There are a lot worse things than losing Joe Manchin and the Senate Majority right now, and the smart play would be to sacrifice that chess piece and make it that much more important of a race going into November. Like if we're talking about smart politics and doing the smart political thing, the smart political thing would be to try to do something, let all the milquetoast D's find a side of the line in the sand to stand on, and make it imperative to the American public that if they want to maintain their rights, here's where we have to be to get them back/maintain them. We got our judicial appointments out of Manchin for 1.5 years, let's fucking cut him loose 5 months before mid-terms to minimize the damage. At worst, McConnell gets the gavel for 5 months and we see him and Biden duke it out for 5 months and the American public sees that a Republican Senate is, in fact, fucking suck-balls bullshit and we can't let it happen for another 2 years. At best, Joe Manchin might come to the realization that we don't really need him that much anymore now that we're so close to mid-terms and losing the Senate anyways.
We're already talking about how this loss is going to spur voting in November, so why not double down and make it fucking crystal clear to the public where we're at. Show the public that we don't have 50 D's in congress, we have 48+2. Tell them we want 60+. Beg them. And start getting fucking loud about what you want to do instead of bitching about how Republicans lied to you again at the water cooler.
Considering the entire problem we're talking about right now in this thread is happening because of members of the court appointed by the Senate, scuttling the ability of the Democratic-run Senate to appoint judges does not seem like the smart play.
Every call for throwing Manchin to the curb is an argument for doing something that doesn't help anyone or anything but feels satisfying.
PhD fellow at Freie Universität Berlin with a warning that our increased policing powers and surveillance capabilities that both parties have happily indulged will lead to inevitable tragedy against those seeking abortion and the queer community under this new legality regime:
last time abortion and sodomy were illegal local police departments led by wide-eyed mouth-breathing white supremacist yahoos did not have NSA-level surveillance equipment, given by bipartisan consensus, to enforce those bans
which is not to say that those bans were not enforced but that their enforcement now will make old forms of enforcement look cute
anyway the democratic party could with the current unified control of the federal government that it has remove that kind of surveillance equipment from the hands of local police departments! but instead Joe Biden will give a speech about Fund The Police
Yeah modern information systems are going to make this especially awful. Don't use digital period trackers any more.
Yeah I really don't want to have to do the 'I told you so' because Manchin got kicked out of the party and then a week later Thomas had a massive heart attack or something.
One of those situations where being right is no consolation.
but yeah people thought that shit when they roadblocked Garland. "Oh we'll win in 2016 and fill the seat no biggie"
Losing the Senate could easily put another right wing shithell on the bench for decades.
In this case it's more likely you miss your chance at flipping a seat. With Breyer's replacement secured the GOP now has 3 out of the 4 oldest justices on the court. Sadly the oldest is only in their early 70s.
"biden can't do anything" is not the compelling argument for being chill about the circumstances some people seem to think it is
I don't think I've seen anyone claim you should "be chill" about the situation because Biden can't do much about it. Rather the point is that the President has very limited means of doing stuff here. That you should be looking to other people with much more power over the situation if you want something to be done.
Specifically I would say the people who can stop this horror show are Senators.
He's the leader of the party and he should act like it even if he doesn't have the hard power we wish he did. Joe Biden is 79 god damn years old and his majority is falling apart. If he's not willing to go hard on a fundamental right now when the hell will he be? He's going to literally die on the hill of enabling permanent GOP rule.
What does "going hard" look like? All the solutions suggested rely on things like Joe Manchin suddenly becoming a Democrat and agreeing to nuke the filibuster (which he loves) for abortion rights (which he doesn't care about)
If he performatively "tries" to do something while knowing he will fail, everyone will be angry at him for "breaking promises" when he fails.
I would like to see the Biden who was threatening to first fight Trump and telling voters who wanted something to 'vote for someone else.' I want grumpy Joe out there
When people cheer for extralegal shit it makes it clear that their concerns with Trump and his corrupt bullshit and misuse of the DOJ wasn't the actual corruption. Just that he wasn't corrupt in the particular way they wanted.
Some people genuinely expect our leaders to, you know, not be corrupt criminals who abuse the power of their office. Doing things in the right and legal way. It's a bad look when that mask slips.
Edit - leaving this here but genuinely posted it thinking this was the party thread.
I think there is a pretty clear difference about using the broken system to enact bad legislation and using the broken system to do good things. I don't give a shit how they get the corrupt Senator who makes money off coal companies stopping environmental bills and his daughter making money off drugs stopping medicare for all out of office as long as they get him out of office. I don't care how they pass a bill that makes abortion legal as long as they do it.
