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Over at Salon, Amanda Marcotte expresses enthusiasm for secret ballots because of concerns that husbands are forcing wives to vote for Trump:
She also thinks it would be good if wives used emotional blackmail to control men's votes:
Oddly enough, there is no mention of the issue posed by absentee ballots. These are the tools by which abusive spouses can use anything from cajoling to emotional abuse to outright violence to dictate the votes of those that reside with them. The only way to make sure this isn't an option is returning to the canonical secret ballot, which is in a voting booth where this is no option to show others who you voted for. Notably, this is a protection against other forms of coercion, such as from employers or caregivers.
Marcotte comes as close as I've seen anyone on the progressive side of things has gotten to acknowledging this problem, but somehow elides the solution to this fundamentally solved problem. Kind of interesting dynamic.
Marcotte is a strange single issue writer. Click on her byline and almost every headline has either "Trump" or "MAGA" in it. She is THE face of 3rd wave feminist Trump Derangement Syndrome. It truly is a bizarre obsession. It seems to me that her writing is intended for an audience of cosmopolitan women who sincerely think that a Trump election = overnight Handsmaid's Tale coming into reality. It's some sort of sexual-political BDSM LARPing because there's never a consistent causal train of thought. I've had conversations with these folks in person. They cannot articulate how the Constitution would actually be suspended or voided. There's a logical gap that's forded with vibes based projections and catastrophizing. Allusion to Nazi Germany are not uncommon.
In the end, doesn't it come to "the ruling party is united enough behind the desire to change the laws and the Constitution that they just do it"? What would stop them?
If you believe that the republicans all want to enact Handmaid's Tale then it's pretty rational to not expect the procedure to stop them.
No.
A whole shitload of precedent and existing laws.
To somehow morph the constitution enough that individual lights could be altered to the point Handmaid's Tale conditions, you'd have to, at the very least, pass a bunch of amendments. Not laws, amendments. This requires ratification by 2/3rds of the states. I don't think there's anything, right now or in the foreseeable future, that 2/3rds of the states could agree on fast enough to accomplish this within a 4 - 8 year presidency and also assume zero turnover in congress. Along the way, I also assume there would be dozens of court challenges.
Remember that, for a few years, the Republicans really mad an effort to overturn The Affordable Care Act. They got close but failed. The ACA is now ingrained enough in the American public that no Republican is making that the center of their campaign, even if they are nominally still in favor of overturning it.
Altering the constitution (in the opposite direction of its original intent) would require an amazing level of sustained, focused, hyper coordinated action. Without any room for even mild electoral losses or turnover. While also assuming something like court packing happening in parallel. And ... in a single 4 year Trump admin?
It's a goofy catastrophy-porn scenario. Congress is fucking up its basic budgetary requirements. The Republican majority kicked out their own speaker. But, we're supposedly to believe that if Orange Man gets a sequel (which will almost certainly be decided by less than 300k votes) all of a sudden 2/3rds of the states and 3/4ths of their population will get out their well concealed ChristoFascist playbooks and get to work.
Well, that was the assumption about Roe, too. And look what happened there.
I think that's in an inaccurate comparison on two levels.
The ACA fundamentally gives people a direct financial benefit. Reference Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security - and their proportion of the budget each year - and its self-evident that direct cash / benefit programs are the stickiest in the American voting public. Roe guaranteed a right which, as personal as it was, is still ephemeral. A "right" doesn't show up in my checking account each month (or, in the case of healthcare benefits, prevent by checking account from going down each month).
Roe V Wade triggered a multi-decade long popular counter-movement to its passage at the Federal, State, and Local levels that self-sustained and routinely co-opted politicians to support it. Where are the local anti-ACA chapters? The real interest in repealing the ACA is pretty much, at this point, the passion project of a few truly committed think tankers, lobbyists, and maybe a half-handful of Congressmen.
All that being said, I actually do hold out long term hope that the ACA will be overturned or sufficiently neutered on the grounds that, eventually, the cost will be plainly identified as major drag on all economic growth. I think this will happen when we get to deep boomer aging, where the Median boomer is now in that lifespan where they required constant and pricey medical care and/or assisted living. Combined with social security going bankrupt within the next 10 years, this will create such a stark revelation of "the old and dying stealing everything from the younger generations" that Congress (at that point rid of boomers almost by definition) will have to act.
Heh, I just wrote, "Congress will have to act." Maybe I am the asshole.
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