ROE VS WADE OFFICIALLY OVERTURNED

 

Anyone who follows politics knew that this day was coming, but it still is hitting like a ton of bricks. This is a day that will bring deep changes to this country, many of which seemed inconceivable just a few years ago.  The Supreme Court has now, officially, overturned Roe Vs Wade.  Nearly half the states in this country will soon ban the procedure outright, subjecting millions of American women to second class status.  It doesn't matter that a majority of Americans oppose this ruling, our system is open to the perversion of popular sentiment, and that's what's happened here.  It is appalling to consider that out of 9 Supreme Court judges, 5 of them were appointed by George W Bush or Donald Trump, neither of whom won the popular vote when they were elected.

This has been a huge struggle that stretches back decades. To me, one of the most transformational moments in American politics came in 1980, when then presidential candidate Ronald Reagan gave a speech in front of Christian Evangelicals and announced "Now, I know this is a non-partisan gathering, and so I know that you can’t endorse me, but I only brought that up because I want you to know that I endorse you and what you're doing."  Before that speech, the Republican party was not strongly opposed to abortion rights (Gerald Ford was himself pro choice), but from then on, Christian Evangelicals and the Republican party would forever be joined at the hip with the party supporting an anti abortion, anti LGBT rights platform in every presidential election since.  And over the years the Evangelicals have focused mostly on one thing, overturning Roe Vs Wade, giving votes, money and vocal support to Republicans as long as they pledge to support overturning that law.

It's been a odd sort of alliance at times; one would think that a thrice married man who has often publicly bragged about his sexual conquests and faces 26 accusations of sexual assault or rape would not be the type to be embraced by the religious right, but it was Donald Trump who got them over the finish line. Thanks to the Machiavellian manipulations of Mitch McConnell in the Senate, Trump put 3 hard right judges onto the Supreme Court in only 4 years.  Quite a turn of events for a man who once called himself "very prochoice". 

So what can pro choice Americans do now?  Sadly, not a lot.  Considering that court justices serve lifetime appointments, the changes that need to occur in the court probably won't happen for years, perhaps even decades.  One long shot is that the next Democratic president could boldly move to expand the number of justices on the court.(I don't see a traditionalist like Biden doing this.)  While this would be seen as a wild and unprecedented move, it should be pointed out that it was also unprecedented for the Republican led Senate to refuse to endorse President Obama's judicial appointment for 10 months before the 2016 election.  So why shouldn't the Democrats aim high?  Perhaps the chaos that this ruling will inevitably lead to could build support for such a move.

In any event, this already divided country is about to get even more deeply divided in the coming months, as pro and anti choice states will start passing laws clashing with each other, and women who have miscarriages will inevitably be accused of murder in some states.   Abortion is a difficult and polarizing issue, and with this ruling the Supreme Court has thrown fuel on an already blazing bonfire in this country.  Things are about to get  very ugly here.

HARD LUCK BIDEN

 An aging president with dropping poll numbers driven by high inflation tipping into a recession.   Whispers in his own party of whether or not the oldest president ever should be replaced rather than run for a second term.  Sound familiar?  I'm talking about what happened to Ronald Reagan back in 1982.  

Yes the poor situation that President Joe Biden currently finds himself in has a precedent, but that doesn't make his troubles any easier.  Will Biden get lucky like Reagan did, and have the economy bounce back right before an election year?  We'll see.  One thing seems to be clear, despite the findings of the January 6th committee, which is exposing even more of Donald Trump's despicable behavior as president, and also despite the fact that the Supreme Court is about to make the unpopular decision to overturn Roe Vs Wade, there appears to be no way that the Democrats won't get clobbered in the midterms in November.  

Part of this is normal; the party that owns the White House almost always loses seats in the House and the Senate during the midterms, with angry voters showing up more than supportive ones.  But the danger of this election is that if there is a red wave of Republican victories across the land, that  would put in power people in swing states who have publicly endorsed Trump's utterly baseless assertions that the 2020 election was stolen from him.  And as we saw after that election, there are many different ways that vote counts can be challenged (and maybe even thrown out entirely).  Which means that if Trump does run in 2024 (and he sure looks like he will), he may have allies in congress and in swing states  willing to help him steal a close election. All of which means that his assault on American democracy probably isn't over.

With the stakes this high, and Biden approval ratings tanking, it is reasonable to ask if maybe he should step down.  And his age is a factor; in 2024 he will be 82 years old, which would push him close to 90 by the end of a second term.  Now, other world leaders have competently run a country at an even greater age, but the US President is a unique leader in that he controls the world's largest military, and has an influence on the world's largest economy.  (The US President is called the leader of the free world for a reason!) So the job is very stressful and relentless.  Plus, if 2024 is a Biden-Trump rematch, it would mark the first time ever that both presidential candidates are over 80 years old, not the best way to be looking forward.  And, a younger candidate could appeal to younger voters, who tend to swing left politically but vote infrequently.  For the record, Biden has repeatedly stated that he plans to run for reecletion, but with a Republican congress inevitably investigating everything about him that it can (get ready to hear a lot about Hunter Biden's laptop in 2023), and possible continued sagging poll numbers, having him stand as a transitional president who had to bring some level of decency back to the White House after the chaos and corruption of Trump, seems appealing. 

