Tag Archive: Roe v. Wade

Lessons from the Biden – Trump presidential debate

President Joe Biden on Memorial Day 2024

Last night, President Joe Biden and Donald Trump held their first presidential debate of 2024. We had predicted that the debate, hosted by CNN at its Atlanta studios with no live audience, would be “a bust.” It was, but in a slightly different way than we had thought. Many viewers and analysts seem to agree that Trump told tons of lies but was forceful and dynamic, and Biden told the truth but gave a very weak performance. We then learned afterward that Biden had a cold, which gave him a hoarse voice and other ill effects that hindered his performance.

The election is happening in just over four months, and a second, and probably final, debate between Biden and Trump is scheduled for September 10 on ABC. Presumably, Trump feels he did just fine last night and doesn’t have to do anything different next time. Thus, the question for Biden and the Democrats is, what lessons can be learned, and what is the best course going forward to maximize the chances of winning the election? Several things come to mind:

Abortion measure could put Florida in play in 2024 elections

Abortion rights protests becoming more popular

Florida voters will have the opportunity to vote for abortion rights in the 2024 elections, as the Florida Supreme Court on Monday approved placing  a proposed amendment to Florida’s constitution on the ballot this November that would restrict Florida’s ability to ban abortion “before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health.” The proposed ballot measure emerged after the 6-3 Republican majority U.S. Supreme Court, with three new Republican justices nominated by Donald Trump, overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, ruling that there is no constitutional right to abortion, and turning the issue over to the states. That year, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis  had signed a law banning abortions after 15 weeks. Then, last year, just before announcing his ill-fated presidential campaign, DeSantis signed a new six-week abortion ban. The Florida Supreme Court’s ruling on Monday allowed even the more restrictive six-week ban to take effect, highlighting the urgency of the voter amendment.

Florida has voted more Republican in recent years since Barack Obama won the state in both the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. For example, Ron DeSantis was elected Governor in 2018 by the narrowest of margins, but won re-election in 2022 by quite a large number of votes. Likewise, both houses of Florida’s legislature have big Republican majorities. And of course, Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Florida presidential election, and also beat Joe Biden in Florida in 2020.

The Florida abortion rights ballot measure, however, has the chance to turn Florida competitive for the Democrats once again in the 2024 elections, especially at the presidential level. Since the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe, for example, abortion rights have been a major issue helping the Democrats in numerous elections around the country. Moreover, according to a poll released last month, 12 percent of voters say that abortion is the most important issue in the 2024 elections, and such voters overwhelmingly support President Joe Biden over Donald Trump. Likewise, a poll released last November indicated that 62 percent of Florida voters favored the proposed abortion rights amendment. The Florida Supreme Court’s abortion rulings (as well as its ruling approving the placement on the ballot in November of a proposed constitutional amendment allowing recreational marijuana use for adults) similarly could drive Democratic and Independent voter turnout to defeat the Republicans in certain Sunshine State elections this year.

At the same time that so many Democratic voters are galvanizing around abortion rights and women’s health, the Republicans’ success in their 49-year effort to overturn Roe v. Wade ironically could take this central issue off the table for them in the upcoming elections. Accordingly, Florida may well become the place this November where Republicans learn the adage, “be careful what you wish for.”

Photo by Fibonacci Blue, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/uxGiIf

To tout President Biden’s accomplishments, make it bite-sized

President Biden boosts high-speed trains and infrastructure

As we are now less than one year from the 2024 elections, there have been some lists of President Joe Biden‘s many accomplishments floating around online, including from the White House itself. The lists are quite long and impressive, comprising legislation (American Rescue Plan, Inflation Reduction Act, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act), executive orders (creating new national monuments, steps to curb gun violence, AI safety measures, and more. These accomplishments are important to share, because mainstream media outlets often refuse to acknowledge them. However, the comprehensive lists of what President Biden has achieved can be overwhelming, especially for anyone trying to recite these accomplishments in conversation, on video, or even in writing.

