Courting the Republican donor spigot is so much easier

I’ve now been in my current residence for 30 years! In December of 1991 I moved in after two years of living in Germany. I think my parents and a sibling or two helped me wash the place on December 1 and the moving van arrived December 2. It’s a nice place, though at times the upkeep feels daunting. At the moment I plan to stay put until simply can’t live here anymore. Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos reported that Gallup has been polling how we think about Roe v. Wade for over three decades. Support for overturning Roe has never been higher than one third of Americans. In May of this year just under a third support getting rid of the right to an abortion. Support for keeping abortion legal “in all or most cases” hovers around 60%. Overturning Roe could hurt Republicans with college educated and suburban voters. 68% of college graduates say abortion should be legal. In another post Eleveld write that Republicans are indeed running scared. They’ll talk about anything but abortion. Democrats have a definite line of attack. Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post who discussed Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s question of whether the court could survive the stench of such a blatantly political move in overturning court precedent.

[Sotomayor] was referring to the apparent willingness of the court to overthrow precedent simply because its membership changed. (The usual reasons for overriding precedent — such as new facts or an evolving social consensus — do not apply in this case.) As the solicitor general and the counsel for the Center of Reproductive Rights argued, this is the first time in history that the court will rip up decades of precedent to take away a fundamental personal right.

CDSofNM of the Kos community did an analysis of a partisan ruling on this abortion case wound mean. I’m not that much of a legal scholar to want to trace down every source in the footnotes (yes, there are footnotes to this post). I don’t understand how these things connect. I’ll let you read the details for yourself. The short summary: 1. Allowing the abortion laws in Texas and Mississippi (this case) to stand violates the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution, the clause that says federal law takes priority over state law. 2. A political ruling in this case invalidates the entire Bill of Rights.. 3. Reversing Roe is contrary to the Constitution’s Due Process Clause, and the 9th and 14th Amendments. That destroys the New Hampshire Compact and invalidates the entire Constitution. Joan McCarter of Kos wrote that Sotomayor’s statement – coupled with what the three conservative justices said in oral arguments – is a strong call for expanding the Court. We can’t wait for the Court to erode our rights. Expand the court now. And what are Democrats doing? Scaring their base as an opportunity to fundraise so we can elect more Democrats to protect abortion rights. Yo, Dems, that’s what we did in 2020. We worked real hard and especially hard in Georgia to give you a majority. You have that majority now. We expect action now – not after the next election – which from the voting rights issues you’re not addressing you’re likely to lose. And what can they do now? End the filibuster. Expand the Court before this ruling is handed down (which can’t be done with the filibuster in place). Pass federal pro choice legislation. Fundraising will be a whole lot easier if abortion rights are secure and Democrats brag about it rather than using the loss of abortion rights as a fundraising tactic. Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics, tweeted:

I don’t think the White House understands how much its weakness in the fight for democracy demoralizes a public that will have to find strength to fight for democracy after Biden is out of office and his staff is back at their big law firms and influence peddling consultancies.

Ashley Nicole Black described it quite well:

You may lose some rights, but don't worry you can vote! Oh, they're restricting voting and gerrymandering so some folks votes don't count? Okay! Well, you can protest! Wait, they made it legal to run over protestors with cars and ppl get away with shooting them? Ok you can uh...

Joan McCarter of Kos reported Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin has been gumming up the Democrat’s agenda so well that Moscow Mitch prays for him every night. And the Coalition to Protect American Workers (actually to protect mega-donors – another case of a group choosing a name that is opposite of what they do) is spending a large six figures on an ad campaign thanking Manchin for standing up to Biden to protect the American worker. And they’re using the same lies that Manchin has been spouting for the last few months In a post from a couple weeks ago McCarter reported on Manchin and his sidekick Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and their routine to reduce the size of the Build Back Better bill:

When one made a demand that was satisfied, the other would pop up with their own demands, dragging the process out and singlehandedly fanning the flames of “Dems in disarray” reporting. The whole point of this exercise for the two of them, it appears, is to open up the Republican donor spigot. That’s were the really big political money is, and courting it is so much easier than doing the necessary work it takes to amass small donor donations. Like showing up in your state, holding town meetings, and being accountable to the people who put you in office. ... The two have set personal bests for fundraising this year, Sinema raking in $2.6 million in the first three quarters—“two and a half times as much as she raised in the same period last year”—and Manchin $3.3 million, which is a whopping 14 times as much as his haul from last year. Both are up for reelection in 2024, so this push isn’t to save their seats in a difficult midterm election for Democrats. More likely, at least in Sinema’s case, it’s to try to scare off a primary challenger.

McCarter wrote that the White House has broken out how much of the BBB money would go to their states of West Virginia and Arizona and how much would help the needy in each state.

There’s a tremendous need in both states, with both ranking in the bottom 10 in the nation for the people living in poverty, Arizona at 43rd and West Virginia 44th. You sure couldn’t tell it by the priorities of these two senators.

It’s been about ten days since someone drove a vehicle into the Waukesha Christmas Parade, killing a few and injuring several. At the time Robert Silverman tweeted a thread about how the far right disinformation machine went after the driver. Someone got the identity of the driver and found their social media account. Then another added screenshots with an editorial slant somewhere between inflammatory and false. There were claims the driver supported Black Lives Matter (though the driver didn’t use that tag). Soon they added the claim that the vehicle driver was doing it as a BLM revenge attack on the Rittenhouse verdict. None of that is true, but their audience will remain convinced that BLM targeted the parade. Alec Karakatsanis, founder of the Civil Rights Corps, tweeted a thread about the New York Times publishing a headline it knew was false. The headline was for another bit of pro-police propaganda. The false headline:

After Murders ‘Doubled Overnight,’ the N.Y.P.D. Is Solving Fewer Cases

Note the quotes in there that say this isn’t a verified fact, but what someone said. That someone is a professor. In the article he didn’t say murders doubled, but police detective caseloads doubled. But the NYT didn’t provide stats or verification or identify their professor as a former cop. They put all this in the headline, which is all many people read, but is enough to create clicks and outrage. They put it in quotes so they could deny making the assertion themselves. Grab a tissue for this last one. Some people understand what a community is for. This scene took place after the school shooting in Oxford, Michigan. Allie Gross tweeted and included a photo of the crowd:

McClaren Hospital where Oxford community is gathered to support the family of Justin Shillings, one of the four teens killed this week. Justin is an organ donor and the crowd is here so that when his body is moved for surgery his family can look down and see the love and support.