So let's say Biden does decline to run.  Who will replace him?  The logical person is Vice President Kamala Harris, but she has had her own issues with low approval ratings and bad press.  And, while I'm an admirer of her, I do wonder how she would do in a race against Trump.  The 2016 election sadly revealed that much of the country seems reluctant to put a woman in the role of Commander in Chief, and that could easily happen again to Harris.  This is, of course, why Biden got the Democratic nomination back in 2020; a lot of Democrats saw an old white man as  more electable against Trump than a nonwhite woman like Harris.  And they were right.   So who else does that leave? If it has to be a while male under 80, that leaves out Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.   I like Pete Buttigieg, but again, an openly gay candidate may prove to be too groundbreaking.  Perhaps Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California, who's about to cruise to reelection?  He's likable, but maybe California is seen as too left by the rest of the country?  Another likable candidate is Beto O'Rourke, although he's probably about to lose a governor's race in Texas, which won't be a good look. And I'm sure there are many other potential Democratic candidates out there that aren't household names yet who could be good candidates.

Of course, all this kind of guesswork is like predicting the weather, because two years is a very long time in politics. As I stated at the beginning of this post, things looked bad for Reagan back in 1982, and sure enough his party lost 27 seats in the House in that election, but two years later, in his reecletion campaign, he won 49 states.  While there's no way that  Biden could have that kind of victory, things could turn around for him.

AN ANGRY, SCARED COUNTRY

Primary midterm elections began yesterday, and they confirmed what recent polls have revealed: Americans are angry.  Angry about inflation, about lingering covid, about gas prices.  And Americans are scared.  Scared of violent crime.  In San Francisco, progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin, was ousted in a recall vote because he was seen as being "soft on crime"  (the fact that crime rates in the city did not actually go up under his regime doesn't seem to matter).  This showed that in even a famously progressive city like San Francisco, fear of crime and a desire to get tough and put more cops on the street, can work.  (Plus a multimillion dollar campaign funded by conservatives against Boudin didn't hurt.)

It understandable that the public are upset about the recent spike in violent crime that happened during the pandemic.  The problem is that they are falling into the usual pattern of wanting tougher sentences  and increasing the number of police on the streets.  While these two solutions may seem reasonable, they have proved ineffective in the past.  Take prison, for example: if sending more people to prison reduced crime, then America would have the lowest crime rate in the world, because we already have the largest prison population in the world (China has a billion more people than we do, and incarcerates less people).  And increased policing also does not necessarily mean less crime; as a 2021 New York Times  article pointed out, "For decades, scholars have acknowledged that local crime rates cannot be predicted by officer strength and police budgets. Sometimes a boost for policing is followed by a drop in crime; sometimes it isn’t."  The article went on to mention that increased policing leads to more arrests for low level crimes, which leads to more tension between police forces and the public.

Personally, I think that the recent spike in violent crime can be chalked up to the pandemic; first of all, the pandemic obviously upset and scared Americans, and when Americans get upset and scared, a lot of them go to the gun store.  Gun sales have boomed to record highs in the past two years, with all the potential violence that can bring.  Also, the pandemic has put the entire country on edge; just look at the increase in negative effects that have hit the country since it began: divorces are up, so is depression, drug and alcohol use, overdoses, traffic deaths, I could go on.  Given all that, the increase in violent crime is just one part of a pattern. Really, it's not surprising that people forced to stay inside start to get on each other's nerves, and conflicts that might have ended in shouting matches before, now often end in violence. As a study from the Council for Criminal Justice in February of 2021 said, "domestic violence incidents increased 8.1% after jurisdictions imposed pandemic-related lockdown orders."  It's really important to remember that this pandemic has been transformative, an experience that no one alive has endured before, and the effects of it will be felt for years to come.

Look, I understand that a politician who responds to the public's fears about the recent increase in violent crime by saying that violent crime was worse in the past (which is true) and that the crime rates will probably decrease as the world moves away from the pandemic (which I also think is true), will get clobbered by the voters, but I still think that more police and tougher sentencing is not the answer.  

The big problem with crime in this country is that Americans seem to reject or ignore a simple fact: the US has a higher crime rate than most industrialized countries because it has a higher child poverty rate than most industrialized countries. (A UNICEF study of child poverty in 2012 found that the US had the second highest child poverty rate in the industrialized world).   Really, is it any shock that children that live in neighborhoods where they risk exposure to lead paint or asthma from poor air conditions, and who attend underfunded public schools that treat them like prisoners, often wind up becoming criminals?  That's why it's so frustrating to hear that voters want something done about crime when one of the best tools to prevent crime came and went during the pandemic: the stimulus money for families with children.  During the pandemic, both the Donald Trump and Joe Biden administrations passed stimulus plans that included $300 a month for each child in families making $150,000 a year or less.  While not a lot of money, it lifted millions of children out of poverty.  Sadly, when that money ran out, a second bill that would have made the payments permanent, failed in the Senate.  

Along with reducing child poverty, other common sense ways to lower crime rates include more funding for impoverished public schools, more after school programs, and, heck, even cleaning up vacant lots and putting in more street lights have shown positive results.  These solutions may not bring the strong feeling that locking up bad guys has for Americans raised on cop shows, but they actually provide better results in the long run at a lower expense.   We already have enough people in jail and enough cops on the street.