09/11/2022
Up until the Dobbs decision, the conventional wisdom was that this would be a “red wave” year. Then things started looking up for the blue. Then, in the last few weeks polls started showing marked red gains and predicted broad GOP victories. Then election night came, and proved most of the polls were wrong again. It just goes to show you, no matter how much certain people think they can tell you what’s going to happen in politics, they’re more often wrong than right. It seemed like a good time to reshare this post from June.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade on Friday got me thinking again about the political winds of the last 50 years. I was born in January, 1973, the same month that historic court decision was handed down. Roe stood for a lot more than just when a woman had a right to autonomy over her own body - it was grounded in the constitutional right to privacy, something we took for granted so much more before the digital age exposed more personal secrets than folks were used to.
The politics which led to the court being able to make such a bold step (and another bold step last Friday) are rooted in changing national demographics, social mores, the decline of religion as a major factor in political discourse, and other socio economic factors. But it's not an aberration to see a court like the current one step out on a limb to undermine growing trends of liberty, autonomy, and conscience over the individual person. Dred Scott v. Sanford, promulgated in 1857, also grasped for a conservative brass ring amidst growing national dissatisfaction - that time over slavery as an institution. In its effort to stuff the liberty genie back in the bottle of history, it characterized black Americans in such derogatory terms as had not been previously endeavored in American jurisprudence. Its overreach was evidenced by a war, only 4 years later, that humiliated the south into economic submission. My point is not that the overturning of Roe will be the case for civil war, but that its eyebrow raising holding, amidst a national sentiment that disagrees, will lead to political ramifications not considered by its adherents. War being only, in the immortal words of Von Clausewitz, the continuation of politics by other means.
The attached image shows political control of the MN House of Representatives over the last 50 years. It's a project I started around 10 years ago and I add to it every election. One can see that, for the 1st half of this time period, and for the first 25 years after Roe, Democrats held virtual undisputed control of the MN House, with one exception in 1984 (Reagan's 1st reelect). In the second half (starting in 1998), Democrats haven't held the majority in even half of the legislative biennia. Column K contains general reasons supposed for electoral fortunes in each election year, but these are merely anecdotal. The unmistakable conclusion is that Democrats have been failing to deliver on such critical bread and butter issues which propelled them to victories, and sustained their abilities to enact progressive policies, through the early 1990s. This period, which included Newt Gingrich's Contract with America and the unholy birth of Fox News and the 24 hour news cycle, gave rise to Neo cons, the tea party, and a marked shift to the right by Republicans who wanted to win. And the public, the data shows, generally went along with them. More anecdotal evidence, but for the first 25 years of this chart, no sane Republican or Democrat would call Minnesota's 8th anything but our anchor blue MN Congressional District. Oh my, have things changed up there - but it's only a microcosm of what is happening in the nation and in MN. Up until the decision on overturning Roe, most political prognosticators were calling 2022 a red wave year. The court's overreach may modify that, mollifying usually reliable red voters and energizing turnout among blue voters. We'll only know for in November. But one thing we do not know is how a major change like this will affect politics over the next 50 years.
The women (and men) who fought for the constitutional right of liberty over their own bodies understood the real ramifications of what the Supreme Court could do to people. For 9 years, I served on the board of a national reproductive rights organization who, along with their sister organizations, perpetually raised the alarm to self described progressives about a post-Roe world. But it didn't matter, because unlike their feminist forebears who labored in the trenches to ensure Roe v. Wade was enshrined by a (ironically all-male) Supreme Court, today's blue voters took it for granted, the obvious harbingers of its demise notwithstanding. And even after 51% of white women voted for Donald J. Trump in 2016 (approx. 29% of whom had had an abortion) talking heads on the left and the right lampooned the warning signs.
Friday's decision is not just a decision about liberty, or healthcare, or economics, or race. It's a coda to a trend of fracturing on the left, driven by progressive disagreements, which allowed for the rise of people like Trump. Still it's been almost 6 years since that historic embarrassment, and I have not seen any hint self reflection by leftist demagogues who care more about the likes on their social media than they do about the policy they actually pass. Maybe this week's infamy will be the wake up call that is needed. And maybe then the next 50 years of this chart can start to look a little more blue again.
