Roe v Wade — Democrats “Cry Wolf” one time too many
Liberals need to stop allowing the Democratic Party to fundraise and campaign on a crisis of their own making
<This story was originally published in 2022, but seeing all the glib memes about Democratic Party heroes who will protect abortion and the current state of health care courtesy of the ACA I thought it relevant.>
As Christian theocracy and the sins of our founding fathers return our country alternately to the Dark Ages and the wild west, Democrats are already electioneering on the backs of the poor black and brown women who will suffer the most under the Supreme Court reversal of Roe v Wade. Joe Biden was glumly announcing “Roe is on the ballot” within minutes after the decision was official. Nancy Pelosi tried to rile up the base by reminding us that “A women’s right to choose…is on the ballot in November.” Barack Obama was out there dutifully Tweeting, missing the perverse irony in his encouraging liberals to work with organizations like Planned Parenthood and others who have been “sounding the alarm on this issue for years.”
It is impossible to recall a national election over the past 50 years in which Democrats did not use women’s reproductive rights as their social issue cattle prod, alerting liberals that if they did not show up at the polls Republicans would overturn Roe v Wade. Yet somehow over that span of time during which Democrats had legislative majorities, they failed to codify Roe into law. The worst offender in this context was Barack Obama, who promised Planned Parenthood, the organization he lauded in his Tweet of June 24th, that his highest legislative priority would be to sign “The Freedom of Choice Act” which would codify Roe v Wade as the law of the land. In fact, he promised at his campaign speech before Planned Parenthood that the “first thing I would do as president is sign The Freedom of Choice Act.” As could be expected, this promise was made during his presidential campaign because the centrist thinktank The Third Way knows all too well how social issues like abortion mobilize the base but don’t cost their billionaire overlords a dime. By the same token, when it was time to bail out those same billionaire overlords in 2008, a mere five months after he made the promise to Planned Parenthood, Obama declared that The Freedom of Choice Act was “not his highest legislative priority.” And Democrats loved him for it.
Somehow there was no accountability for Obama’s bait-and-switch among the liberal base or Democratic Party media. Planned Parenthood took the slap in the face to women across America in stride and continued to align with Democratic Party fundraisers rather than the handful of Democrats who actually stood for justice, supporting Obama in his next bid for the presidency and then choosing Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders despite her choice of anti-abortion vice-presidential running mate Tim Kaine. If womens’ reproductive rights were a real priority for Democrats, if they really wanted to protect the black and brown women they believed were obligated to put them into office, this bill would have been passed during the several months Obama had a Democratic legislative majority, or at the very least there would have been some outrage and pressure from Planned Parenthood and its allies to force Obama to enact his “highest legislative priority.” But the presidential campaign was over and Democrats achieved their electoral goal, so there was no need to talk about women’s reproductive rights until the next election cycle. In fact, had Obama passed The Freedom of Choice Act, Democrats would only have gays and guns (and Trump) to campaign on, so the most cynical take on this historic and apparently intentional failure would be that Democrats prioritize electoral politics over the health and safety of women.
Because it goes without saying that Democrats would never compromise the health of Americans in favor of their donors and consultants. Obama wanted a public option in the Affordable Care Act, but it was Joe Manchin…sorry, Joe Lieberman…who got in the way back in 2012. Even with a public option, Obama’s signature health care legislation was harmful public policy, placing the health care conglomerates squarely in charge of our well-being. Since the ACA’s implementation, infant mortality remains higher in the US than in any other industrialized nation, life expectancy continues to plummet, and the cost of health care for patients continues to escalate while access diminishes. Obama played the Establishment game, telling Americans he was finding the “middle-ground” between private sector greed and a “government takeover” of health care, parroting Republican propaganda regarding a single-payer health care system.
The irony is that Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All legislation had within it provisions that guaranteed women’s reproductive health care and effective codified Roe into law. Of course, Democratic leadership and their thinktanks launched propaganda campaigns with glazed over union members making videos telling us how much they loved their private health insurance, while Hillary Clinton went around the country in 2015 claiming that in a single-payer system you would lose your Medicaid and Medicare. Once again, the lies of the Democratic Party come back to make us sicker and more stressed as a society, this time the double whammy of effectively reducing access to health care for the majority of Americans and once again failing to codify access to reproductive health care into law. Not only would Medicare for All guarantee access to abortion and contraception to all women, it would have overriden The Hyde Amendment, an appropriately named misogynistic rider restricting government funds from funding reproductive health care. It is worth noting that Joe Biden was one of the most vocal supporters of The Hyde Amendment up until his 2020 run for president, and in 2021 he put language in budget legislation to reverse it, which Kevin McCarthy and Republicans promptly reinstated without opposition from Democrats.
