The democratic nominee
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Roe v Wade is completely a religious issue @benshawks08. Once it became precedent in a SCOTUS case (thanks to ambitious feminist lawyers pushing it), it was Pandoras Box, we were never going back. The Republicans aligned with the Evangelicals and began their crusade to get it overturned.
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I was trying to pinpoint the moment I think the Supreme Court jumped the shark @benshawks08 . I guess you were asking what this had to do with @FarmerJayhawk’s post.
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@approxinfinity said in The democratic nominee:
Roe v Wade is completely a religious issue @benshawks08. Once it became precedent in a SCOTUS case (thanks to ambitious feminist lawyers pushing it), it was Pandoras Box, we were never going back. The Republicans aligned with the Evangelicals and began their crusade to get it overturned.
It is very much NOT a religious issue. I think that’s all I will say on that as it could open it’s own Pandora’s box.
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@benshawks08 said in The democratic nominee:
@approxinfinity said in The democratic nominee:
Roe v Wade is completely a religious issue @benshawks08. Once it became precedent in a SCOTUS case (thanks to ambitious feminist lawyers pushing it), it was Pandoras Box, we were never going back. The Republicans aligned with the Evangelicals and began their crusade to get it overturned.
It is very much NOT a religious issue. I think that’s all I will say on that as it could open it’s own Pandora’s box.
The contention around the issue is whether some people are able to restrict others from having an abortion or not. The main argument, as I understand it, for being able to restrict others from having an abortion (i.e. “pro-life”) has to do with when a child or fetus can be regarded as a human life. The Church has taken the position that life begins at inception, and that all life being sacred, the fetus should be granted the same rights as other citizens. The arguments against allowing others to restrict one’s ability to have an abortion (i.e. “pro-choice”) argue that life begins at birth, and that circumstances such as unwanted pregnancy, health risks to the mother, birth defects, rape or any other reason are all valid reasons to have an abortion; it is the woman’s right to choose.
I’m sure there are people in both camps that believe their reasons for or against are not religious, but the point of contention and the majority of people who are arguing against the right to have an abortion are Christian in this country.
I don’t want to get into an argument about which is right. I really don’t.
My point is that this shouldn’t have gone to the Supreme Court. It caused the Evangelicals to align with the Republicans in order to win the Supreme Court so they could overturn Roe v. Wade. It put the Court under constant partisan attack thereafter. Had it stayed at the state level, with each state allowed to have its own law around abortion, our country would be better off. That’s how I see it anyway. My hypothesis. I’d love to hear feedback if other people think it would have been positive or negative for the country if this hadn’t been rules on by the Supreme Court, or if it was impossible to avoid.
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@approxinfinity I’m also not trying to argue the right or wrong of it but I think leaving it to states would just increase inequity from state to state. A person could be charged for murder in one state for a service a doctor can provide in another. Just doesn’t make sense to me that way. As far as I know birth certificates are dolled out at birth making that the point of personhood. Has this been different at any point in history? I honestly don’t know.
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@benshawks08 it’s possible that it could not be considered murder for the woman, but could be considered murder for the doctor to perform it in states where it was illegal. The woman could conceivably cross state lines if she needed it performed. That’s not ideal, but with hindsight, I think it could have been better than the role Roe v. Wade played in partisan gridlock.
There are many other things that are illegal in some states though nothing of the same magnitude. There would have to be a compromise there. I don’t think we can go back to state level legality now. I think the cat is out of the box. But if it never happened, organically the law would have developed on a state by state basis. I don’t think it would have become nearly as contentious. Everyone has a passionate opinion about it now. I think we’ve been conditioned, and it didn’t have to be that way.
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@approxinfinity said in The democratic nominee:
@kjayhawks part of the problem there is actually the decline in news coverage. With less reporters working stories, there’s less coverage.
Local news is the biggest casualty from the online advertising model. It’s a hard problem to solve as the business models benefit from efficiency that comes with concentration.
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@kjayhawks said in The democratic nominee:
I’d be shocked if trump doesn’t win by miles. People are scared of change, Trump is fool but people know what to expect. With the the talks of socialism and what not it’s a huge guess to what Biden does good or bad.
I agree people are resistant to change, but it’s not like Trump has been exceptionally consistent or predictable.
