It was one of that a-month-that-was kind of month!
The Supreme Court’s rulings changed America. The long-accepted myth that the Supreme Court was a non-political entity was shattered. It is now store-window political for all to see, shards everywhere.
The Court, you see, overturned a century-old New York law that forbids carrying loaded guns on the street. It overturned its own half-century-old ruling that allowed abortions until the fetus was viable. It ruled that public money could be used to pay tuition for religious schools. It ruled that football coaches could lead students in prayer on the 50-yard line after games: they did not specify which god the students would be forced to pray to.
The Supremes tore down one of America’s primary institutions. People no longer can believe that justice is blind. People no longer can believe candidates for the courts when they pledge their undying support of stare decisis. The last three appointees lied to the senators during private meetings and public hearings.
Justices are appointed for life. One gets the feeling most try to meet that goal. Gorsuch is 55, Kavanaugh is 57, Barrett is 50, Roberts is 67, and Alito is 72 years old. The end of life is a long way off. We are in for another twenty-plus years of conservative rulings.
The Roe decision[i], its reversal, brought people to the streets. Protests were large, they were widespread across the country, and they continue. But it may be a case of too little, too late, and for naught.
The court voted 6 to 3 to overturn Roe, while polls showed that 67% of the population favored a woman’s right to choose an abortion or not. That is apples and cumquats, but many people think a relationship should exist. In the end, it does not matter which side of the abortion argument one favors. The ruling changes the country today and for many tomorrows to come.
Those who favored Roe heap lots of blame on the six conservative justices of the court, on the Republicans in the Senate that consented to their appointment, and on the former president who nominated them. I blame the nabobs of the Democratic Party and their followers.
The fault rests with the abject failure of the Democratic Party to be an effective antagonist to the well-disciplined far-right movement that was willing to take on a fifty-year fight to overturn Roe. The takeover of the cultural and political winds continues Roe v. Wade unabated. Roe may be just the beginning of the fight.
Since the day the Supreme Court announced in 1973, there has been a deliberate, consistent, and effective effort to overturn it. There have been annual March for Life demonstrations in the streets of cities across the nation. The Democrats ignored them. There have been sermons from the pulpits that galvanized the small town and rural voters who could not imagine voting for the “left”. The Democrats ignored the non-urban areas and their people. Local and state elections were won and lost on the issue of abortion. The Democrats ignored them. Every national election in the last fifty years has, to a significant degree, been about abortion. The Democrats ignored the trends.
The Republican Party, however, saw Roe as an effective wedge issue at the local, county, and state levels; a way to win elections and control State Houses, and governor’s mansions, and send representatives and senators to Washington. It worked because of their arduous efforts, and their consistency in a political battle. Give them that.
The Democrats, on the other hand, assumed Roe signaled the end of the battle, rather than the beginning. The Democrats’ strategy focused on the large population centers with large numbers of the highly educated elite. The Democrats forgot that we are a republic and not a democracy.
When it comes to national politics, and especially senatorial and presidential elections, winning a majority of the votes is irrelevant. The Republicans hold fifty seats in the Senate, yet they stand for forty-two million fewer citizens than the fifty senators on the other side of the aisle.
The result of their failed strategy is that only twenty-two states have Democratic governors and 62 of 99 state legislative chambers are controlled by Republicans. States draw election districts and write the election rules. Counties and city governments enact their own rules, decide local voting precincts, and conduct elections. If one party wants to control Congress or the White House, they need to win elections in local precincts, county elections, and state houses. In thirty-nine states the Supreme Court is elected in some form or another or their term of office is decided by popular vote. You can never forget that we are a republic. The states elect the president. The people only choose the electors.
To win in rural areas, small towns, and suburbs, a party must appeal to the needs of the people in those areas. It should be obvious that the Democratic Party is so out of touch with people in those areas, that voters are willing to elect the likes of Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, or Louie Gohmert of Texas, all certified off the chart extreme right-wingers, conspiracy believers, election deniers, and seemingly not too bright, but still considered better candidates than any Democrat running against them.
The marches come too late. Those who are most affected by the Roe decision should have voted in elections for the last fifty years. They should have voted for candidates who supported their beliefs. Yet when a candidate ran for President telling everyone in plain sight that he would only nominate judges who opposed Roe and promised to overturn it, the young voters stayed home and 70-plus million people voted for him. The marches come too late
The fault dear Brutus lies not in our stars but at the feet of Democratic Party leadership. The party needs new leaders who are willing to slog it out over the next twenty or thirty years to change the makeup of those state legislatures, the local school boards, and the state courts. Abject failure requires new leadership!