The impact of the Democrats poor judgment and their inexplicable persistent attempts at “reaching across the aisle” to Republicans has also enabled this return to theocratic rule, as one of those rulers was placed on the Supreme Court by none other than Joe Biden. The justice who wants to go even further than overturning Roe, Clarence Thomas, was effectively appointed to the court by Joe Biden himself, who publicly humiliated Anita Hill with his abusive questioning and then denied her a proper hearing by refusing to allow her witnesses to testify. It is Clarence Thomas who now wants to ban contraception and gay marriage, and it is Joe Biden’s misogyny and racism that enabled perhaps the most toxic justice in modern history to be appointed to the court, not to mention by proxy promoting the ascendancy of Ginnie Thomas who was a major player in the January 6th insurrection. The impact of the political expediency of Democrats and the unwillingness of their rabid echo chamber base to hold them accountable echoes throughout the empty hallways of our democracy.
But the Democratic Party is set in its ways. They will only work within the corrupted two-party system, never seriously entertaining abolishing the filibuster to save Roe v Wade or us from an epidemic of gun violence. They do not want people to band together as someone like Bernie Sanders does, because their objective is only to perpetuate the culture wars that divide us as wealth inequality escalates to unprecedented levels. Nancy Pelosi’s response to the reversal of Roe v Wade is to send me an e-mail through the DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) asking me to stand with her and rush $19 and “EXPAND” her pro-choice majority. Not only is this problematic in repeating the same tired fundraising tactics that obviously have not been working, but I must doubt Pelosi’s sincerity as her PAC sent money into Texas (along with Republicans) to defeat progressive House candidate Jessica Cisneros in favor of anti-abortion, pro-gun, anti-union candidate Henry Cuellar. There is simply no way to reconcile Democratic leadership’s support for a male anti-abortion candidate over a female progressive while soliciting me to send money to support a pro-abortion majority. Pelosi’s virtue signaling might be red meat for MSNBC watching Democrats, but the reality is she is part of the cabal that has allowed women to return to the status of barefoot and pregnant.
The Republicans at least are out in the open regarding their allegiance to corporate America and the patriarchy for which it stands, while the Democrats deceive their electorate, especially the black and brown constituency, into voting for them and then largely doing the opposite of what they promised, blaming external forces for their failure to deliver any meaningful change. Democratic leadership repeatedly backs centrist and center-right candidates over progressives in congressional races, then wonders why centrists in their own party are obstructing their agenda. Democrats make these donor-aligned choices then throw up their hands when they can’t pass legislation that they seem none too interested in passing. They try to hide the fact that their legislative priorities are for the wealthy by stoking culture wars, a tactic used for decades as delineated by Malcom X:
“The white conservatives aren’t friends of the Negro either, but they at least don’t try to hide it. They are like wolves; they show their teeth in a snarl that keeps the Negro always aware of where he stands with them. But the white liberals are foxes, who also show their teeth to the Negro but pretend that they are smiling. The white liberals are more dangerous than the conservatives; they lure the Negro, and as the Negro runs from the growling wolf, he flees into the open jaws of the “smiling” fox.”
How bad will it have to get until the withering 29% of the electorate that calls itself Democrat understand how their party has actively brought us to this unthinkable moment? How many times can the Democratic Party tell us the sky is falling and the only remedy is to vote them into office, only to have the sky fall when they are voted in? They have been in power for the last year and a half, and all I have seen in unfettered militarism, mocking rejection of Black Lives Matter and black youth with a president bragging about “funding the police,” massive deportations of Haitian refugees and escalation of immigrants held in private for profit detention centers while we welcome in 100,000 white people without question, Americans gunned down in our streets and schools, increasing wealth inequality, rejection of science during the pandemic with over 600,000 dying on Biden’s watch, a health care system in crisis and now the loss of a Constitutional right in the reversal of Roe v Wade. I also see a party and a president whose moral compass is steered by political expediency, with a president who fails to invite Venezuela and Cuba to the Summitt of the Americas due to their human rights violations yet grovels at the feet of “pariah” Mohammed Bin Salman, one of the world’s most egregious violators of human rights, of Saudi Arabia for oil. And liberals and their media will make excuses for it all, blaming progressives, Trump, Putin, Republicans, Joe Manchin — anyone but the sly foxes fooling them with performative political grandstanding.