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@approxinfinity said in The democratic nominee:
@FarmerJayhawk i wish abortion was left at the state level, we never had Roe v Wade and the Republicans never had to adopt the Pro-Life position universally (and conversely, the Democrats adopting Pro-Choice) to woo the Evangelicals.
I think when Pro-Life v. Pro-Choice became a winner-take-all battle at the federal level, it pushed us further down the road of bitter partisanship in Washington and guaranteed that the Supreme Court would be dragged into partisan bullshit.
Jefferson was wise to advocate a separation of Church and State and when Roe v. Wade gets overturned it will mark the crossing of a line that should never have been crossed, which I think is why Republican appointees have to date not been willing to pull the trigger. Abortion should have been handled at the state level and kept the hell out of Washington.
I’m curious if you think that abortion was on a collision course with the SCOTUS, or if you think this could have been avoided if Weddington and Coffee didn’t push Roe v. Wade or if the SCOTUS hadn’t taken the case.
My theory is Roe short circuited what was likely going to happen at the ballot box anyway, legal abortion in most places. My counterfactual is the fights over marriage equality. If Obergefell would’ve been decided in say, 2007 vs. 2014, you’d have a lot more bitter fights over it now. But instead, public opinion developed more organically and the Court ruled when it was more “ripe.”
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@BShark said in The democratic nominee:
We obviously can’t see it happen but I believe that whether Biden or Trump wins, the next four years will play out exactly the same.
This about sums it up
Two privately owned political parties choose two candidates with nearly identical policies and then voters try to guess which will be slightly less shitty. Both parties hold primary votes, but neither is under any legal obligation to uphold the results if they want to go with someone else. There’s no preferential voting, the system is designed to give a third party candidate the longest odds possible. They use easily rigged electronic voting machines. The political and capitalist classes hold near complete control over mass media and have no reservations about lying or burying stories they don’t like. On top of all of that, there is quite a lot of outright fraud in manufacturing fake votes and suppressing or destroying legitimate ones.
So I guess I’m just getting more and more disillusioned with the process and THE SHOW.
I don’t want to be in this camp, but I think I’m sitting right next to you @BShark I don’t think it will be exactly the same, but I fear the same mechanics are at work on both sides. Both have escalated the game to the point that it’s getting harder to diffuse things, find the common ground and compromise. When they play the game set at “Win At All Costs,” we all will lose.
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@approxinfinity It had to go to the Supreme Court. The issue presented was whether restricting someone from getting an abortion unconstitutionally violated that person’s rights. Constitutional rights are national in scope, and equal protection cannot be infringed by states under the 14th Amendment.
That some people base their opposition on religious underpinnings does not make the issue involved a religious one. Think of it this way: if I believe that God wants me to have access to a gun, that is irrelevant to my constitutional claim to have unrestricted access–that right is in the Second Amendment. Similarly, my constitutional right to vote is based on the 4 amendments that deal with voting, not my theological contention that religious people who want to deny it are wrong.
The huge problem, though, for abortion rights is that unlike those examples, they are not spelled out in the Constitution. Instead, they are based on a “right to privacy” that is a judicial construct from the Warren Court of the 1960’s. Primary among the cases creating it was the Griswold case (1964 or so?) saying states could not restrict access to contraception.
The Court at that time started a process of finding rights in what was called the “penumbra” of the Bill of Rights, which basically means that these are rights to be free from government that are so inherent they need not have been spelled out explicitly.
This is the basic conflict between “strict constructionists” and “living document” schools of thought. The former decries adding rights that were never imagined by the framers. The latter believes that the changes in societal conditions since 1787 bring up new situations implicating the ability of Americans to free, and require broad interpretation to protect the framer’s goal of preserving that freedom.
Roe could have been based on stronger constitutional grounds, but Blackmun went far afield and the result has been chaos. He could have simply said that absent medical reasons, the state cannot prohibit abortion as a violation of equal protection: in no other situation is someone obligated to put their own life on the line to preserve another, as is required of a pregnant woman forced to continue to delivery. (That is a theory my Con Law professor had, but I have not seen it urged many places.)