He's working against you and destroying your credibility
Kick him out and the narrative changes to "Democrats shoot themselves in the foot by kicking out 50th Senator and handing the Senate to Mitch McConnell"
When people cheer for extralegal shit it makes it clear that their concerns with Trump and his corrupt bullshit and misuse of the DOJ wasn't the actual corruption. Just that he wasn't corrupt in the particular way they wanted.
Some people genuinely expect our leaders to, you know, not be corrupt criminals who abuse the power of their office. Doing things in the right and legal way. It's a bad look when that mask slips.
Edit - leaving this here but genuinely posted it thinking this was the party thread.
I think it is obvious that there are times when an extreme situation justifies such breaches of laws and norms. This is one of them. If underhanded tactics and abuse of power can stop SCOTUS from banning abortion, underhanded tactics should be employed and power should be abused.
That said I'm not super confident that going after Manchin like that would work. But if it would, fucking do it!
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ShivahnUnaware of her barrel shifter privilegeWestern coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderatormod
Joe Manchin sounds suspiciously like the name of a Democratic politician, which we have a separate thread for yelling about.
From a 'lets be inside baseball about this' perspective. Can anyone think of any possible legal framework in which abortion should NOT be a right?
It just seems so patently obvious from the constitution that you shouldn't be allowed to make it illegal, with the ONLY way you could even start down that path being a judgment which clearly stated that fetuses were people, with full rights and privileges.
Here we are, talking about a court making a decision which is apparantly supposed to be a reflection of the law and there's no discussion in the opinion of the law. Just what Alito reckons.
Well, here we all Reckon that Washington DC should be a state etc. But that sadly doesn't make it the law.
From a 'lets be inside baseball about this' perspective. Can anyone think of any possible legal framework in which abortion should NOT be a right?
It just seems so patently obvious from the constitution that you shouldn't be allowed to make it illegal, with the ONLY way you could even start down that path being a judgment which clearly stated that fetuses were people, with full rights and privileges.
Here we are, talking about a court making a decision which is apparantly supposed to be a reflection of the law and there's no discussion in the opinion of the law. Just what Alito reckons.
Well, here we all Reckon that Washington DC should be a state etc. But that sadly doesn't make it the law.
Get 7 liberal judges on the court and hey presto, DC is a state.
The Supreme Court is all about a bunch of learned bullshitters finding whatever they already believe in the Constitution.
So what could Biden do? Anything active and assertive. He doesn’t need to do anything extralegal.
He has the bully pulpit. While Trump did many things wrong, using the bully pulpit to pressure his party to do what he wants is not one of them. That’s what it’s for. Push for a vote in the Senate of the already voted on House bill. If they do nothing that bill dies next year anyway. Kill the filibuster for it. Threaten primaries for any Senator who does not comply. Reach out to Murkowski and Collins and try to get them on board.
Then have the vote. If it passes, great run on that in the midterms. If it fails? Rally then about how you need more people to get it through. Push the message. Show people you are doing something, being active.
I know the idea that if the vote fails then you have the stink of failure on him, but that is better in my view than doing nothing, which also is a type of failure and will also depress turnout.
I don't know much about Murkowski but I don't think Collins is getting on board under any circumstances. Would be happy to be proven wrong but I don't think that's happening.
Loudly calling for the filibuster to be abolished is certainly something Biden should be doing, though. If rhetoric is basically all he's got, he should use it as much as he can.
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ShivahnUnaware of her barrel shifter privilegeWestern coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderatormod
Ok so, to clarify:
you are allowed to talk about politicians, democrats, etc, as long as the discussion remains directly tied to the leak. What I don't want is to have unrelated discussions cluttering this up, or to have arguments which fit 100% in another thread even if this hadn't happened. People have argued about ejecting Manchin dozens of times in various democratic party threads, and discussion of that belongs there. Obviously, as stated in the OP, what is on topic is going to be a shifting and moving target, and that can be tricky to work with, but we're in sort of a tricky situation here where a lot of things have overlapping partial relevance.
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ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
I don't know much about Murkowski but I don't think Collins is getting on board under any circumstances. Would be happy to be proven wrong but I don't think that's happening.
Loudly calling for the filibuster to be abolished is certainly something Biden should be doing, though. If rhetoric is basically all he's got, he should use it as much as he can.
