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Is Congress that subservient?
I saw part of a speech by Kamala Harris, talking about abortion. According to the VP, if Donald Trump is elected, Congress will pass a bill outlawing abortion coast-to-coast, which Trump will sign. But if Harris is elected, Congress will pass a law mandating abortion access in all 50 states, which she will sign. Does she really think that Congress passes whatever legislation the president wants?
I can see a Congress pushing or not pushing a piece of legislation, depending on who the president is. For instance, let us say that the majority of Congress wants to shut down all oil drilling in Alaska. If Trump is the president, they would be wasting their time, as he would surely veto it. If Biden or Harris is president, a presidential signature is likely, so the members would try to pass it if they had the votes to get it past a Senate filibuster. But the same Congress that would vote for a nationwide abortion ban if they thought they would get the president’s signature, would not pass a bill that does the opposite, just because the president would sign that one. Everyone on this website already knows this, but any voters who were hoping they would hear less ridiculous BS from Harris than they have heard from Biden or Trump is in for disappointment.
Published in Abortion
The Left has been insisting since the Obama days (egged on by Obama) that Congress not passing a law that the president wants is a legitimate basis for the president to issue a
dictatorial decreeexecutive order to accomplish the purpose of the law the president wants.No. She is lying and demagoguing. Expect a *lot* more lying, because it works with Democrat voters.
She’s only been the “nominee” for a few days, but I am already sick of the wall-to-wall “abortion” topic. Someone asked Elizabeth Warren what Kamala Harris’s biggest achievement during her VeePee-ship has been, and Warren actually said it was that Harris “was the first sitting Vice President to visit an abortion mill.” (TBC, that’s a paraphrase. Liz didn’t actually use the term “abortion mill,” but you get the idea.)
How sad that a very great many people on the Left cannot look at a girl-person (assuming they can find and identify one), even an infant, without immediately going to the “I hope she can have an abortion whenever she wants one” trope. There’s never any “I hope she has a wonderful and happy childhood,” or “I hope she can excel at whatever she chooses to do,” or “I hope she can achieve her dreams, whether as a wife and mother or as a successful career woman.”
I never hear any of them saying “I hope she is loved.”
No. It’s “abortion” yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Abortion forever.
Ugh. Is it possible people will get as tired of this as I already am? I hope so.
That is a very good point.
Short answer. The Dobbs decision said that abortion is no longer a federal issue. Congress can pass laws protecting or outlawing abortion, and they are all invalid going forward.
There was a man who identified as a woman in hopes of experiencing an abortion. It’s a liberal sacrament.
As a former fetus, I am obviously concerned by this.
This is the honest, if overly optimistic, part of her campaign promise premised on the Democrats winning Congressional majorities and eliminating the filibuster at least temporarily, to restore abortion rights.
It’s an unlikely combination, but the strongest case for a Harris win rests on reproductive rights favored by a strong majority of voters. You may not want to think that’s the case, but you should consider the possibility that it is.
A substack I get, Arnold Kling’s In My Tribe, posted an interesting Dan Williams essay link this week which applies here. Williams says self-serving (and alliance-reinforcing) narratives have widespread demand. Rationalizations create social rewards within a tribe and are more difficult to refute, especially in one’s own mind, than outright lies. We all have them. Political thinking is aspirational and powerful. Willing something collectively can help make it so.
On the question of the abortion rights fight, the Democrat tribe expands to its broadest contours. So the hope that Dobbs will be overturned, either by changes in SCOTUS or by a new federal law which the present SCOTUS doesn’t have the political will to block, gives the (D) side an ideal narrative. That tribe’s good will is certain to shower down on Kamala Harris in the form of loyalty (including that of ballot harvesters in swing states), donations, and broad acceptance she might not otherwise deserve.
She doesn’t expect the current Congress to pass a national abortion rights law. She hopes the issue will save her party some Senate seats and win close House races (as it did in 2022), and give her an edge toward the Presidency.
The Trump campaign’s narratives outside that one issue are strong. By her former statements on many issues, Harris is the most radical left wing major party candidate to ever run for President. Trump will try to expose that, and suppress talk about what his SCOTUS picks did to take half-century old abortion rights away from poor women in red states.
Complicating Trump’s problem is JD Vance, with his past comments about childless women and no rape exceptions regarding abortion. A WSJ editorial J.D. Vance’s Basket of Deplorables this weekend on the topic of Vance’s attacks on the childless is on the way to 5,000 comments, more than double the top number I’ve seen there for any editorial. In 2024, social conservatism is political poison.
Why should he suppress it? The Court sent it back to the states where it belongs. Maybe in the future the court will have a majority that can hallucinate about emanations of penumbras (or was it penumbras of emanations?) long enough to scribble out sufficient legal twaddle to reverse the reversal, but in the meantime Trump will not sign legislation for a national ban.
Now that I’ve fed, watered, and curried your hobbyhorse, do you feel better?
Democrats think the best way to win is promise women they can kill their babies. The devil himself couldn’t do worse.
The childless cat ladies are really upset about being called childless cat ladies. There were always going to vote Democrat/Socialist. The question is how will normal women react? Will they vote to improve the lives of families and future generations or will they vote to improve the lives of the cat ladies? Let’s find out.
They do it because it works. They just pound any vague thing like abortion is going away. You have to vote Democrat because of this.
Supposedly, the longest you can go without knowing you you are pregnant is 45 days. Add 30 days to that for the abortion limit and don’t bring it up for four presidential cycles.
