Republicans biting themselves in the A$$

"Women are not without electoral or political power."

I love it when Republicans' own words come back to bite them in the A$$. Who doesn’t like a bit of schadenfreude in the morning?

I wonder if Justice Alito understood how damaging the Dobbs decision would be to women and to the Republican party in general. 

'Our decision returns the issue of abortion to those legislative bodies, and it allows women on both sides of the abortion issue to seek to affect the legislative process by influencing public opinion, lobbying legislators, voting, and running for office. Women are not without electoral or political power.'
- Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization in 2022. 

Women are turning out en masse and using our political power by voting. We watch in horror as women are denied life-saving care and the terrible stories of women dying and others losing their fertility come to light. Our elders remember the “before-times” and determinedly vote. “We are not going back!”.

In writing the 2022 opinion, Alito did not acknowledge just how devastatingly the US ballot boxes have been rigged by prior Supreme Court decisions eviscerating voting rights. However, it looks like women are overcoming those obstacles, especially suburban white women (who are maybe not voting as their husbands dictate) and older women who remember what life was like before 1973, the year I was born. 

I don’t know how many of the people voting for Harris will vote blue all the way down-ticket, but if they do, the Republican party is toast and they know it. If Congress swings Democratic then hopefully the John Lewis Voting Act will be made into law and a whole host of other policies that US citizens overwhelmingly want but which Congress has not been able to implement because of the “Freedom” Caucus blocking any sensible progress. 

In 2016, Lindsey Graham prophetically wrote: 

"If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed ... and we will deserve it"
- Lindsey Graham

He was off by 8 years - justice and change move slowly in the US - but ultimately he was right.

Fundamentally, the Republican party imploding is not good for our Democracy. You need at least two healthy parties, preferably even more for a healthy functioning Democracy. The Democratic Party of the US is in the center-right of the world-wide political spectrum. I would love to see a true progressive party spring up as the Democrats shift more to the right to court Republican voters who are putting country over party.  Thank you Republicans for Harris for doing your patriotic duty. I don’t know how this will all shake out, but I’m sure something will emerge. This is definitely not the first time in US History that parties have dissolved, birthed, or flipped. 

Gabrielle Blair wrote an eloquent piece on the current US Political Spectrum, I encourage you to read the whole piece.

The Lopsided U.S. Political Spectrum

To have a functional, healthy two-party system, the Democrats need to be Center-Left, and Republicans need to be Center-Right. This is important for a lot of reasons. One of them is that we need debates and discussions and negotiations and compromises in order to find the best solutions. And we also need both parties hovering at the center, because belief-wise, that’s where the majority of the American population is at, and we need a government that represents our views.
- Gabrielle Blair

Republican Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance ran his bid for Senate by being a center-right Republican. Nowadays, he seems to want to be the new face of the MAGA Republican Party. He is supported by Peter Thiel and the Federalist Society. But back in 2016 he was a “Never-Trumper”, supported by the Lincoln Project for his run for US Senate in Ohio and he won his seat with their backing.

I don’t know if Vance will crash and burn after this election because of his hard swing to the right, but let’s ensure that he never gets the chance to be “America’s Hitler’s” right-hand man in waiting. In 2016 he wrote a text to his college roommate who published it years later after Vance took a hard right into MAGA-land.

"I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical a****** like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler. How's that for discouraging?"
- JD Vance 2016

We have three more days until voting stops. Let’s ensure that VP Harris and Governor Walz have a large lead to stave off any and all shenanigans TFG’s team will try to pull. If you are voting in person on election day, be sure not to wear propaganda, and get to the polls as early as you can. I have a feeling the lines, no matter where you are, will be long. Vote blue all the way! Let’s gett’r done!

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