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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31691 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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The left wants the status quo ante of Roe v. Wade

By their revealed preferences, they do not; they knew it was going to get repealed in that leaked decision and they did nothing, and then it was repealed and they still did nothing.

If they cared that much, I would have expected a bill on the floor of the House the next day- but they didn't even bother to even do that. It's not like they're incapable of throwing together a law quickly; after all, they do that for assault weapons bans at every opportunity- so they must not value it that much. (That said, the ruling by and large didn't affect the people agitating for abortion rights.)

The right is the side making those into culture war issues, not the left.

There was nothing stopping a Blue state from making their abortion laws even more liberal than they were in the RvW times. You can certainly argue "the right is imposing its standards on us" in the context of, say, Bruen (imposing gun rights on Blue states), but not so much for this.

If they cared that much, I would have expected a bill on the floor of the House the next day

I definitely saw social media comments on the left annoyed at this... but also, this is all about noisemaking, not policy. No one was under any illusion that such a bill would pass the Senate, so it's just a question of whether it was good politics to force a (virtual filibuster) vote in the Senate. Maybe the Democratic Party made a tactical error by not forcing a vote (i.e. maybe making Republican senators commit to their abortion views would have been bad for them in the midterms... but I'm guessing the Democrats would have held the vote if they believed that), but they lacked the power to pass a bill so it seems strange to blame them for not doing so.

but they lacked the power to pass a bill so it seems strange to blame them for not doing so.

Hence why I brought up the gun bills; they still present them even if the same thing would happen (passes House, stalls Senate). Just because it's (locally) bad politics doesn't mean they're not going to do it anyway; this is true to an extent for the Republicans winning the abortion battle in the first place, if you believe the pundits.

maybe making Republican senators commit to their abortion views would have been bad for them in the midterms

Interestingly, the only thing that makes sense here (and their failure over the past 40+ years to actually back up abortion rights with legislation) is that making Democrat politicians commit to their abortion views would be bad for them. But then again, this makes sense if you assume the left's distance from "center" is larger than it is for the right's.

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