics violator… who played a key role in undermining democratic norms in the United States, and hastening political polarisation and partisan prejudice.
In How Democracies Die*, Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky point out that Gingrich’s speakership had a profound and lasting impact on American politics and health of American democracy.
They argue that Gingrich instilled a “combative” approach in the Republican Party, where hateful language and hyper-partisanship became commonplace, and where democratic norms were abandoned.
Gingrich frequently questioned the patriotism of Democrats, called them corrupt, compared them to fascists, and accused them of wanting to destroy the United States. Gingrich furthermore oversaw several major government shutdowns.
And lo, is that not where the Trump and the now GQP are, corrupt, fascist and wanting to destroy the US?
How Democracies Die: Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt.
First edition. New York, NY : Crown, 2018
ISBN: 9781524762933. 9781524762940 (pbk.)
LC: JC423 .L4855 2018
grâce à Wikipedia, LC et al.
‘The November elections could well be the Democrats last chance.’
The Democrats last chance was to do something now, before the coming November mid-terms and they’ve already blown it. After the last elections they had the presidency, and both houses of Congress (just) and yet they’ve done very little to shore up the rule of law and defend the constitution. They would have done at least a few useful things if they had not been sabotaged by a couple of their own Senators, but there it is. The Republicans have learned from the failure of their 6th Jan insurrection, they have increased their control of the administration of elections, their gerrymanders and electoral suppression tactics have been refined and their grip on the courts is stronger than ever. After the November mid-term elections it is almost inevitable the Democrats will lose one or both houses of Congress so they will be paralysed until the 2024 elections finally puts the Republicans in power permanently, because they will certainly never allow mere voting to remove them ever again.
It is quite amazing that the Democrats have been so insouciant this time and faiuled to learn anything from Obama’s similar catastrophic error in his first years as President of playing by the rules and ‘reaching across the aisle’. The Republicans only bit his hand off then, and this time it’s much worse.
“As Pericles warned 2500 years ago: “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.””
I do not believe for a moment that Pericles ever wrote or said that, even allowing for a fairly loose translation. It looks something far more modern that’s attributed to someone famous from long ago for greater effect. There are plenty of examples.
However, it’s worth remembering that in Athens, where all the adult male citizens were expected to take part in the political life of the city and also contribute to its defence and so on, there were some who lived private lives and left all the politics to others. The word for someone like that was ἰδιώτης, which in modern English is idiot.
That term meant “idiosyncratic’ – an individual rather than hoi polloi.
I still find the USA a country of many absolute, often unfathomable and irreconcilable contradictions even after having lived there for a number of years, visited for several long periods and still having a number of close American friends. For example – on the one hand, there is no issue with making any sort of semi-automatic gun (easily modified for automatic fire supported by supposedly illegal military level large capacity magazines) readily available to almost anyone over the counter fueling the tsunami of gun related homicides and regular mass shootings. On the other hand, abortion is prohibited, often even following extreme violence, rape etc, and then often only reluctantly and grudgingly permitted at the extremis point of likely death of the mother in many jurisdictions.
In the 1980’s I remarked to some US friends that I found the USA a worrisome prospect for a right wing dictatorship in the long term given the seemingly prevalent, ever widening and extremely partisan political, cultural, religious, and racially based schisms apparent to a foreigner. Some Dutch friends living across the street at the time expressed similar observations although the very few close American friends I confided in were, superficially at least, no more than a little dismissive, defensive or unsettled and largely went silent on the subject.
The Trump years appeared to be but a feared prequel to my long and still held concerns. The continuing decline of the USA, domestically and internationally, on such a broad front brings into question the long term suitability and effectiveness of Australia’s long standing ace-in-the-hole, the so-called “alliance” with the USA.
In planning for any existential crisis for Australia we need to re-balance our efforts, to place more reliance on our own resources and our own ties, including security, within our region and lower expectations of assistance from a distant nation with many other eggs to fry globally and seemingly divergent and developing authoritarian tendencies. As the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown there are already established limits to the lengths the USA can or will go to to assist an “ally”. The response of the EU to that invasion also illustrates these limits, these realities, even within its own backyard.
Hopefully this does give the democrats z chance at the mid terms. But they need to push it hard, starting now. Also push hard on all the other thibgs in the crosshairs of the right eg gay rights, same sex marriage. We should also keep in mind what this is, taking away control of womens bodies from women themselves. It just screams patriarchy. Every woman should be afraid as should the men who love them. This is just part of the ongoing war against women and it needs to be resisted.
Maybe we should put sanctions in place against the leading proponents and the majority judges on the supreme court to highlight our objections.