Democrats' Never Ending 'Roe' Gaslighting
Democrats promise to codify abortion rights. Working class people donate and vote. Democrats sit on their hands. Republicans gut abortion rights. Rinse and repeat.
At 9:39 pm EST Monday night, most likely before sauntering into the White House bedroom and asking Jill who she is and where did his horse go, President Joe Biden tweeted out this beauty:
Really? We’re still playing this fucking game?
In late June of this year, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to overturn the 1973 landmark decision. What three votes put the majority opinion over the hump? You guessed it; Neil Gorsuch, Brett “i like beer” Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Y’know, the three justices Trump and the Republicans rammed through in the meager span of four years. Barrett in particular still bewilders me. She was confirmed one week before the 2020 presidential election. Democrats let Trump snatch up a major political victory the week of the God damn election. Thank God they had a global pandemic (and Trump’s laughable response to it) to bail them out.
It’s so easy to blame Trump and Republicans for this, and I’m not here to admonish them of their sins and obvious complicity as the collective figureheads of anti-abortion sentiment in America. That said, the events that allowed these people to get into office and put Roe’s dismantling into motion need a deep rewind. It’s too easy, and frankly, too intellectually dishonest to blame Roe’s demise squarely on Trump and the Republicans taking control of government and muscling through the deciding votes onto the court. How did they get into office in the first place? Look no further than Chuck Schumer’s middle finger of a concession to Republicans as a clear example of why both parties are at fault. As Chris Hedges brilliantly elucidates in his recent ScheerPost article, “A functioning democracy could easily dispatch Donald Trump and his doppelgängers. A failed democracy and bankrupt liberalism assures their ascendancy.”
He hit the nail on the fucking head, but I’ll attempt to piggyback. Democrats’ failure to represent the people in office and fulfill their fucking campaign promises not only disenfranchises people, but disenchants them. What are people going to do when they become so jaded and so dissatisfied with the way things are running? As history has repeatedly shown us, they get thrust into the arms of demagogues. Maybe if Barack Obama had not dropped more bombs than George fucking Bush or told Flint, Michigan that their water was fine, or if the primary not been rigged against Bernie Sanders, Trump would not have taken office. In my estimation, had Obama not continued the rogue imperialism and decimation of the working class already undertaken by his predecessors, maybe a whopping 12% of Sanders supporters wouldn’t have defected to Trump. If Hillary Clinton had actually given those people a reason to vote for her, instead of brazenly bastardizing identity politics and trying her hand at vacuous pandering youth outreach that would give an aspirin a headache, maybe she’d have won. Sure, she won the popular vote anyway, but entirely on the back of deeply blue and heavily populated coastal states like California. The electoral college vs popular vote debate is a separate can of worms for another day. All I’ll say on it right now is that winning ten fewer states than Trump and winning the popular vote exclusively through Democratic strongholds is not exactly a glamorous sales pitch for those who wish to do away with the electoral college.
I say all of that to say this; Trump is a heavy favorite in 2024. Sure, the endless investigations of Trump’s pre and post-presidency malfeasance can and probably will eventually net something, however pyrrhic it may be. But if eligible to run, Trump is almost certainly going to win. Am I….stoked about that? Of course not. Am I suggesting we all turn the other cheek when/if we find out he killed Kennedy and ate Santa’s cookies? No. Jokes aside, I am unambiguously no fan of Trump, and if one of the roughly 6012 investigations that he’s been subjected to does ultimately land him in legal trouble, I won’t shed one tear for him. The issue I am more presently beside myself with is that obscenely copious amounts of time, energy and precious political capital have been wasted trying to de-legitimize Trump and it’s failed every fucking time.
As I attempt to circle back to the abortion issue, while tying all these side tangents together, I think it’s very important to note that when challenged by left-wing activists online to force a vote on Medicare for All, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other so called “progressives” in Congress refused to do so. But these same congresspeople went full steam ahead on not one, but two impeachment trials against Trump, knowing they didn’t have the two-thirds needed to convict. You cannot and will not convince me that “doing the right thing” was important, because you know what the “right thing” to do is? Give people fucking healthcare during a fucking pandemic. Or at least try to. Jesus fucking Christ. AOC’s January 2020 appearance at the MLK Now was marked by her apparent frustration with how slowly the fight for Medicare for All was advancing. Roughly nineteen minutes in, Cortez not only laments that the Democratic party is “not a left wing party,” but that “we can’t even get a floor vote on Medicare for All, not even one that gets voted down.” If that’s the case, why did you and your “progressive” colleagues reject Force the Vote on the grounds that it would get struck down? By Cortez’s own logic, a vote struck down beats no vote at all, not to mention that you could employ sub-strategies like primary challenges against those who vote no, and ruthless attacks against those lawmakers on every cable news show. It’s also fascinating (and I’m putting it mildly) that her original remarks were at a MLK themed conference. If we’re going to invoke Dr. King’s name, I think the words of his that stand out most to me in this case are: “Justice delayed is justice denied".”
In case I’ve buried too much of the lede, I’m insinuating, no, I’m declaring that the Squad’s refusal to force a vote on Medicare for All not only delays its passage, but denies it. But, if we simmer down just a bit and try to analyze or explain why this utter betrayal of the people is happening, I draw a lot of parallels to the Roe issue. *Light bulb moment* Guys, I think I figured it out. Cortez and her Squad aren’t going to even attempt to bring Medicare for All up for a floor vote for the same reasons all congressional Democrats refuse to codify Roe; they need something to campaign and fundraise off of. They need a reason to scare you into voting for them. That’s why Jim Crow Joe, who promised to codify Roe if elected in 2020, not only oversaw the ruling get overturned, but still has the unmitigated audacity to exploit the issue as a campaigning tool with the midterms a month away.
See, congressional Democrats are a lot more politically inept than even the most cynical news junkies could ever realize. They are seemingly convinced that passing M4A and codifying Roe would deprive them of talking points in the next election. Do they not realize they’d never lose another one if they did these things? Fulfilling your campaign promises isn’t just politically advantageous, but just the right God damn thing to do. What the fuck is the holdup? Before you try to give them a pass by saying Republicans will shellac them in the midterms (which they definitely will), know this: that’s what Democrats want. They want a convenient scapegoat to point to when shit doesn’t get done for the people. They’ve had countless opportunities over the last forty years, including a 60 seat supermajority in the Senate under Obama (circa 2009-11). Obama originally said the signing the Freedom of Choice act would be the “first thing” he’d do as President, before saying in March 2009 that it wasn’t his “highest legislative priority.” The fuck happened, Barack? Oh, nothing happened, I know. You’re just a dirty fucking lying sack of shit. If you, the reader, are still with me, let me close with this: you need to wake the fuck up. Congressional Democrats don’t give a fuck about you and they never will. To any mother-to-be reading this, if you experience an ectopic pregnancy that causes you to bleed to death, you can bleed to death knowing your death, along with the $100 you donated to your congressperson’s campaign, weren’t in vain. I’m sure they’ll codify Roe for realsies this time! They totally won’t sit on their hands and wait another two years to use it as a vehicle for money and votes. Like they’ve ever done that before.
Until next time, space maggots. To close, I’ll just clarify that I’m under no illusions that Biden himself took out a smartphone and tweeted that shit. It’s just morbidly humorous to imagine him sending out such a tone deaf and offensive tweet before staggering to bed and asking Jill where Jackie is.