America’s Future
The 2024 election is about a lot of things. For MAGA-Republicans, it’s about America changing in ways that they don’t recognize. As one MAGA-Republican said to me; this is an election about what a future America will look like. We have two different visions for our future. His version is unacceptable to me, and my version is unacceptable to him. Isn’t it ironic that two (too?) old men, both definitely of “their time”, the 1980’s, are running to define the America of the 2020’s and beyond?
So our choice is about political power in America, whether it will remain in the “white majority” hands, or be shared by the changing demographics and colors of a new American electorate. It’s about culture; whether the America of the future will recognize the diverse backgrounds of all Americans, or base advancement on fitting into an old “model” of what Americans are “supposed” to be. And it’s about “20th century morality”, the idea that gender and identity is binary, and that everyone must fit into the “square hole”, whether they are a “round peg” or not.
And it’s about wealth in America, and whether our Nation has an obligation to share that wealth. We are in an era when the difference between the “haves and have-nots” seems greater than ever before. The median household salary in 2023 was $74,202. That means that half of American households made less. To be in the top 10% of incomes it took almost three times that, $216,056. And the top 1% was almost three times more, $591,550 (DQYDJ). Truly the story of the first quarter of the twenty-first century is the rich got richer, and the poor were left behind.
The “Giant”
Those are important issues, and may determine the outcome in November.
But the “sleeping giant” awakened almost two years ago is the issue of abortion. There’s a lot you can say about the Trump Administration, but their ultimate success was in altering the trajectory of the United States Supreme Court. When Trump became President, there were four “conservative justices”, four “liberal justices”, and one seat remained vacant. When Trump left the White House, there were six conservatives, three of them “young” for the Court, with a minority of three liberals.
The clear goal of the conservative legal movement was to change the Court decision of Roe v Wade, that established a national abortion policy for fifty years. With a six seat majority on the Court, they did exactly that. They “un-wrote” the doctrine of a Constitutional right to privacy, and threw the regulation of abortion onto the state governments. That same “un-writing” might eventually apply to more than just abortion: gay marriage, gay civil rights, contraception, and inter-racial marriage all might be “on the block” (read the Justice Thomas concurrence to the Dodd decision).
Half the Citizens
Whatever you personally think of the Dodd decision, one thing is for sure. Over half of the citizens of the United States lost the right to make their own bodily decisions. Instead of a “national right”, that now becomes a matter of living in the right, or wrong, zip code. And I’m certainly not saying that “all women” are in favor of abortion. But what the Dodd decision and its fallout nationally did; is make a woman’s right to control her own body a “primary issue” for millions of women (and millions of men as well).
How much impact does Dodd have on voter mobilization? In Red-Red Kansas, a huge majority came out to vote to protect abortion rights. In (sadly) Red-er Ohio, voters came out twice in three months in massive numbers to do the same. Even in Kentucky, voters rejected an amendment banning abortion. Purple Michigan and Vermont, and in Blue California; the right of women to make their own choices was protected.
Driving Turnout
In the 2024 election, the swing-states of Arizona and Nevada, will have a “vote” on abortion. So will the Red state of Florida, and the Blue states of Colorado and Maryland. And while it’s not directly on the ballot, the state government of Texas has taken such an extreme view that it will impact elections there as well.
Just because abortion is on the ballot, doesn’t mean Democrats will necessarily win. But it does mean that voter turnout will be driven by more than just the Presidential question, and more than just other local issues. A larger voter turnout is usually good for Democrats. And besides, it’s difficult to see that for someone who goes to the polls to vote pro-choice, would then turn around and put the creator of the Dodds Supreme Court back in power again.
Joe Biden made the 2020 election about the fate of democracy. The election of 2024 still is about that fate. And no issue makes that clearer than the issue of a woman’s right to make her own choice for her own body. It’s the “giant” issue – and it’s no longer sleeping.
