Mentally, a lot of Democrats are in a strange place these days. They… hell, let’s be honest, we won (since I’m clearly taking sides here). We control the White House and, to a lesser degree, congress. The upcoming election is challenging but, at least for the moment, polls have been trending in our favor and the Republicans have given us a lot to work with.
Given the stakes of the next two elections, this would seem to be a moment for focus on the poor quality of Republican candidates and on issues where the GOP has locked itself into incredibly unpopular positions (particularly reproductive rights, the insurrection and the attack on Social Security and Medicare).
But instead of focus, we are all too often seeing despair and panic, or at the very least, a sense of helplessness.
Take this reader letter that Josh Marshall ran along with approving comments in his editor’s blog recently. [Emphasis added.]
Just read your latest piece. I still think you are correct on the Codify Roe promise. But every single day that goes by without explicit promises, in living rooms and cars, the energy wanes. The right to abortion (and the right to privacy in general), affects many, many people. The actuality of it, on a day to day or week to week basis, doesn’t.
We saw a lot of think pieces a couple of months ago arguing that the electoral impact of repealing Roe would be limited since the new laws (Read more…)