Aside from having major implications for individual rights and perhaps for the Democratic Party, the current abortion fight may also affect the future of individual politicians, one of whom I wrote about at New York:
Vice-presidents of the United States are captive to their boss’s interests and the assignments they are willing to delegate. This has been particularly true of the current vice-president, Kamala Harris. She’s in the shadow of a generally unpopular president who has at best a shaky grip on his own party (most Democrats hope those negative characterizations of Joe Biden will soon be out of date, but they remain accurate right now). And as my colleague Gabriel Debenedetti recently explained, Harris has been unlucky with the thankless jobs Biden has given her:
“Her popularity started sinking when she first visited Central America and appeared dismissive of a suggestion that she visit the border. Behind the scenes, she was worried the assignment to take on the migrant crisis was a clear political loser … Her other top priority — voting rights — was no less publicly frustrating when the administration’s preferred legislation predictably failed in the split Senate. Some close to her wonder why she didn’t muscle her way into leading more popular projects: implementation of the COVID-relief-bill spending or, later, the infrastructure package.”
But now Harris’s luck may have finally turned: She is emerging as the Biden administration’s chief champion of abortion rights at a time when they are uniquely in danger and when Democrats everywhere are seizing on the issue as a potential game changer in 2022 and beyond. It’s an issue that fits her far better than it does the president, an old-school Irish Catholic politician who until mid-2019 opposed federal funding for abortions and could not bring himself even to say the word abortion. Harris is an entirely credible and consistent advocate for reproductive rights, as the Los Angeles Times noted:
“Taking command in the battle over abortion’s future, now largely being fought in the states and as an issue in the November election, comports neatly with Harris’ political résumé, touching on her experience as the first woman elected to the second-highest post in the nation and as a former California attorney general and U.S. senator with a longstanding interest in maternal health.”
It’s also worth noting that the women most immediately and harshly affected by the anti-abortion legislation racing toward enactment in red states are people of color, Black and Asian American women like Harris. And although many other federal and state Democrats will command a portion of the bright spotlight on this topic, Harris uniquely can call on the unparalleled megaphone of the White House, which reaches all states with highly diverse abortion landscapes. Per the Times:
“’We need a leader on this. No one knows who’s the head of Planned Parenthood,’ said Montana state Sen. Diane Sands, an abortion rights activist since the 1960s and one of many Democratic lawmakers and advocates who have met with Harris in recent weeks.”
Most of all, the abortion-rights battle offers Harris something her 2020 presidential campaign lacked: a passionate constituency with national reach, as the Washington Post observes: “She faces considerable pressure to show that her political skills have improved since that effort, which collapsed before a single primary vote was cast.” Yes, she has the famously combative “KHive” Twitter army ready to throw down on her behalf at a moment’s notice, but she could use a showing of excitement in the non-virtual world of left-of-center grassroots activists too. No issue is more starkly partisan than abortion post-Dobbs; within the Democratic Party, there is no real downside to pro-choice militancy.
What would really benefit Harris politically, of course, would be evidence that the abortion issue can stop or significantly mitigate the red wave so many Democrats fearfully glimpse on the horizon of the November elections. If abortion rights turn out to be not simply an energizer for the Democratic Party’s progressive base but a wedge issue that can bring back the suburban gains and heavy youth turnout of the 2018 midterms, it could help give Harris’s prospects a significant boost.
This development for Harris couldn’t arrive at a better time. Biden’s rapidly approaching 80th birthday is very likely to revive pressure on him to retire at the end of his first term. At this point, even though Harris is the heir apparent as vice-president, it’s unclear whether she has enough political juice to head off powerful rivals for the 2024 nomination. Nothing would make her more powerful as a presidential contender than to have not just Biden’s blessing but a reputation for fighting on an issue of crucial importance to progressive politics and the people it aims to represent.
We fight for TODAY, and we always do.
Every election we hear “maybe it would be better if ….” Hell, I’ve said it and thought it myself.
But that kind of thinking gets Reagan a second term, gets us the Supreme Court we have now, the one that crowned Bush.
No, we fight today. And the day after November 2nd, we start fighting for 2006.
Bah, Andrew Sullivan is deluding himself if he thinks re-electing Bush will force him to take responsibility. He never has about anything else, we’d just get more of the same Rovian misdirection, distraction, and denials we’ve gotten for the last 4 years.