Furthermore, what level of decent prenatal care can the government force?
This. 1,000,000, 000 “likes”.
They need to drop all of this and set it at 12 weeks or something.
I’m not sure this works in the electoral college.
Set it at 10 weeks and stop talking about it. Four POTUS election cycles.
Your post simply brings to attention the fact that most democrats don’t think deeply or pay much attention to real political details. Kamala can say just about anything and it doesn’t matter much except to the minority who demand accountability and clarity from their leaders.
Out of curiosity, I watched a recent half-hour podcast by Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary under Bill Clinton. He had a young woman on. I don’t know if she was a co-host or just a guest. The whole show was about the euphoria of nominating Kamala Harris for President. In the entire half-hour, they never once brought up a single accomplishment by Harris. In fact they never even brought up any of her political stances or actions at all! The only political act they even mentioned was by Trump, when he cut taxes (for the rich, of course!).
Instead they spent the whole show talking about Kamala’s swift rise, the enthusiasm for her by the political elites, her skin color, her infectious laughter(!) (believe it or not, they are spinning her nervous laughter as a sign of optimism and joyfulness). You could not ascertain a single one of her political beliefs from watching this incredibly shallow drivel.
Actually, my wife is a childless cat lady, but a staunch conservative. She did not like the remark from J. D. Vance when he made it three years ago, and she has always held a grudge against him. However, I’ve seen her warming up to him lately, especially after his nominating speech at the Republican Convention, which she praised.
I am lukewarm about him myself, for totally different reasons. I’m not crazy about his isolationism and I don’t think he’s particularly smart on economics.
If social conservatism is political poison, then the Republic is near death. Time for palliative care?
Yeah, all the childless cat ladies I know are conservatives.
Trump continues to change the topic off abortion because he knows Dobbs is his weakest point. That’s why his GOP platform purged 40 years of anti-abortion rhetoric. His political radar is strong enough to see that social conservatism could destroy the GOP.
People use the arcane language of Roe to discredit and obscure the central finding: privacy rights are unenumerated rights protected by the 9th Amendment. The present court excluded abortion rights by 6-3 but there’s no way that lasts half as long as the Roe/Casey. The strong underlying foundation of the 9th Amendment remains (with contraceptive rights still protected in Griswold remaining so, probably unanimously as soon as the Court’s oldest members retire.) Future justices will also consider women’s reproductive rights implicit in the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment.
Don’t even think about a national abortion ban. I hope and predict the voters will eventually have their say and pass federal legislation re-establishing the rights until viability per Roe/Casey. Congress will weigh in on numerating rights. I expect the filibuster will be suspended, just as it was suspended to add that anti-Roe justices to the court. If such a national abortion rights bill is signed into law by a Republican President, the anti-abortion movement will reach its effective end point.
At that point private persuasion, support for adoption services, and perhaps pre-natal gene therapies will become the focus of “pro-life” advocates as the subject moves out of the legal realm entirely.
It’s insane to repeat Vance’s horrible words as if to defend them. Don’t you see the campaign and the conservative media realize what a blunder it was? Thousands of responses in the WSJ say so. Even Special Report on Fox did a piece on it today.
Try not to live in a bubble. It was a weird thing to say and either the vetting team made a huge blunder or it was blithely insensistive to a huge voting demographic.
It’s not about the three Democrats (one male) who Vance called childless cat ladies in 2021. It’s about every person in America with no children, including many of us angry enough with Vance to reconsider our voting plans so long as he remains on the ticket.
24 weeks is viability. Expect no retreat from that for national abortion rights.
Post-viability it may remain for the states to legislate, although the recent SCOTUS Idaho case showed even Justice Barrett had concerns about women’s health being impacted by a hard ban. There are many health concerns for women with problematic pregnancies, some of which can impact future opportunities to procreate. Laws which intimidate doctors create dangers for us all.
Wrong. Our population is just getting over religious superstition slower than some cultures (and faster than others.)
The point of the post, Jim, is not what one’s preferred policy is on abortion. The point is that presidential candidates speak to voters as if Congress is theirs (or the victor’s) to command. And that isn’t how it works. The winning presidential candidate doesn’t automatically get a bonus 5 Senators and 50 House members.
Totalitarians think in totalitarian terms and project their behavior on others. Also, Democrats are the party of debauchery and abortion enables it.
They must live miserable lives if Kamala is the source of their second greatest pleasure, debauchery being their greatest pleasure.
Ah. Now that I know where you’re coming from, all is plain.
Just get rid of those inconvenient Christers, and the GOP will march from victory to victory.
She should start Childless Cat Ladies for Trump.
Surprisingly Harris didn’t scrub up and participate in the abortions herself.
This childless cat lady is where you are in regards to Vance – I don’t like the isolationism, and like you I don’t think he’s sharp on economics.
I take it from this that you are either pro-abortion or pro original Roe vs. Wade and pro Casey decision(?)
Vance’s comment, while not advisable for a politician, is nowhere as bad as hundreds of the things Donald Trump has said. Do you think it was a blunder to nominate Trump?
I think Americans (mostly democrats) have generally become too sensitive to perceived personal slights. That’s why so many comedians lament that they cannot ply their trade for fear of offending some minority group. If this one comment by Vance makes you angry enough to reconsider your voting plans, what about when Biden suggested that Republicans were going to put Black people back in chains? Or any number of Kamala Harris’s “word salads” where she displays the verbal IQ of a bunch of spinach. Do those cause you any reflection on your voting plans, too?