The Conservative Justices Bet Dobbs Wouldn't Hurt Republicans Forever. They Were Right

[In It to Win It]

Balls and Strikes

When the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, the five Republican justices in the majority had a sense of how dangerous their decision could be to their party’s electoral future. For as intensely as the conservative legal movement despised Roe, that decision’s compromise framework remained broadly popular among normal people: In May 2022, shortly after a draft of Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization leaked to the press, a CNN poll found that two-thirds of Americans did not want the justices to overturn Roe. Over the preceding three decades of polling the question, the percentage of respondents who supported overturning Roe had never risen above 36 percent.

Near the end of his opinion, Alito sort of gestured at the burden he’d placed on his fellow Republicans, but just as quickly appealed to his solemn responsibility not to think about it. “We do not pretend to know how our political system or society will respond to today’s decision,” he wrote. “And even if we could foresee what will happen, we would have no authority to let that knowledge influence our decision.” The Court’s job, he continued, was to return “the issue of abortion to the people and their elected representatives,” and let the chips fall where they may.

I am guessing that, at least at first, Alito did not like where those chips ended up falling. In the two years after Dobbs, many Republican-controlled state legislatures passed draconian abortion bans, but where voters had the opportunity to decide the issue for themselves, the result was different. Every time abortion access was on the ballot, it won—not just in blue states like California and Vermont, but also in purplish states like Michigan and Ohio, and in red states like Kansas and Kentucky, where GOP-leaning electorates nonetheless repudiated their elected officials’ efforts to restrict abortion access.

The backlash to Dobbs also buoyed Democratic politicians in tight races, and helped the party outperform expectations and even expand its narrow Senate majority in the 2022 midterm elections. Exit polling in swing states like Michigan and Pennsylvania revealed that 27 percent of voters said that abortion was the most important factor in their decision, trailing only inflation (31 percent), and by only a few points.

[Cha]

1. PROPAGANDA! many voted for TSF

they believed Only he could Save them.

[Skittles]

2. in the end, misogyny won

sickening

[ColinC]

3. Lol nobody cares about rights

[DeepWinter]

4. I have

4 kids, Gen-X and Millennials, 9 nephews /nieces all Gen-Z and Millennials. Abortion wasn't even a talking point among them. It was all housing prices, economy, inflation. Basic kitchen table, pay the bills stuff.

[Scrivener7]

7. If young people are worried about "kitchen table" stuff now, wait til they are forced

to feed and clothe 7 kids around that kitchen table.

This isn't over. They are idiotic to separate the two issues.

It may take them a while, God help them, but they'll learn.

[Fish700]

8. They can't afford to have kids

That is one of the main areas of discussions among millennials online. They are angry that when they grew up, their father worked at a gas station and somehow had new cars, a stay-at-home wife, a summer cabin, and went on a vacation every year when they have collage degrees and can't afford to keep a pet. It's even a meme.

https://www.boredpanda.com/me-vs-parents-memes/

[Scrivener7]

10. And yet, many will be forced to.

Also, I do think that is quite exaggerated. I am of an age that I would be a parent to millennnials if I had kids. There was no point in my life where I could work in a gas station and afford much of anything. I think that was truer in MY parents generation, because of the GI bill and the comparatively inflated salaries given to men until women came into the workforce.

My era was when the stay-at-home wife became untenable and women had to go to work to make ends meet. Yes, college expenses have exploded since I went, and my college was cheap.

But summer cabins? new cars? stay at home moms? yearly vacations? Those were just not an option for any but the rich, even then.

[Fish700]

12. I am probably about the same age as you with the same experience

But that is the perception online. As a Gen Xer I had relatives and friends whose families were just like this. Coal miners with new cars, swimming pools, and a stay-at-home wife.

[Scrivener7]

13. Well - coal miners were a different story! For some reason, they were propped up financially

until the whole thing collapsed under them. (I still don't know why the obsolescence of that tiny segment of the workforce was such a huge political topic when the demise of retail jobs went largely unlamented. There were probably ten times the number of retail jobs lost, and in a much shorter span of time. But I digress!)

But as you say, that is what the kids believe. And as we have just seen, the truth has become whatever we believe of the things we are told.

[Shrek]

9. Do any of them live in a state where abortion rights are restricted?

If not, it makes sense that the issue doesn't carry much urgency with them.

[John Shaft]

5. Anything that tells you that the right thing is wrong

is propaganda.

Bodily autonomy is the fundamental basis for all other autonomy. This will always be true. This is always the right thing to do. Stick to the truth like a "light far, far away."

Persuasive opinion articles are an industry that is part of the corrupt media system (which includes most of the internet) in this country. Listen to your people. If you don't have people, listen to the voices in your head, but for fuck's sake stop buying into the mainstream for ANYTHING. It is all corrupt, it has always been corrupt, the media has ALWAYS been used as a tool of control. Maybe a useful test is to employ 2 degrees of separation from a billionaire for what you allow as valid. I do know that any profit-driven entity does not have the public good front and center. For-profit entities exist to make profit. That's it. In a nutshell. Oversimplified as fuck, but you get the gist.

[Shrek]

6. Seems like success at the state level has taken the sting out of Dobbs n/t

[newdeal2]

11. Until they get a national abortion ban passed, which he will sign

Or target access to contraceptives and mifepristone.

Accepting fewer rights forever because of temporary economic pain is plain stupid IMO.

[Jit423]

14. WTF are we doing to ourselves??? First, electing Trump, failing to convict him after two impeachments, and

electing him again after he has been found guilty of sexual assault, and 39 felonies. Now this:
AI and automation: posting from a poster on a different site:

"For context I work production in local news. Recently there’s been developments in AI driven systems that can do 100% of the production side of things which is, direct, audio operate, and graphic operate -all of those jobs are all now gone in one swoop. This has apparently been developed by the company Q ai.

For the last decade I’ve worked in local news and have garnered skills I thought I would be able to take with me until my retirement, now at almost 30 years old, all of those job opportunities for me are gone in an instant. The only person that’s keeping their job is my manager, who will overlook the system and do maintenance if needed. That’s 20 jobs lost and 0 gained for our station.

We were informed we are going to be the first station to implement this under our company. This means that as of now our entire production staff in our news station is being let go. Once the system is implemented and running smoothly then this system is going to be implemented nationwide (effectively eliminating tens of thousands of jobs.) There are going to be 0 new jobs built off of this AI platform.

There are people I work with in their 50’s, single, no college education, no family, and no other place to land a job once this kicks in. I have no idea what’s going to happen to them. This is it guys. This is what our future with AI looks like. This isn’t creating any new jobs this is knocking out entire industry level jobs without replacing them."
___________________________________
Well, NAFTA and immigration can't be blamed for taking these jobs.
Believe it or not, and most would not, but automation and "progress" coupled with greed and corruption are the big driving forces behind the exponential growth of the income gap in the USA. Humans are rapidly losing skills to build and repair by hand and brain and to think critically and to communicate personally. Project 2025 is designed to do more of this. If Trump's appointments are all confirmed, the country is screwed for our lifetime.
Wonder what happens when the satellites fail, the power grids collapse and most of the farmers stop growing food and grow Weed? Sounds like a novel, doesn't it. Maybe I'll get AI to write it?