Therefore, a better method might be to pick one subject at a time, and focus on that. For example, earlier this year, the Biden team began enlisting what some call “an army” of mostly young social media influencers, and even gave them a special briefing room at the White House. These influencers use social media such at TikTok to create short pieces on topics in which they have chosen to specialize, such as financial policy, gun violence, marijuana decriminalization, electric vehicles (EVs), and more.

While these social media influencers are well-known, with large audiences and familiar platforms, there is no reason why the rest of us cannot similarly use the tools of communication at our disposal — blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels, old-fashioned letters to the editor of local or national newspapers, website comments, and even face-to-face conversations with friends and family at upcoming Thanksgiving and other holiday dinners — to share all this good Biden administration news. In doing so, sticking to one topic at a time might be most palatable to those listeners and readers with short attention spans due to holiday food comas or otherwise.

Besides being able to hold people’s attention spans, a further advantage of this bite-sized approach to sharing President Biden’s accomplishments is that it lets individual Democratic voters play up the issues that are most important to them.  For instance, one who thinks climate change is the most crucial issue we face can talk about the Inflation Reduction Act, with its tax credits for EVs and solar energy installations. Another person who is most passionate about protecting abortion rights in the wake of the Republican majority U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade can bring up President Biden’s executive orders to safeguard abortion and contraception, and so on. In this manner, all of the important issues likely would get aired, no one’s eyes would glaze over with exhaustion, and President Biden would get the full credit he deserves.

Photo by Maryland GovPics, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/GaEPVS

Republican overreaching may hurt them in 2024 elections

Younger activists, a major Republican fear

Republicans have a predictable pattern: even with government nearly evenly divided, they get drunk with power, use their votes to overreach with extreme policies, and wind up alienating voters in the next election. In June 2022, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court, with three new right wing Republican justices courtesy of Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell, voted along party lines to take away the right to abortion that had been established in the Court’s Roe v. Wade decision nearly 50 years earlier. This decision set off a firestorm among voters, especially younger voters, who showed up to the voting booths in droves five months later and gave the Democrats considerably better results (retaining control and actually winning a one-seat majority in the U.S, Senate, barely losing control of the House, and gaining state governorships and state legislature majorities) in an off-year election where the party in power usually does much worse.

Republicans, however, did not learn the lesson from the 2022 elections, i.e., that their extremism scared away voters. Instead, the GOP has charged ahead with even more extremist actions that could hurt them in 2024. These include:

List of culprits in the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade

Republican U.S. Senator Susan Collins, not looking too good

On Monday night, the explosive news broke that the Republican-majority U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is about to overturn its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision granting a constitutional right to abortion, and indeed, that a draft of the decision is already being circulated on the Court. The likely result of this imminent decision will be to leave abortion to the states, where it is estimated that at least half of them (primarily the ones with Republican governors and/or legislatures) will outlaw abortion completely, even in the case of rape, incest, and possibly he health or life of the mother.

To many observers, the news about this decision is shocking but not surprising, given the Court’s 6-3 majority of conservative Republicans. These Republican justices were put on the Court for the very purpose of overturning Roe, and perhaps many other decisions granting rights to women, blacks, LGBTQ Americans and other minorities; as well as protections for consumers, workers, the environment, wildlife, etc. However, the list of culprits that led us to this day goes well beyond the six current Republican SCOTUS justices and the Republican presidents who put them there. Here are some additional parties who share responsibility for the impending loss of a woman’s right to choose:

On Kavanaugh nomination, Democrats finally lose their innocence

Protesters against U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh

Donald Trump‘s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court should be the final nail in the coffin for Democratic innocence about how the power game is now played in Washington, D.C. Republicans threw out Robert’s Rules and any shred of decency or fair play decades ago. The Republicans know that politics is a numbers game — numbers of votes to get elected, number of Supreme Court votes to get a majority decision, number of Senate votes to confirm a Supreme Court nominee. For the Republicans, it’s not about character, lying, past statements or even past crimes. It’s only about winning. For some remaining Democrats, that light switch hopefully has been flipped on in the face of the Kavanaugh nomination hearings.