Getting it Good and Hard
Democrats have lost the power to persuade and as issues move back to the states, that puts them in a very difficult position.
In spirit, the Biden administration is the second coming of the Obama years - with one major difference.
Biden isn’t the slick, silver-tongued snake oil salesman that Obama was. I’m not sure he ever was, mostly seen as the affable buffoon for all his years in the Senate, a reliable Democrat vote that the people of Delaware kept sending back to the Senate despite scandal after scandal and failed presidential run after failed run.
Lunch Bucket Joe.
We joke about all the tasks VP Harris is being given, tasks she has simply ignored or roundly failed in doing – but recall, Obama gave Joe similar tasks that went nowhere. Remember the Cancer Moon Shot? How about Sheriff Joe, Obama’s stimulus enforcer?
Much of the issues with Democrat policies, I have laid at the feet of Ole Sheriff Joe.
But the Democrats have a much larger problem.
Democrats have forgotten how to pass a law.
They already tried to "codify" Roe and couldn't get the votes. Now Biden has signaled that he is for nuking the filibuster in the Senate to pass something, but that has a snowball’s chance on Satan’s fireplace mantle of getting done if Manchin and Sinema are still around.
Look at their responses to their inability to advance their agenda: pack the SCOTUS, change the representation in the Senate to make it “more representative”, use more executive power (as in “forgiving” student debt, eliminate the Senate, eliminate the Supreme Court, change/dump the Constitution – and so on. You know the thing.
Their reaction is understandable. The last two weeks have been a new slice of a fresh new Hell for them. Even though John Roberts has taken on the “swing justice” role once held by Anthony Kennedy and they just added the first black woman (even though she is not a biologist and apparently she doesn’t know she is a woman) to the court to replace the retiring Stephen Breyer, who promises to be even farther left than the “Wise Latina”, Trump’s nominations of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett have shifted the power from the left to the right.
And that gives AOC night terrors.
For decades, the Democrats have depended on the judiciary as a reliable vehicle they could use to implement an agenda that never could pass a vote in Congress, much less a national vote. That is what happened when seven justices manufactured the right to an abortion in 1973 and usurped the powers of the people in the states to decide.
Overturning Roe did not ban abortion, all it did was to say the Burger Court erred by sticking their nose in where it didn’t belong. Some, like Clarence Thomas, have noted the same interference in decisions like Obergefell and Griswold v. Connecticut and seem to suggest those would have been more appropriately matters to be decided by the states.
The Democrat strategy of legislation via lawfare has been incredibly successful. They have used activist organizations to great effect, funding and filing lawsuit after lawsuit with the express intent of getting them to the Supreme Court, seeking the Holy Grail of the progressive agenda, the imprimatur of a Supreme Court decision in their favor, the marque of Constitutional Approval.
It is far easier to get your way when you are playing to a small group, the members of which you already know which direction they lean, so the Democrats shrank the audience down to a judge, a jury or just the SCOTUS. Convincing a few people in a trial or the SCOTUS is far easier than trying to sway millions of people who have millions of different takes on a subject.
The second aspect of preaching to a smaller choir is that it is far easier to make a minor or unpopular issue seem much more important or popular than it is.
Now imagine the Dems must go to all 50 states to sell their policies.
The process is quite a bit more involved. Now they can’t just take an issue to a court and get a decision, they must mount campaigns to convince a majority of people in those states to vote for people who will support and drive those issues in state legislatures and governor’s offices – and those people will have other characteristics that will cause people to vote yay or nay on them getting to office, it isn’t just a single issue any longer.
Success has suddenly sailed over the horizon because the Democrats have lost the power to persuade. Their success in using the judicial system has robbed them of a critical skill set, they have become tellers and not sellers.
The visceral, violent reaction to the SCOTUS decisions of the past couple of weeks signal what scares them the most. They got a taste of it when Alito’s draft majority opinion was released back a few months ago - they may be seeing the beginning of the end of judicial activism as their primary tool.
Of course, the usual suspects are out doing their best to protest through fiery, but mostly peaceful rioting but the Democrats aren’t getting the Pussy Hat/BLM/ANTIFA level “burn it down” protests they were sure would follow the Dobbs decision. They wanted George Floyd level action but instead, got a High School marching band at a small-town Labor Day parade.
Sort of exposes the possibility that abortion was always much less of a national cultural issue that it was sold to be and is important only to a minority of death fetishists who deny the humanity of a baby in the womb and that to Democrats, it was a wedge issue they could use to raise money and divide Americans.
One might surmise they fear the same with Obergefell and Griswold.
Democrats have been lamenting the death of democracy for years. Trump killed it; they screech as they use an unelected and unaccountable judiciary and bureaucracy to implement rules and regulations on which no citizen voted.
It will be interesting to see how the Democrats react when they find out that democracy isn’t dead at all, it is still alive and well at the state level.
Hey, H.L. Mencken did say that “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
Canada is pretty far left. But the average Canadian, who apparently does talk and vote left, lives right. They’re mostly small c Conservatives. They save their money, pay off their mortgages, and mostly believe in something, although they have trouble defining it. They are okay with abortion if it’s done early. Most believe we have a law on the books saying 12 weeks max. We don’t. It’s the only unregulated thing in Canada. Zero laws. Most are shocked to think of abortion as anything but an early event. Sooner or later it’s going to hit them the left is not their home.
When you say Sherriff Joe, do you mean Joe Arpaio? Or are you calling Biden that? Always enjoy reading your stuff!