Both Collins and Murkowski are not going to do anything. They want some of their constituents to think Roe mattered to them, but if it truly did they never would have supported the likes of Kavanaugh and former-handmaiden Barrett.
The leaders of the party should also stop supporting candidates who are not pro-choice. Like maybe they shouldn't all be backing Henry Cuellar in Texas and should instead back Cisneros.
The leaders of the party should also stop supporting candidates who are not pro-choice. Like maybe they shouldn't all be backing Henry Cuellar in Texas and should instead back Cisneros.
Pelosi should be done for this alone. But just like Feinstein she'll be with us forever.
The leaders of the party should also stop supporting candidates who are not pro-choice. Like maybe they shouldn't all be backing Henry Cuellar in Texas and should instead back Cisneros.
Yeah utterly inexcusable that theyre still campaigning for him
The leaders of the party should also stop supporting candidates who are not pro-choice. Like maybe they shouldn't all be backing Henry Cuellar in Texas and should instead back Cisneros.
Yeah utterly inexcusable that theyre still campaigning for him
But putting out a message that you personally think of abortion in terms of the fetus’s rights only but legally can’t oppose it will surely shore up support
From a 'lets be inside baseball about this' perspective. Can anyone think of any possible legal framework in which abortion should NOT be a right?
It just seems so patently obvious from the constitution that you shouldn't be allowed to make it illegal, with the ONLY way you could even start down that path being a judgment which clearly stated that fetuses were people, with full rights and privileges.
Here we are, talking about a court making a decision which is apparantly supposed to be a reflection of the law and there's no discussion in the opinion of the law. Just what Alito reckons.
Well, here we all Reckon that Washington DC should be a state etc. But that sadly doesn't make it the law.
The US Constitution is predicated on negative rights. That is, the document says what the government is allowed to do, not what the citizens are allowed to do.
By default, abortion is allowed since it's not something the law says the government can regulate. By the 9th Amendment, it's a thing that either devolves to the states or to the individuals to decide for themselves.
Why we are here: Because some states thought it would be a grand idea to limit or prevent women bodily autonomy through restricting or banning abortion throughout the 20th century. Well, it goes back even further than that with many censorship laws in the 19th century targeting books and pamphlets which contained basic sex information and topics of contraception, but I'm trying to get to a point here quickly. The problem is that men don't have to worry about pregnancy and so any such law restricting what women can do with their bodies run afoul of the idea of equal protection since it's pretty clear that you can't tell one group of people what they can't do with the body they had no choice in taking at birth. One thing leads to another and it is now suddenly a federal problem thanks to different states having different laws. And since the Constitution is silent on the matter, they have to make some shit up.
Except, wait. It's not. The 14th Amendment clearly states that this kind of discrimination is blatantly illegal. Section one says:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
There you go. It could not be any clearer. Your abortion laws either have to have the same effect on men as they do on women (which is a physical impossibility) or you can't have abortion laws. Because the Constitution is silent on the matter and because the 14th says you have to treat everyone the same no matter what, you have to allow women to make up their own minds about abortions.
However.
However, this isn't about abortion itself. If you look at the history of it, this is about white supremacy. Abortion as a controversy was ginned up by the Dixiecrats due to school equality becoming the law of the land. Again, due to that pesky 14th Amendment being pretty clear about itself, The Slaughterhouse Cases notwithstanding. Before their involvement, the evangelical christians were on the side of letting people have them. Why? Because not having abortions was a Catholic thing. This is what lead to Roe V. Wade. That decision was the compromise between the states and religion.
The legal framework is there and has been since the 1860s. The problem isn't not having the laws on the side of pro-choice. The problem is that abortion is a stand in subject for racism.
Which is why the leak of Alito's opinion is pretty massive since it rips the mask of that part of the political theater going on. He says outright that anti-racism laws, anti-discrimination laws, and all kinds of other explicit recognition of the 14th and 15th Amendment are on the chopping block right now.
The problem isn't the law.
The problem is the court itself. What it stands for, what it means, and how we go about putting people on it.
All opinions are my own and in no way reflect that of my employer.
Being personally anti-abortion but professionally pro-choice in no way signals to women that you don’t understand the issue at all, no way
It signals that he is pro-choice but would very much like to not get excommunicated. Which is kinda cowardly, but a lot of Catholics find themselves in that position. Abortion is legal in Italy, note.
