this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2024
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chapotraphouse
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Honest question, am I being too cynical in thinking the Dems are running on abortion rights this time purely as a way to juice turnout, or did Roe getting overturned and their base's reaction to it actually change it into being a priority? I know they had half a fuckin' century to "try" and pass abortion rights as law and passed on it every time including a supermajority in Obama's first term where the Obungler said "it wasn't a priority," but I feel like the liberal electoral base for the Dems was shocked and pissed by SCOTUS striking down Roe in a way that the party was unprepared for.
I know a Harris administration won't have a Senate supermajority or House majority most likely so it's all hypotheticals and SCOTUS or the parliamentarian or some other bullshit would block it if they did, but I feel like liberals finally realized how fucked they are trying to accomplish anything they care about now that the SCOTUS is fucked for decades with no plans of impeaching Thomas/Alito/Kavanaugh or packing the court. The Dem's base is desperate to "get back to normal" on reproductive rights, and the party has no real path to accomplishing that. I know a decent chunk of libs will be satiated by just having "vote harderer" scolded at them and having candidates just say "I support a woman's right to choose," but a lot of them are pissed that the Biden admin did jack shit trying to fight SCOTUS other than putting out statements saying they disagreed with the ruling. Is reinstating Roe through federal legislation actually something they're gonna take seriously moving forward, or is it just the new shiny football for their voters to try to kick?
That's a bingo.
The dems are boldly lying about Roe and it's why I phrased my title like I did. That woman is at the goddamned convention so she's politically plugged into the democratic party and yet she's already mentally accepted decades of inaction.
The only way to restore Roe is to first cripple the power of the GOP justices. If the dems ignore that reality - then restoring Roe is DOA right now. Imagine the dems win in the election and actually pass a law. After that the GOP justices will simply say it's unconstitional. And that's that. The same is true for any congressional efforts to try to "reform" the supreme court. GOP justices can say anything they don't like is unconstitional.
Without radical judicial reform and/or packing the court everything the dems are saying about the court and Roe is a lie. Plus the GOP justices gave the president extraordinary powers for "official acts". But if Harris becomes president - she surely won't use that power to streamroll over the GOP justices or for any other purpose. All of this makes me insane.
At this point I don't understand how people believe anything any politician says they're going to do. I just don't understand how it's possible to keep charlie browning this shit.
The very word "Trump" is a liberal thought terminating cliché. This joke of a "ban" is the only policy or position Kamala has made if you don't count the empty "Restore Roe!" posturing. Entirely unlike Biden - Kamala's team realized that she, Walz, or their proxies simply need to say "Trump" about every 30 seconds and the libs will be triggered with anger, worry and fear. So - no actual positions or policies need to be put forth to get their base to vote. And Kamala's team figures many independents and some republicans are triggered by "Trump" in the same way.
I should've figured. It's rare that I wasn't too cynical, the last times I remember that happening were thinking the DNC would keep Biden running for reelection and basically just forfeit, and thinking the journalist that died of illness covering the World Cup in Qatar had hybrid MERS/COVID-19 that'd spread and kill like a third of the people that contracted it since there was some bougie camel racing convention thing right next to one of the World Cup stadiums where there was rumored to be a MERS case.
using abortion to control people on an individual level vs using abortion to control people on a state level
it really is this. the geography of class conflict in the US is one of reinforcing the systems that exploit labor in the zones of high labor drmand, and vague social democracy for places where finance capital managers like to live.
the rust belt was dismantled for its criminal resistance to capital and is rapidly being reconstituted in The South, the perennial internal colony of western capital formations. where the great mass of workers are, there will be hollowed out public infrastructure, poor civil/human/reproductive rights, and many appendages of the carceral apparatus ready to surpress and stifle insurrection.
blame for it's subjugation will be laid at the feet of those who toil under it by the smug sucdems of glittering finance, insurance and real estate hubs that extract value from it.
Sorry, I know this is a big question and one theorists and activists have been grappling with for more than a hundred years now, but who do you think the revolutionary subject in the US is? I don't disagree with anything in your comment, but an overwhelming majority of American proletarians still seem to think of themselves more as consumers and market actors more than a working class that's in fundamental conflict with capital. I'd say that anti-police brutality and the broad appeal of hating the expanding police state is the most live wire in the American masses towards change, but that was before the George Floyd uprisings got co-opted and defanged by the Dems and Biden winning and vowing to "fund the police" to huge applause at his first state of the union.
There was a moment after that Minneapolis precinct got torched where that polled better than either Biden or Trump where I felt like we might actually be on the verge of prolonged mass unrest against the state like '68, but that seems to have all but fizzled out now except for small coordinated efforts like Stop Cop City. I feel like organizing against the carceral state and the militarization of the police is one of the most viscerally felt inroads to people's day-to-day lives in the US, and linking that to the treatment of Gaza and American police ties to the IDF and the Zionist entity's treatment of Palestinians to American police's relation to PoC in places like Ferguson as functionally internal colonial relations where they function more as counterinsurgency forces than law enforcement is key to building a mass movement in the US against capitalism and the state.
I've seen a ton of regular people without solid political ideological foundations who were fully onboard with stuff like police defunding and abolition and mass criminal justice reform with pardons for any marijuana convictions in 2020 get deactivated politically and go back into lesser evil electoralism bullshit.
Sorry man I talk too much, I should go now idk, I'm just rambling
I think you are onto something with the revulsion for the carceral state. I think that is the flashpoint, the lightning rod that so much is connected to... whether it be brutality, extrajudicial executions, immunity, to the Cop City/urban pacification, militarization and kill house training with international murder squads and the colonial apparatus, or the judicial corruption, prisons with private equity, criminalizing immigration, and forced labor systems. such a high portion of the population is touched by this institution and everyone but the most elite fear it reaching, without accountability, into their lives.
a thing about fear and the socialization of masculinity is that we are indoctrinated not to acknowledge our fears, even to ourselves, creating a blind spot for us conceptually. this is confused with "strength" and it is sold to everyone as the preferred response to feelings of fear.
I think it bubbles to the surface as anger when it finally erupts. what I remember most from 2020 was the anger and how righteous it was. we walk around for years with this lead ball burning our insides, but we can't allow ourselves to admit it. so when the moment comes where we feel able to strike at those who put it there and rid ourselves of it, there are people from many walks of life erupting with fury.
yes the apparatus was successful in stamping it down, in the middle of a global pandemic no less when we held our breaths at an unseen killer ripping through us. that's what I remember most: the way the system didn't care much about the pandemic until it could be used to discourage the logic of protest and direct action by large gatherings.
combined with media framing desperately trying to make cops look reasonable (while they are arrested and peppered with rubber bullets) and protestors as crazed maniacs, they managed to diffuse many into the ballot box. and then we got Cop Prez and Cop Prez Jr by fiat.
personally, I think they got really lucky in 2020 with the constellation of events around the George Floyd protests, and all we need is one moment where their luck doesn't hold. that phrase: they have to get lucky every time, we only have to get lucky once.
we all know they are going to kill someone publicly again in front of cameras with people pleading for them to live. the system needs its unrepentant sadists and they will never be muzzled for long. once it happens and goes wide, we will be right back where we were, in the full knowledge that nothing fundamentally changed.
That's a large chunk of neoliberalism ideology in a nutshell; You deserve the rights you can afford.