CounterPunch+ 6.19.2022
Hey, how about those “radical Left” Democrats? Have you heard about one of their big ideas on how to buck historical odds and win the mid-term elections this year? They’re counting on the Christian fascist Supreme Court to end women’s half-century constitutional right to control their own reproductive lives. What a gambit! What audacity!
Why have the leading liberal, Democratic Party-affiliated pro-choice groups Planned Parenthood and NARAL surrendered in advance to the death of Roe v. Wade, announcing the rise of a “post-Roe era” without mass resistance in the streets and public squares? Why haven’t they followed the lead of Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights (RU4AR) by joining in rallies, marches, and direct actions under the banner of “Post-Roe? Hell No!”? Why have they refused to undertake giant popular mobilizations and direct actions on the model of successful abortion rights activism in Latin America? Why don’t they join RU4AR in donning the green bandana, the symbol of women’s and abortion rights protest in Argentina, Mexico, and Columbia?
Beyond the liberal class’s general and longtime fear of the mob, a big piece of the answer was suggested in a June 6th New York Times Op-Ed by the liberal Talking Points Memo founder and chief editor Josh Marshall. “Democrats,” Marshall writes, “hope to make November’s midterm elections a referendum on Roe v. Wade, the linchpin decision upholding abortion rights, which the Supreme Court is almost certain to strike down this summer.”
Well, gosh, it’s going to be hard to do that if Roe doesn’t fall, no? For the Dems to win, women must lose a basic constitutional right whose attainment through many years of struggle led to a dramatic improvement in women’s opportunities and freedom.
The not-so leftmost of the country’s two dominant political parties is banking on the restoration of female bondage through the reimposition forced motherhood in much of “world’s greatest democracy,” where 70 percent of the populace supports the continuation of Roe.
What audacity! Yes, the Dems are looking forward to the horrific decision promised in the draft Jackson v. Dobbs decision that was leaked early last May. They think it will help them “keep Congress” (which they don’t really “have” in the first place thanks to the deeply conservative nature and power of the US Senate) despite:
+ The harsh historical record of mid-terms: the party newly in White House power almost always loses the mid-terms[1].
+ Rampant inflation, the worst in four decades, and related fears of a coming recession.
+ The historically high percentage of US Americans who say the country is “on the wrong track.”
+ The endless bumbling and very low approval rating of the obviously over-his-head octogenarian and self-described “gaffe machine” Joe “You Know the Thing” Biden, who pours billions into mass Ukrainian bloodshed while millions struggle to keep up with the rising cost of living at home.
+ The insane baby formula fiasco.
+ Fading Black support for Biden following his failure to meaningfully address Black concerns in a nation torn by massive racial disparities.
+ Biden’s clear inability and/or refusal to use his office to stem the nation’s epidemic of mass gun violence and to direct the prosecution of the fascist Trump for trying to stage a coup against the nation’s “constitutional democracy” after the 2020 elections.
+ Widespread right-wing gerrymandering and voter suppression combined with moves towards flat out election cancellation in Republican-controlled states.
The cynical perverse hope for a post-Roe abortion rights backlash as a key to Democratic electoral success will be intensified by Democrats’ apparent willingness to let the Republi-fascist party off the hook for its NRA-captive sponsorship of the nation’s ongoing gun carnage. In its usual Weimar-like Clinton-Obama spirit of “reaching across the aisle” to “get things done” no matter how limited and narrow, the Party of Passive Resistance has let the Q’Anon-Curious Party of Trump and Taylor-Greene set the terms for a post-Buffalo/-Uvalde gun bill that falls so sickeningly short of serious change that it doesn’t even include raising the legal age for purchasing military-style assault rifles from 18 to 21. “Hey, come back for that beer in three years, junior. You’re too young. Spend that money on an AR-15 to help us stop metropolitan Marxist-Transvestite Critical Race Theory and drug-dealing Immigrant Caravans sent to End the Suburbs, rape the countryside, destroy God and the family, ruin white womanhood, turn children gay, and replace virtuous, hard-working white volk with dark-skinned agents of baby-killing Communist Subversion!”
Josh Marshall thinks Democrats “can win” by promising to “codify Roe as national law” after abolishing the Senate filibuster. That is a childish pipedream meant to keep campaign contributions flowing to money-hungry, corporate-captive candidate committees and politicians while providing cynical cover for the advance surrender of a key women’s and human right. Surely top Democrats know that the Trump Court has judicial review power over all federal legislation and will strike down a national abortion rights bill.
Like the rest of the Democratic ruling and professional classes, Marshall knows that it’s his job to keep the people off the streets and out of the public squares. The masses must always be taught that effective “marching” means marching into voting booths for brief, strictly time-staggered major party mark-making rituals once very two our four years.
How grotesque and cynical. How about dem dismal, demobilizing, dollar-drenched Dems?
Note
+1. Two very unusual exceptions: 1934 (because of the Great Depression and the popularity of Franklin Roosevelt’s early New Deal) and 2002 (because 9/11 produced a wave of patriotic fervor in alignment with the messianic militarist George W. Bush).