The truth is that the Democratic Party does not really want systemic change at all. Biden explicitly made the promise to a roomful of billionaires during the 2020 campaign promising them “nothing would fundamentally change.” And for them it’s only gotten better. After Wall Street crashed the economy in 2008, Obama took the banksters into a room and warned them that they’d better let him pass a token banking regulations bill to save them from our “pitchforks.” The Democratic Party does not want revolution. In fact they mock activism. In speaking to Planned Parenthood in 2007, Obama told activists their tactics were too provocative and that “the culture wars are so 90s.” In 2016, he said that movements like “Black Lives Matter” “can’t keep on yelling” and they need to have a “seat at the table.” In 2021, he trivialized Black Lives Matter’s policy demand to Defund the Police, reducing it to a “snappy slogan.” In every single speech Biden made about criminal justice reform following the police execution of George Floyd he associated “protest” with “rioting and looting,” amplifying the Fox News stereotype of black people as rioters and looters. Democratic leadership reminds us time and time again they are fine with “protest,” but there is no place for violence. Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland was not outraged when it was leaked the Supreme Court was set to overturn Roe V Wade, but he had a stern warning for those protesting the kings and queens taking away their Constitutional rights:
“The rise of violence and unlawful threats of violence directed at those who serve the public is unacceptable and dangerous to our democracy,” Garland said. “I want to be clear: while people vote, argue, and debate in a democracy, we must not — we cannot — allow violence or unlawful threats of violence to permeate our national life.”
The Democrats sees our unity against those in power who are violating “democracy” as a threat, but not the Supreme Court ruling itself. Trump and his minions are framed as a threat to democracy, but apparently so are we if we protest the reversal of advances in human rights and medical science. To Democrats, both have to be stopped equally, thus immediate passage of a bill in the Senate to increase penalties for such protest and to protect family members of justices passed immediately in the Senate and is currently being considered in the House. Democrats are just fine with protest, as long as there is no property damage. “Law and order” must be followed by us, but not by our legislators or The Supreme Court. The immeasurable suffering of women and black people slaughtered in the streets, that Democrats can tolerate. Handguns being carried around casually as a matter of course while nearly 50,000 Americans per year are murdered by gun violence, no big deal. But a broken window or a smashed ATM, that destruction of capital is simply going too far. That apparently is what draws action to draft public policy from Democrats and Republicans alike. As Democrats urge us to remain polite in the face of intolerable state-sponsored violence and injustice against us, it appears that nothing short of mass civil disruption will save us.
It is true that Democrats can’t control the political agenda of the unelected kings and queens on the Supreme Court. But of course they are aware of that, which is why they have used the balance on the Supreme Court as election fodder for decades as well. But the actions of the Democrats, or lack thereof, suggest they really don’t really care, and with a base that rewards them for aligning with Wall Street, defense contractors and health care conglomerates, they don’t have to. Millionaires and billionaires don’t have to worry about access to reproductive health care or health care in general, so this Supreme Court decision really doesn’t affect them at all. They just have to convince you they are outraged so you send $19 and pay their way into office one more time, so they can show you how “pragmatic” they are and how that “incremental change” is so much better than nothing at all. After 40 years of liberal incrementalism and “pragmatic progressivism” we can conclude that nothing at all might have been better after all, unless you find a way to explain away the Democratic Party’s intentional inaction and utter failure on their signature issue.
Democrats assure us if we vote them in just one more time it will be different. Yet even in the most desperate of situations, amidst the loss of health care for tens of millions of women, Democrats can’t change their tune, pouncing upon this tragedy as an opportunity for fundraising and electioneering. These reruns are too depressing, their rhetoric too empty, and their hypocrisy too blatant. Their choreographed version of God Bless America on the Capitol steps was deafeningly off key, their monotonous tune grating in its litany of excuses and lack of authenticity. They might be able to fool most of the 29% of the electorate who are registered Democrats, but this withering and panicked base is increasingly acting out with rage worthy of a Trump supporter against anyone like me who points out the historic inability of their party to protect us against virtually anything. Biden liberals avoid discussing the issues and public policy while vote shaming those who won’t show up at the polls for a party that works actively against progressive candidates while embracing the centrists who will do the bidding of the donor class regardless of their potential to block a legislative agenda. Because Democrats don’t care about the legislative agenda, and they don’t have to with pundits across the country comparing self-declared “capitalist” Biden to FDR and their MSNBC base dutiful in the face of their country crumbling around them.