Being personally anti-abortion but professionally pro-choice in no way signals to women that you don’t understand the issue at all, no way
It signals that he is pro-choice but would very much like to not get excommunicated. Which is kinda cowardly, but a lot of Catholics find themselves in that position. Abortion is legal in Italy, note.
I get his motivation and loudly decry his ignorance of the issue, the latter of which is disqualifying to be a representative imo
Being personally anti-abortion but professionally pro-choice in no way signals to women that you don’t understand the issue at all, no way
It signals that he is pro-choice but would very much like to not get excommunicated. Which is kinda cowardly, but a lot of Catholics find themselves in that position. Abortion is legal in Italy, note.
Italy, Ireland, France, Mexico, Brazil, and a number of other majority Catholic nations. None of whom have had nearly as much trouble on the topic since their asshole politicians weren't using it as a racism proxy.
All opinions are my own and in no way reflect that of my employer.
Being personally anti-abortion but professionally pro-choice in no way signals to women that you don’t understand the issue at all, no way
It signals that he is pro-choice but would very much like to not get excommunicated. Which is kinda cowardly, but a lot of Catholics find themselves in that position. Abortion is legal in Italy, note.
Italy, Ireland, France, Mexico, Brazil, and a number of other majority Catholic nations. None of whom have had nearly as much trouble on the topic since their asshole politicians weren't using it as a racism proxy.
Really you're going to point out Ireland didn't have a problem with abortion when it didn't legalize it until 2018? Like come on man.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
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Considering the entire problem we're talking about right now in this thread is happening because of members of the court appointed by the Senate, scuttling the ability of the Democratic-run Senate to appoint judges does not seem like the smart play.
Every call for throwing Manchin to the curb is an argument for doing something that doesn't help anyone or anything but feels satisfying.
Not until we don’t need him anymore
To a certain entrenched gerontocracy, they are! Politics is politics and the country club is the country club.
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but yeah people thought that shit when they roadblocked Garland. "Oh we'll win in 2016 and fill the seat no biggie"
Losing the Senate could easily put another right wing shithell on the bench for decades.
Yeah modern information systems are going to make this especially awful. Don't use digital period trackers any more.
One of those situations where being right is no consolation.
In this case it's more likely you miss your chance at flipping a seat. With Breyer's replacement secured the GOP now has 3 out of the 4 oldest justices on the court. Sadly the oldest is only in their early 70s.
I would like to see the Biden who was threatening to first fight Trump and telling voters who wanted something to 'vote for someone else.' I want grumpy Joe out there
{Twitter, Everybody's doing it. }{Writing and Story Blog}
He's working against you and destroying your credibility
Not right now they shouldn't. Holy shit what an awful idea that would be right now.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
I think there is a pretty clear difference about using the broken system to enact bad legislation and using the broken system to do good things. I don't give a shit how they get the corrupt Senator who makes money off coal companies stopping environmental bills and his daughter making money off drugs stopping medicare for all out of office as long as they get him out of office. I don't care how they pass a bill that makes abortion legal as long as they do it.
{Twitter, Everybody's doing it. }{Writing and Story Blog}
And as shitty as that may be, we still need him.
Kick him out and the narrative changes to "Democrats shoot themselves in the foot by kicking out 50th Senator and handing the Senate to Mitch McConnell"
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
That said I'm not super confident that going after Manchin like that would work. But if it would, fucking do it!
It just seems so patently obvious from the constitution that you shouldn't be allowed to make it illegal, with the ONLY way you could even start down that path being a judgment which clearly stated that fetuses were people, with full rights and privileges.
Here we are, talking about a court making a decision which is apparantly supposed to be a reflection of the law and there's no discussion in the opinion of the law. Just what Alito reckons.
Well, here we all Reckon that Washington DC should be a state etc. But that sadly doesn't make it the law.
Which of you anoles are arguing there too
Get 7 liberal judges on the court and hey presto, DC is a state.
The Supreme Court is all about a bunch of learned bullshitters finding whatever they already believe in the Constitution.
He has the bully pulpit. While Trump did many things wrong, using the bully pulpit to pressure his party to do what he wants is not one of them. That’s what it’s for. Push for a vote in the Senate of the already voted on House bill. If they do nothing that bill dies next year anyway. Kill the filibuster for it. Threaten primaries for any Senator who does not comply. Reach out to Murkowski and Collins and try to get them on board.
Then have the vote. If it passes, great run on that in the midterms. If it fails? Rally then about how you need more people to get it through. Push the message. Show people you are doing something, being active.
