Turnabout is fair play.
Texas got clever. They figured out a workaround to ban abortion. The Supreme Court let them do it.
Now California is using the same technique--against guns.
Of course California Governor Gavin Newsom is planning to run for president in 2024. He is filling a void.
Newsom is taking visible action on an issue highly popular with the public. He will get criticized for it by the NRA. The controversy makes his actions newsworthy and the criticism shows he is wiling to pay a price. That brings him credibility as a person of principle, standing up to the NRA.
There are favorable unspoken messages imbedded in Newsom's actions. One is that Newsom can act while Biden and Democratic senators are helpless. Another is that Newsom is a fighter who will take bold in-your-face actions. A third is that he recognizes that the Supreme Court has replaced the president as the seat of power in America. If you want to look like a giant killer you need to take on the giant.
This is not a typical mid-term election. The traditional and expected outcome in the midterm is for the presidential party to lose congressional seats. But Biden's win did not sweep in on his coattails Democrats in marginal and vulnerable seats. The opposite happened. Republicans gained seats. Biden does not need to be checked by congressional majorities of the opposite party. Republicans call him weak from senility; Democrats admit he is showing his age. He is an unlikely tyrant. The Democratic majority in the House is narrow. The Democratic majority in the Senate is non-existent. Manchin is strong, not the Democratic majority. Democrats are already handcuffed by Republicans.
The strong out of control tyrant is the Supreme Court. It is decidedly, openly, joyfully conservative and Republican. They just took away a right and they hint that others are at risk. Red state legislatures are grabbing opportunity with trigger laws and total abortion bans. Republican senators are openly talking about rolling back gay rights and forms of contraception and positing national bans. A Republican attorney general wants to prosecute a doctor who provided an abortion to a 10 year old rape victim. The counter-trend in the 2022 midterms is likely to be against the people really running things, the 6-3 Supreme Court and extreme behaviors in the red states.
Newsom is riding that counter-trend, hoisting the Supreme Court on its own petard. California has attempted to make it impossible for the Court to distinguish their law from Texas'. California replaced the word "abortion" with "gun violence." Newsom is daring the Supreme Court to expose its hypocrisy by overturning California's gun law while allowing the Texas abortion law to stand. He said,We believe this will be litigated in the Supreme Court and we believe the Supreme Court will be challenged. Because if there's any principle left whatsoever -- and that's an open ended question -- with this Supreme Court, there is no way they can deny us the right to move in this direction.
I might be wrong on both counts. People look up to tall, good-looking people. Maybe there is no such thing as too attractive. In any case, Newsom is showing political skill and courage. He is positioning himself as a regulator of something most people want regulated. He picked a popular issue and picked his enemy. That is what winners do.
7 comments:
We could do a lot worse. In fact, we have. I can see him doing well in a debate with DeSantis, if Republicans still have the balls, or ovaries, to debate.
In 2020 people voted "anybody but Trump". 2024 may be "anybody but Trump or Biden". Gavin Newsome vs Ben Crenshaw would be a thought provoking choice.
Newsom V. Crenshaw would be thought provoking, for the 65 or 70 % of the populace still capable of coherent thought. At least, I hope it's 65 or 70 %.
"The strong, out of control tyrant is the Supreme Court. It is decidedly, openly, joyfully conservative and Republican".
Once again, yet again, the Court is and has long been--ever since Marbury v. Madison in 1803--a coequal branch of government subject to legal and political/ideological ebbs and flows because Justices are nominated by the executive and approved by Congress. During the Eisenhower administration, the Court became decidedly, openly, joyfully liberal and Democratic, and remained so until the Trump administration. Democrats are discovering they have long and erroneously taken for granted that the Court MUST be a politically liberal institution. I was a little kid then but I've seen pictures of once-ubiquitous "Impeach Justice William O. Douglas" billboards around a half-century ago. Robert Bork was treated shamefully. The tyrant worm turns.
Whether losing positive control of the Court will translate into midterm election energy for Democrats remains to be seen. I suspect based on current polling that it will not, at least not in places that will matter politically, because of primarily the economy, and to a lesser extent because today's Democratic base and platform thoroughly alienates most Americans, especially Hispanics. Moreover, on the merits upon which Newsom hopes to capitalize, the daily realities for women re contraception and abortion are not similar to those 50 years ago. The Second Amendment has been revivified where it counts, and most Americans (in my opinion) blame criminals for gun violence, not guns themselves, though admittedly it is far from an easy either/or.
As a co-equal branch of government, Supreme Court justices should be limited in the time they are allowed to serve.
On second thought, Newsom V. Deathsantis might be even more exciting.
Gavin Newsom is a smug elite liberal snob, as demonstrated by his French Laundry escapade, in which he attended an unmasked party for a lobbyist at one of the country’s most expensive restaurants, during a mask mandate he had imposed on “the little people.”
Taking a stand against gun rights by hypocritically adopting a technique he disagrees with is not going to endear Newsom to the American working class.
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