this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2024
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It really is. The same people who say they oppose abortion bans are going to vote en masse for the Democratic Party in the fall, even though the Democratic Party has done nothing meaningful to restore Roe.
Im sorry its a pretty wild to blame democrats and democrat voters for this? Are you serious?
The article you just posted states that Biden attempted to overturn the ban, but the Supreme court refused.
Also earlier this year democrats have tried codifying Roe but the GOP shut down (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna161016).
They had Congress under both Obama and Biden but didn't act. Obama even said publicly Roe wasn't a priority.
This is why I blame Democrats. The actions they do take are performative and symbolic. My personal opinion is that they have no intention to codify Roe because it's an issue that brings in a significant amount of donation money on their behalf. (Also why you'll never see Republicans ever support any kind of reasonable, constructive immigration plan. Our politicians are financially incentivized to let emotional issues linger.)
In the past you have stated that the Democrats had control of Congress and the presidency under Biden and Obama, yet they were unable to do things like get a public option in the ACA or codify roe v Wade. However this continues to be a misunderstanding of the situation.
https://19thnews.org/2022/01/congress-codify-abortion-roe/
While I can agree I am disappointed in the inability to get these things done, and Obama saying it was no longer a priority, I don't see how you can pin this all on the Democrats as some kind of monolithic entity.
The fact of the matter is during Obama's terms, there were anti abortion Democrats. These Democrats were enough to keep abortion access out of the ACA and prevent roe being codified.
Fast forward to Bidens terms, and we now have a filibuster rule that requires 60 senators in order to pass stuff in the Senate. There were not 60 senators who supported roe codification when the Democrats "controlled" the Senate.
People who support abortion access are going to vote for Democrats because as time has gone on, the Democratic party has rallied around abortion rights, while Republicans have rallied against it. Opinions changed, and the Democrats are now the party of abortion access. Blaming the current state of things on a monolithic democratic party is in my opinion a bad faith warping of the situation
What do you suppose they could do?
They need both chambers of Congress to pass a law or constitutional amendment, and they only have one. Biden could expand the Supreme Court, but he's too much of an old school statesman to rock the status quo, and there's no guarantee they'd vote as a unit.
Furthermore, Democratic states have been enshrining abortion access into law and/or their constitutions, and they've been getting abortion onto voting ballots in red states, so it's not really fair or accurate to say they haven't done anything meaningful.
Edit: typo
They had the presidency and Congress under Obama and Biden.
They didn't act.
So your stance is that the Democrats under Obama should have used political capital to push for legal abortion when abortion was already legal? Or am I missing something?
I don't think the excuses for Obama are helpful. Not now, and not then. Even when he was president, it was very clear that the issue needed to be settled by Congress, and he had the power to do it.
And right here I no longer believe you're debating this in good faith.
When Obama was president, abortion had been legal for like forty years. And, although I wish it had done more, the ACA was and is a very important piece of legislation. But, it was obvious they should've instead focused on fixing something that, at that time, wasn't broken? Yeah, no.
Okay, Obama didn't have the benefit of future knowledge that Roe v Wade would be struck down. It was a precedent that had stood the test of time across decades.
Why the Dems didn't do it for the very short time they had both chambers under Biden, I don't know. Perhaps they had a naive belief that Conservatives wouldn't be the trolls they are.
But even if we assume they won't do anything about it again, which I seriously doubt based on how popular abortion access has become—even if we assume that, abortion isn't the only thing on the ballot, and people are voting en masse for the Democrats, because LGBTQ rights, environmental protections, and even American democracy itself is at stake.
To cast aspersions and wring hands over abortion when we're 30 days away from the election...I just don't get how that helps anyone. The die has been cast. Holding onto some vain hope that neither Democrats nor Republicans will win (or worse, that everything will burn down in some bloody revolution) is madness.