I know the idea that if the vote fails then you have the stink of failure on him, but that is better in my view than doing nothing, which also is a type of failure and will also depress turnout.
Loudly calling for the filibuster to be abolished is certainly something Biden should be doing, though. If rhetoric is basically all he's got, he should use it as much as he can.
you are allowed to talk about politicians, democrats, etc, as long as the discussion remains directly tied to the leak. What I don't want is to have unrelated discussions cluttering this up, or to have arguments which fit 100% in another thread even if this hadn't happened. People have argued about ejecting Manchin dozens of times in various democratic party threads, and discussion of that belongs there. Obviously, as stated in the OP, what is on topic is going to be a shifting and moving target, and that can be tricky to work with, but we're in sort of a tricky situation here where a lot of things have overlapping partial relevance.
Both Collins and Murkowski are not going to do anything. They want some of their constituents to think Roe mattered to them, but if it truly did they never would have supported the likes of Kavanaugh and former-handmaiden Barrett.
They knew this was coming.
{Twitter, Everybody's doing it. }{Writing and Story Blog}
Pelosi should be done for this alone. But just like Feinstein she'll be with us forever.
Yeah utterly inexcusable that theyre still campaigning for him
But putting out a message that you personally think of abortion in terms of the fetus’s rights only but legally can’t oppose it will surely shore up support
The safest and most effective way to reduce abortions of unwanted pregnancies is to penalize the men who cause them
Any “personally against abortion/professionally can’t oppose it” assholes that don’t preach that approach can eat my whole fat ass
The US Constitution is predicated on negative rights. That is, the document says what the government is allowed to do, not what the citizens are allowed to do.
By default, abortion is allowed since it's not something the law says the government can regulate. By the 9th Amendment, it's a thing that either devolves to the states or to the individuals to decide for themselves.
Why we are here: Because some states thought it would be a grand idea to limit or prevent women bodily autonomy through restricting or banning abortion throughout the 20th century. Well, it goes back even further than that with many censorship laws in the 19th century targeting books and pamphlets which contained basic sex information and topics of contraception, but I'm trying to get to a point here quickly. The problem is that men don't have to worry about pregnancy and so any such law restricting what women can do with their bodies run afoul of the idea of equal protection since it's pretty clear that you can't tell one group of people what they can't do with the body they had no choice in taking at birth. One thing leads to another and it is now suddenly a federal problem thanks to different states having different laws. And since the Constitution is silent on the matter, they have to make some shit up.
Except, wait. It's not. The 14th Amendment clearly states that this kind of discrimination is blatantly illegal. Section one says:
There you go. It could not be any clearer. Your abortion laws either have to have the same effect on men as they do on women (which is a physical impossibility) or you can't have abortion laws. Because the Constitution is silent on the matter and because the 14th says you have to treat everyone the same no matter what, you have to allow women to make up their own minds about abortions.
However.
However, this isn't about abortion itself. If you look at the history of it, this is about white supremacy. Abortion as a controversy was ginned up by the Dixiecrats due to school equality becoming the law of the land. Again, due to that pesky 14th Amendment being pretty clear about itself, The Slaughterhouse Cases notwithstanding. Before their involvement, the evangelical christians were on the side of letting people have them. Why? Because not having abortions was a Catholic thing. This is what lead to Roe V. Wade. That decision was the compromise between the states and religion.
The legal framework is there and has been since the 1860s. The problem isn't not having the laws on the side of pro-choice. The problem is that abortion is a stand in subject for racism.
Which is why the leak of Alito's opinion is pretty massive since it rips the mask of that part of the political theater going on. He says outright that anti-racism laws, anti-discrimination laws, and all kinds of other explicit recognition of the 14th and 15th Amendment are on the chopping block right now.
The problem isn't the law.
The problem is the court itself. What it stands for, what it means, and how we go about putting people on it.
It signals that he is pro-choice but would very much like to not get excommunicated. Which is kinda cowardly, but a lot of Catholics find themselves in that position. Abortion is legal in Italy, note.
A comedian who died of cancer in the 90s.
pleasepaypreacher.net
I get his motivation and loudly decry his ignorance of the issue, the latter of which is disqualifying to be a representative imo
Italy, Ireland, France, Mexico, Brazil, and a number of other majority Catholic nations. None of whom have had nearly as much trouble on the topic since their asshole politicians weren't using it as a racism proxy.
Another dead hero.
Really you're going to point out Ireland didn't have a problem with abortion when it didn't legalize it until 2018? Like come on man.
pleasepaypreacher.net