In the same way that Democrats are incredulous that so many Republicans believe Biden stole the election, I cannot comprehend how so many Democrats believe their party is in any way humane or heroic. Over the past 40 years all I have seen is excuse after excuse for all the things they have failed to do, or the toxic outcomes of their legislation from Clinton’s Welfare Reform to Biden’s Tough on Crime to Obama’s “Affordable” Care Act. Even the negative impacts of their half-assed, means-tested, donor-approved programs somehow become the fault of Republicans or are merely a product of the time they were conceived (much like the excuse for our floundering fathers and slavery). And it is worth noting that like their failure to codify Roe into law, Democratic Party legislation over the past several decades has ended up disproportionately harming poor and marginalized communities, which is very much in line with Malcom X‘s assertion. Incrementalism cannot counter the forces working against theocracy and fascism — in fact, its impotence fosters the submissive political environment that allows more openly hostile influences, such as Republican court-packing, fascism and theocratic doctrine, to shape the legislative agenda.
Until Democrats stop crushing the progressives who have the courage to stand up for justice, until they stop capitulating to billionaires and allowing Fox News and Republican propaganda to shape their messaging, and until they stop sending e-mails with bright red fonts urgently asking for $19 thinking it will remedy every crisis they help to create, our downward spiral will continue. State-run media will not protect us, so we must get the message out and help those who do not accept corporate PAC money and who are not aligned with Democratic Party leadership to win their elections over the Democrat’s chosen anti-abortion, anti-labor, pro-gun candidates. I am actively working against Congressman Danny Davis in my district, who told me in 2009 when I went to his office to push for a single-payer health care program “now is not the time.” The same thing Barack Obama said when asked about pushing for gun control legislation after the Sandy Hook school massacre, and the same thing he said just months after promising to codify Roe v Wade into law. Right now House Democrats need to be drawing up articles of impeachment for Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett for lying under oath during their confirmation hearings. Progressives will call for it, yet I doubt Nancy Pelosi will take such “radical” action as she is too preoccupied with $19 donations.
Biden needs to immediately open up federal lands for abortion services, initiate a non means-tested voucher system allowing women to obtain funding for travel and reproductive health care expenses, and look for border towns in which to open new reproductive health centers with the guidance of state and local governments. These actions should have already been in the works of course, but even in these dire straits Democrats will do the right thing only if there is sufficient pressure from its base. Now is the time to call your representative and in no uncertain terms (no you don’t have to be “polite”) let them know this is the end of the line for current Democratic leadership and on your way out you’d best so something to atone for your incompetence and protect the women you’ve been exploiting to your electoral advantage.
With this performative election-obsessed Democratic Party, it is never the time for change. It is never the time to do anything that the media or the Republican party might call “radical” because it’s always best to meet in the middle to appeal to those legendary swing voters as that is the way the ruling class wants it. When public policy that will actually help the majority of Americans is proposed, like Medicare for All or free public college, Democrats mock these ideas as radical. Obama dropped the Freedom of Choice Act in his desire to appease Republicans and religious leaders. Democrats opposed Medicare for All at the command of the health care conglomerates. Joe Biden ushered Clarence Thomas onto the Supreme Court because he was and still is a devout servant of the Establishment. This history does matter, but the abandonment of critical thinking, the hesitancy to “circle the wagons” in telling the truth about the utter incompetence and failure of the Democratic Party, is ushering in horrors from which we might never be able to recover. If we cannot find a way to infiltrate the hardwired belief system of Democrats who have been driven to defend Biden and the Democratic Party at all costs, the depth of which we are currently experiencing, then we will never get progressives into office who will have the courage and sound public policy to reverse course. It might be too late to change things within the system, as the shellacking they will be taking in the midterms will coincide with an escalation of the horrors that theocracy and fascism bring. Horrors that $19 cannot even begin to mend.
I appreciate your thoughts. The reality is this is now a states' rights issue. There is no federal solution or radical change coming. Short of Democrats winning a bunch of presidential elections and replacing dying/retiring Supreme Court justices, absolutely nothing will change. National Republicans, led by Trump, aren't going to touch this issue on a federal level. They have no reason to. Democrats know this. But it's a hot-button issue they can fundraise on (something the GOP does as well).