Comments

1

The Senate isn't "broken". Its doing exactly what it was intended to do: mitigate and diffuse popular democratic political momentum. Electing more Democrats is necessary but it's not sufficient.

2

My most cynical expectation is that Roberts will get Kavanaugh to flip, MS' law is upheld, Roe survives, and people relax 'cause everything's fine

3

It looks like our only vaguely realistic hope is for a giant asteroid to land on the Supreme Court, incinerating all of them in a giant ball of fire. Honestly, that seems like a far more plausible and likely than the Democrats actually doing anything that doesn't involve spending money on the military or begging for campaign contributions.

4

@2 Maybe he'll buy Kavanaugh a six pack pack of beer weekly until the official decision is rendered.

5

@1 It's a cliche to say the French are cowards, but maybe we need to take a page from their book. When they had a bellyful of their own nation oppressing them, they started cutting people's heads off and yadda yadda yadda...now healthcare of any kind is readily available to anyone who needs it, no questions asked. Plus they're not working 40+ hour weeks like schmucks.

I dunno what it's going to take for America to get off its collective ass and actually fight for something, but we are pretty much living through the start of a Martin Niemöller poem.

6

Cantwell and Murray could grind all Senate movement on budgets to a halt, just by their own votes, until the Senate passed a national right to abortion services in every state and territory.

And Manchin couldn't stop them.

7

Good old complaining about democrats, the useless cowardly impotent middle ground between voting and eating the rich. Let's all fantasize about bravely eating the rich together, I'll be a level 12 protestomancer

8

Yeah it’s all a bunch of platitudes on outrage day, but what more do you want them to do? There are not enough votes in red states to enshrine Roe into law.

9

@5 If you look at the French however abortion is only legal there through week 14 and even then providers can refuse to perform the procedure under a conscience clause. Right now abortion is available in WA through week 24. Most of Europe has stricter provisions that what is currently available in the US so I don't think using them as examples will help the case to keep Roe intact.

10

Manchin and Sinema exist. Learn to accept it.

This fight, however, was lost when Putin won in 2016.

12

@9 I see you did not read past the first sentence of the wiki on abortions in France. 14 weeks is the no questions asked cutoff. You can still get one after that.

It's not quite a direct comparison either. The right to an abortion in most of Europe is national law. I imagine if federal standards ever passed here they would be pretty conservative too unfortunately, but still better than nothing. Especially if exceptions are factored in.

13

"When they had a bellyful of their own nation oppressing them, they started cutting people's heads off and yadda yadda yadda..."

Which lead to the obliteration of the intelligentsia, famine, a totalitarian dictatorship, two more monarchies and almost two decades of the bloodiest wars in that continents history until WWI killing millions.

14

"Most of Europe has stricter provisions that what is currently available in the US"

Nonsense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_law

Most of western Europe not only largely has government paid abortions but have the umbrella of strong federal laws. Not some bizarre patchwork of state religious minority imposed restrictions and weaponized gameifying of what is technical allowable.

Fuck. Even Turkey has full abortion rights.

PS. Ironically for the rightwing Putin fan-bots Russia not only has had fully legal abortions since the nineteen fifties but has no second amendment.

15

So what was the point of this post? The headline says “ring hollow”, you complain about the responses from Washington Democrats, then admit they really can’t do anything due to the current makeup of the Senate. What?

18

@14 your chart really doesn’t help your point. Turkey only has no reason procedures through week 10. Most of Europe is in the 12-16 range. Looking through it the US is more of an outlier in the 22-24 week range. FWIW according to your chart it’s still completely prohibited in the UK except for health reasons. You know the other difference? All of those other countries legislated acces rather than rely on a shaky legal opinion. Even RBG recognized the danger of R v W

https://www.newsweek.com/ruth-bader-ginsburg-roe-wade-abortion-scotus-1702948?amp=1

To Brent’s point you can go later in specific circumstances but that’s not what we are really taking about here. Polls show the majority of Americans support access to contraceptive services so the Dems could pass a version that is probably closer to what Europe has fairly quickly. I doubt they’ll do that though if only because it’s a great wedge issue to march around about coming up on midterms.

19

Yeah, I'm confused by Jayapal's tweet. We know that ending the filibuster, regardless of whether or not one thinks this a prudent move, isn't even on the table. She said she wants to "pass an exception" to it? Does anyone know what she's referring to there? Is there some other course of action I'm not aware of that's in play?

@1,

I think the Senate is fundamentally broken. It was conceived of as an institution hundreds of years ago when the makeup of the country barely resembled that which exists today. The whole concept of "states rights" made at least a little bit more sense when the population was a fraction of what it is at current, and regional interests and needs were far more disparate.

I can't say whether it's functioning as intended or not as you state, and it may well be, but that intent has long since been rendered obsolete.

20

@19, I don’t ever see the Senate changing its function. Not only do we have to live with it, we have to endure sanctimonious platitudes about the “wisdom of our forefathers.”

22

The time for action by the Democratic Party was in the nomination and election process in 2015-2016. There's no leverage now.

24

@19, maybe like Supreme Court appointments, which were subject to filibuster until they passed an exception to it.


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