I personally think Sullivan, as a man with conflicting political needs (he is a gay, pro-gay marriage conservative) is trying to rationalize a reason to support Bush, so he frames it in the sense of “punishing Bush by re-electing him.”
It is true that Kerry will get the full brunt of the conservakooks wrath when he gets in, but that never stopped Bill Clinton.
Whenever peolle cite the popularity of conservative outlets like Fox News, it’s worth noting that nearly all conservatives (1/3 of the oublic it would seem at least) get their news exclusively from places like this. As Ron Reagan said, conservatives don’t usually like the debate-style news that liberals watch. They prefer echo chambers of their own beliefs. The conservatives’ power only seems greater because all the eggs are in one basket.
“Security moms…” Let’s assume Kerry wins the election. What next? The Republicans have made a big deal out of the fact there hasn’t been a repeat of 9/11 so far. Many observers regard it as mere luck, citing the generally inept handling of homeland security by this Administration plus the huge difficulty of protecting a huge country such as the United States. The likelihood of another attack in 2005-08 is regarded as fairly high.
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Kerry will of course do his best to clean up the mess both at home as well as in Iraq, but we can be sure the usual suspects (FoxNews, Limbaugh, Coulter, WSJ etc.) will blame him for every single thing that goes wrong from the day that he enters the Oval Office. If there is another 9/11, you can be sure these guys will say it “proves” Democrats cannot be trusted to protect America. The Kerry presidency will be written off as another Carter parenthesis, plagued by big problems and a Democratic president who could not successfully solve them.
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Under these circumstances, maybe it won’t be an unmitigated disaster if “Shrub” is reelected… As a consolation prize, we get to see him stubbornly dig an even deeper hole for the Republican party during his second term in office. The credibility of neoconservatism has already suffered a fatal blow in Iraq, and increasingly few voters believe the GOP stands for “fiscal responsibility” anymore. By 2008, it seems quite likely that Iraq will be in a state of near-civil war, there will be enormous budget deficits thanks to his tax cuts, no credible plan to handle the retirement of the baby boomer generation, the “we’re safer because we invaded Iraq” theory will most likely have been disproved in a most violent fashion… And all this while Republicans were controlling the White House as well as both chambers of Congress! Heck, even president Hillary Clinton does not sound like a far-fetched idea under such circumstances…
Andrew Sullivan writes:
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BUSH-HATERS FOR BUSH: Once you’ve absorbed the chutzpah, it’s a pretty powerful argument. It’s a bit like Bush saying, after bankrupting our fiscal future in three short years, that we cannot afford Kerry’s big spending instincts. No shit, brother. So we’re torn between holding Bush accountable and re-electing him. But here’s another brilliant Bush counter-argument: wouldn’t we actually be holding him accountable by re-electing him? For the first time in his entire life, Bush may actually be forced to take responsibility for his own actions if he is re-elected and becomes the LBJ of the Iraq war. I wonder why Bush-haters haven’t thought of this: that the way to punish Bush is to force him to live through the consequences of his own policies. Why, after all, should Kerry take the fall? If he gets elected, can you imagine what Fox News and NRO are going to do to him the minute he brushes his teeth in January? He’ll be destroyed by the chaos in Iraq, whatever he does. The right will give him no lee-way at all. Maybe this is simply another version of the notion that we shouldn’t change horses in the middle of a cliche. But there’s an upside: if Bush fails in Iraq, at least he will be punished for his own failures; if he succeeds (and, of course I hope he does), we all win. Am I persuading myself to endorse Bush? Or am I finding some kind of silver lining in the increasingly likely event of his re-election? I blog. You decide.
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I am certainly not advocating defeat (that would be irresponsible given the magnitude of the problems facing us), but at least there is a silver lining if “Shrub” wins. Sometimes, good things happen to those who wait.
MARCU$
The first time I heard the pubs use “security moms” I knew we were in for this fraud. And I knew it wouldn’t be long before the corporate media lap dogs would be lapping it up.
How many times this week has some pretty airheaded news reader intoned “Are security moms giving Bush a new edge with women? Are they replacing the soccer moms?”
Nonsense. It’s a marketing slogan and nothing more. Like saying our laundry detergent is new and improved.
The Rove machine knows that the modern middle voter responds to repeated phrases, the grist of the marketing mill. As long as the term is used, it helps Bush. The whole point of the term is to make the absurd statement that women are moving to Bush because they are concerned about terror and Bush allegedly makes them feel safe.
Hogwash.