NY Times:
Will the Abortion Debate Keep Moderate Women in the Democrats’ Camp?
From the suburbs of Philadelphia and Grand Rapids to more conservative territory in Nebraska, there are early signs that some voters who disapprove of Mr. Biden also increasingly believe that Republicans have gone too far to the right on a range of issues, particularly abortion.
It’s a dynamic with the potential to shape statewide races and some House contests, and one that crystallizes a central tension of the midterm elections as Democrats test whether efforts to define today’s Republicans as extremists can mitigate the political headwinds they confront.
Max Boot / WaPo:
American democracy is broken. Here’s how to fix it.
There is no justice in a political system that gives Republicans six of nine Supreme Court seats even though a Republican has won the popular vote for president only once in the past 30 years. So, too, there is something deeply amiss with a Senate that gives California (population 39.3 million) the same number of seats as Wyoming (population 581,348). The Founders never envisioned such an imbalance between power and population. It undermines any pretense that we are still a democracy.
Adam Kinzinger / Twitter:
1) When your friends say this committee is not fair, maybe remind them that those testifying are all republicans, appointed by trump. That Kevin McCarthy got a fair deal in a split commission, but then took his ball and went home. When the committee was then formed…2) Kevin pulled his remaining three members after two, who foamented the insurrection, were not allowed to stay on.@GOPLeaderCOULD have then added two more, but Trump told him to pull his members…3) he thought this “brilliant move” would pull the plug on the committee. But it did not. Cheney and I got on. This BIPARTISAN committee has been able to find out things that up until recently were denied by the Jan 6th truthers…4) so they are left with trying to discredit a young woman with more courage than they could muster in a lifetime. Except… that is not working. Cassidy does not seek the limelight, but she is compelled with honor. She did not even have to swear an oath to the constitution.5) like Kevin, Elise, Kristi Noem and others did. But she volunteered to come under oath to tell what she knows. She is a better person than them all. They’re all scared. They should be.
Ashley Lopez / NPR:
The Christian Right is winning in court while losing in public opinion
[Robert P.] Jones [PRRI]said he also sees the Christian Right beginning to part with democratic norms. For example, many Christian conservatives have been supporting voting restrictions and backing Trump’s election lies. Jones said it’s one of the ways they can make sure their country is a Christian nation.
“I think we are seeing the last kind of desperate grasp – that by the way includes violence – that is kind of a desperate attempt to kind of hold on to that vision of the country and to hold on to power,” he says.
Ultimately, Jones said, this period in American history could be a hingepoint for democracy.
“I think if we can protect our democratic institutions and we can weather these attacks on it, then I think there is light at the other end of the tunnel,” he said. “But I do think we are in for some dark days.”
More and more white evangelical Christians are now talking about the US as a Christian nation in ways that verge on or outright embrace Christian nationalism – the idea that the US is a Christian nation and its laws should be rooted in the Bible.
Susan J Demas / Michigan Advance:
Forcing 10-year-old rape victims to give birth isn’t moral, just or ‘pro-life’
In a post-Roe America, anti-abortion forces are proving it was never about standing up for women
One of the first victims of this misogynistic fiat was a 10-year-old rape victim in Ohio who was forced to travel to Indiana to terminate her pregnancy.
It’s clear that a lot of Republicans skipped health class, but pregnancy and childbirth can be dangerous even for healthy, adult women (far more so than abortion).
Bill Scher / Washington Monthly:
The End of Roe v. Wade Could Help Democrats in These Midterm Races
Instead of fighting each other over abortion, Democrats can fight these Republicans.Per reports fromThe New York Times,The Washington Postand National Public Radio, there is mounting “frustration” from progressives over the White House’s response to theDobbsdecision. Ocasio-Cortez, on Twitter, shared a viral video of two abortion rights protestors chastising “Joe Biden’s campaign” for making afund-raising appealin the aftermath ofDobbswhen Democrats have failed to codify abortion rights despite their congressional majorities. The New York representative sympathetically added, “We simply cannot make promises, hector people to vote, and then refuse to use our full power when they do.”
Legitimate arguments can be made about whether Democrats should take every conceivable action — without regard to existing law and Senate rules — to protect abortion rights now or whether party members should only work within the system because further erosion of norms would make all rights, reproductive and beyond, at the mercy of shifting political winds.
But why should Democrats get mired in an intraparty debate about tactics when they can unite against Republicans banning abortion?
David A Graham / Atlantic:
Actually Good News About Voting for a Change
Colorado’s simple plan to increase voter registration is already working.
This sort of bad news has overshadowed one of the more interesting and encouraging changes in the country. Starting in May 2020, Colorado modified its registration system so that anyone who gets a new driver’s license and provides proof of citizenship is now automatically registered to vote. The state then sends people a postcard informing them of their registration and offering them a chance to opt out. That’s a small tweak from the prior system, in which anyone who came to the DMV would be offered the option to register, but a study produced earlier this year by two Stanford University political scientists shows that the new approach has made a significant difference: more than 200,000 new registered voters in the 16 months through September 2021, in a state where about 3.3 million votes were cast in the 2020 presidential election.
That’s the first real empirical indication of how effective this system, known as “back-end automatic voter registration,” can be, as compared to the more common “front end” system, in which people are offered a chance to opt into registering when they visit the DMV. (The latter approach is “automatic” insofar as voters do not have to visit a different agency or mail in a form.) While democracy advocates and many in the Democratic Party fret over threats to voting, a shift to back-end AVR could be a simple and effective way to lower barriers to voting and expand access.