He could have stretched the 10th amendment, finding a right to privacy in the “powers . . . reserved . . . to the people.” This would have created other problems, because the amendment discusses affirmative power held by states and the people, rather than the feds; it has never been a restriction on states criminal powers.
Anyway, Blackmun invented the trimester breakdown, coupled with the viability standard, apparently as a compromise to get a majority. With absolutely no textual basis and no absolute bright line of protection, it has invited attack ever since.
My own feeling is that Blackmun believed, as did many of us liberals back then, that technology might end the controversy. There was a hope, I suspect, that there would be developed a means of ending pregnancies by transplanting fetuses to willing recipients at an early enough time as to involve no more discomfort or danger than legal abortion (This was a naive hope, I now realize.)
I think Roe will be overturned. I also think that it wouldn’t be in such great danger if the abortion rights movement had shown more respect for people who have such a huge distate for the human cost of abortion, but that is a different discussion that also requires recognition that pro-lifers have not demonstrated enough concern for the lives affected after an unwanted birth. Suffice it to say that neither side allows the other any legitimate standing in the debate.
Until a foolproof and safe method of preventing pregnancy is developed, the mess will continue.
Edit: I was writing during several preceding posts, so I haven’t read or addressed those after 'Prox’s one that began with “My point is that this shouldn’t have gone to the Supreme Court.”
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@mayjay thanks for the detailed breakdown. i’ll have to read Backmuns opinion on it. I appreciate your Con Law professor’s take. Makes sense to me. And I never considered that assumptions about future technology played a hand in the ruling.
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Too funny not to share
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https://twitter.com/danozzi/status/1247971313743880192
Mmmm cathartic.
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@approxinfinity The technology as a cure for abortion thing is my own conjecture insofar as it relates to Blackmun. I remember talking with my dad and others about it a lot, and even reading about it, but a lot of that discussion was also just focused on birth control. A lot of people believed opposition to birth control would fade away.
But virtually everything has been objected to by somebody, hasn’t it?
As to my Roe discussion, I cannot guarantee all my thoughts against the vagaries of trying to remember discussions from law school 40 years ago!
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@BShark laughable
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Truth bomb
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A well polished ad. With Trumps horrible COVID response front and center down the stetch, I don’t see how he’s reelectable.
Here’s the Trump Pence campaigns letter trying to get the ad taken down:
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Don’t underestimate the staying power of stupidity.
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@approxinfinity I usually wouldn’t defend Trump in any manor but Dr. Fauci himself wasn’t too worried about the virus in January. I think Trump is trying not to scare people at this point. I just wish he carried himself more professionally, drives me nuts. To me it doesn’t matter if he’s re-elected, it’s always the less of evils and which corporations are funneling in the cash to said candidate.
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@kjayhawks I take your point. Fauci was wrong too early on. The really critical period was February 2 (date of Trump’s travel ban) to mid-March (when states started issuing stay-at-hoQme orders, California first). His lack of leadership there not directing people to stay home, and lying and bullshitting every press conference was mind-blowing. I would like to see if they can distill that into effective messaging before election season.
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@approxinfinity it will be interesting to see how it effects his chances in November for sure.
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@approxinfinity you see the press conference today?
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Trump does not mean well. Trump cares only for himself. Any well-meaning person would be able to admit a mistake. He is precisely the same as he has been for 50 years.
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This is a sports board, so let’s think about this in terms of sports. No one on this board would tolerate any player or coach that would not ever own up to any mistakes, choosing instead to always blame (pick one or many) the referees, the other team, teammates, coaches, media, etc. We wouldn’t tolerate it not only because its annoying, but also because if you never take that accountability, you cannot improve as a player. If you say, hey, I’m actually a good shooter, but I was missing because the rim was bent, or, I am a good defender, but that guy was scoring because the help defense was out of position, or, those turnovers weren’t my fault, my teammates weren’t paying attention, etc., then you never improve in those areas because psychologically, you are telling yourself that your performance is fine. You will certainly plateau, meaning other, less talented players or coaches will easily bypass you in time.
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@justanotherfan you nailed it!
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@Crimsonorblue22 I read about it but that probably isn’t enough, unfortunately. I heard he said he could tell the Democratic governors to open up and they’d have to what he says. Did I miss anything notable?
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@justanotherfan Well said, could go towards most in politics.
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@kjayhawks I think the big problem is when politicians think more about getting elected/re-elected than honestly evaluating what’s they think and feel and then try to do the right thing. The media does have some culpability there as if someone does something the first evaluation is how will it affect the next election. If someone changes their mind they are a flip flopper and on and on it goes. Same problem with the dem primary. Too many people focused on beating trump instead of voting for the candidate they truly think is best.
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Biden won’t be the president even if he is elected. No keep an i on the vp selection. Biden is nothing more than a Manchurian president.
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@approxinfinity said in The democratic nominee:
@Crimsonorblue22 I read about it but that probably isn’t enough, unfortunately. I heard he said he could tell the Democratic governors to open up and they’d have to what he says. Did I miss anything notable?
Well here is the thing @approxinfinity. If A sitting president can be blamed for not shutting down the country soon enough, but yet doesn’t have the power to reopen the country sounds a bit weird to me. Or hypocritical or political?
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@DoubleDD the president is like a quarterback. He doesn’t have the ability to make his receivers catch the ball but if he leads them with a good pass they will catch it. if he calls one play in the huddle, gets behind center and then runs a different bad audible, blames players in the huddle the subsequent play, maybe even blames players from four years ago, argues with his coach, throws his helmet and pouts, he may still be a better quarterback than Trump on coronavirus.
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I’m very glad people have rediscovered federalism during this crisis and the Trump admin generally since the 10th amendment was seen by the press as some kind of crackpot way to bring back the Confederacy. But now it’s patriotic! Almost like… and follow me here… process arguments are inherently insincere.
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@FarmerJayhawk what is a process argument?
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@approxinfinity arguing about the methods we use to get from point A to point B (e.g. the filibuster or any parliamentary procedure, the powers of certain branches of government, etc.) When I was in state politics during the Obama years we were always told by D’s to just “do what Obama says!!” including things that were clearly outside his authority. Now, those same people are all about defying the administration and supporting their D governor. You can find Senators of both parties both praising the filibuster as both a threat to the Republic and unconstitutional yet when they’re in the minority its a bulwark against the tyranny of the majority and key to securing compromise. All of it’s garbage. Just folks making whatever argument suits their agenda. No real principle involved.
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@FarmerJayhawk I totally agree and think that has always been somewhat true. I do think Mitch has pushed us further in that direction. He is well known for drudging up old procedural precedents to suit his current agenda. He’s not the only one and it’s definitely on both sides, but I do think he is one of the biggest abusers of such arguments.
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@benshawks08 said in The democratic nominee:
@FarmerJayhawk I totally agree and think that has always been somewhat true. I do think Mitch has pushed us further in that direction. He is well known for drudging up old procedural precedents to suit his current agenda. He’s not the only one and it’s definitely on both sides, but I do think he is one of the biggest abusers of such arguments.
To his credit he’s always defended the legislative filibuster.
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@FarmerJayhawk But quite memorably not ALL filabusters.
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@benshawks08 said in The democratic nominee:
@FarmerJayhawk But quite memorably not ALL filabusters.
True. Harry Reid was warned for starting this. Cocaine Mitch plays for keeps
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@benshawks08 also good points my friend
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@BShark I love how this was breaking news yesterday. You mean a Democrat endorses his former running mate and friend whom is also a Democrat, first I’ve heard of it.
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@kjayhawks Don’t forget he’s the ONLY democrat left in the field! In other breaking news, Ivanka supports Trump’s bid for reelection…
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@benshawks08 exactly maybe they are running out of stories lol
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Donald Trump should not be blamed for not shutting down the country because he does not have that authority. He cannot issue a nationwide “stay at home” order like governors or local officials can. That’s outside his power.
So I hold no issue with him on actually shutting down the country.
The problem is the messaging has been confusing at best. Because Trump has a very strong following, when he says something, it resonates with a lot of people, to the point that if he says that something is a big deal, it is a big deal to those people, and if he says something is nothing to worry about, those people won’t worry about it.
As a result of having such a strong and loyal following, though, he has a large responsibility to keep those people informed of what is going on, because they won’t take something seriously if he doesn’t say it (or worse yet, says that it isn’t anything to worry about). That’s what happened here. Trump said COVID-19 was a hoax, and that it would disappear. So the people loyal to him dismissed reports that were counter to those statements. As a result, even now we have people that, despite all of the deaths and other issues, are still not really taking this seriously. That’s not good at any time, but especially during a public health crisis.
And why is it that a public health crisis is so different? Well, simply put, we need close to 100% buy-in for any action to be effective in a public health crisis. This isn’t about Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, liberals, moderates, right, left, etc. This is an infectious disease. Anyone can get it. Anyone can pass it along. That puts everyone at risk if even a minority of people continue to spread the virus.
The message has to be consistent about the risks, the dangers, and the way forward. That’s important in any crisis, but especially during a public health crisis, where you have to have nearly unanimous buy in for anything to work.
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@justanotherfan exactly how I see it my friend.
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@justanotherfan said in The democratic nominee:
Donald Trump should not be blamed for not shutting down the country because he does not have that authority. He cannot issue a nationwide “stay at home” order like governors or local officials can. That’s outside his power.
So I hold no issue with him on actually shutting down the country.
The problem is the messaging has been confusing at best. Because Trump has a very strong following, when he says something, it resonates with a lot of people, to the point that if he says that something is a big deal, it is a big deal to those people, and if he says something is nothing to worry about, those people won’t worry about it.
Doesn’t that fanbase include ignorant governors and constituents of governors that are riding on his coattails?
Really hard for me to see the responsibility for lack of consistent shutdowns as being much different from lack of consistent messaging and leadership which had a very direct impact on the lack of consistent shutdowns.
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I’m a bit confused here. I don’t really remember a Paul Revere riding in the nite warning the coronavirus is coming, the coronavirus is coming. The media says it was no big deal? The governors didn’t think it was a big deal. Yet when Trump did try todo something he was called a racist by the Dem media and the soon to be elected Biden. Who sense later apologized. Is Trump wrong not to post that the states and their governors woefully unprepared for a virus like this. Are we not saying the states should decide went to open back up? The same states that didn’t have enough masks or ventilators in stock pile? Yet we just blame Trump? Good luck with that at the ballot box. The American people are tired of a party that says they care but would rather make it a priority to secure monies for the Kennedy Center and illegal immigrants, in A bill that was supposed to help the American people. This is what you guys don’t get Trump loves America and whether you believe it or not Americans love him.
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@DoubleDD Trump sat on his thumbs for a month (and that’s a conservative measure) ignoring warning signs and telling the public the coronavirus wasn’t issue and that he had a natural gift for being a doctor, proclaiming the closing of the borders as a “mission accomplished” moment, and that he didn’t want the Diamond Princess included in his death tally because it would look bad, etc.
If you can’t see that this guy is a self-absorbed idiot who was distracted by petty nonsense while coronavirus was spreading in the US, and if you think that the President of the United States doesn’t have influence to help stop the spread of a global pandemic, there’s nothing I can tell you.
Which is it, very stable genius or idiot who was caught unaware? Or what, did the very stable genius realize what was happening but not do anything because it’s the governors’ job? This spin job doesn’t work.
Stop chugging the hydroxychloroquine.
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@approxinfinity said in The democratic nominee:
@DoubleDD Trump sat on his thumbs for a month (and that’s a conservative measure) ignoring warning signs and telling the public the coronavirus wasn’t issue and that he had a natural gift for being a doctor, proclaiming the closing of the borders as a “mission accomplished” moment, and that he didn’t want the Diamond Princess included in his death tally because it would look bad, etc.
If you can’t see that this guy is a self-absorbed idiot who was distracted by petty nonsense while coronavirus was spreading in the US, and if you think that the President of the United States doesn’t have influence to help stop the spread of a global pandemic, there’s nothing I can tell you.
Which is it, very stable genius or idiot who was caught unaware? Or what, did the very stable genius realize what was happening but not do anything because it’s the governors’ job? This spin job doesn’t work.
Stop chugging the hydroxychloroquine.
Actually the hydroxychloroquine does help. Just saying. The only spin I see is trying to forget what the media, the Dem party, and Joe Biden said about a Trump closing down the country. Which appears from the conversation he didn’t have the power todo. Yet still gets blamed for not doing it earlier.
