Cromwell

If you were wondering what to get your mother for Mother’sDay, the GOP has just the answer for you—an unplanned and unwanted baby! What could be a better tribute to Mom than that?

And you thought she would settle for candy and flowers.

We’re back in Boomerville! It’s 30 degrees cooler here. Some of the trees don’t have leaves yet, but the grass is green, the apple trees are in bloom, and the dogwood are spectacular.

It’s good to be home, and 500 miles from Ron DeSantis.

I’ve never interviewed Emmanuel Macron, and I probably never will. If I did, however, it would go something like this:

(I enter Macron’s office in the Elysee Palace, where he is waiting for me)

C: Before I start, M. Le President, I have to say, this is a gorgeous office. Particularly that desk there . . .

M: Ne le touchez pas! That desk was old when the Sun King was alive!

C: Actually, that’s a good segue to my first question. To paraphrase Sarah Palin, how’s that Jupiterian thing working out for you?

M: Well, I won the election, didn’t I?

C: True. But do you attribute that to your winning personality or to your record and the weakness of your opponent?

M: Mostly the latter. The French people want someone who can solve their problems, not someone who just screams about them.

C: It seems to me that the French people always want something different than what they have.

M: There’s some truth to that, but the French are not unique in that respect. America went from Obama to Trump, after all.

C: There is a lot of international concern about the political health of France even though you won fairly comfortably. After all, Le Pen got 41 percent of the vote. Do you think the concern is justified?

M: In part. It is possible that this is the high water mark for populism in France. We just don’t know at this point.

C: I have a theory that political systems are unstable when they lack responsible, well-defined parties on both the center-right and the center-left. Do you agree with that?

M: I think there is some validity to it.

C: Don’t you think that is a perfect description of where France is today? You occupy the entire center. That means anyone who is dissatisfied has to gravitate to the extremes.

M: Am I concerned about that? Yes. It would be much better if we had a plausible, responsible opposition.

C: What are you going to do about it?

M: That’s really an issue for the other political parties–not for me. My job is to deliver the goods for the public, not to figure out what the opposition should do.

C: What does Ukraine mean for your idea of European sovereignty? After all, America has been leading the way in the battle against Russia.

M: In the end, Russia is Europe’s problem. It always has been. We can’t just stop talking to them. We need a better way to resolve problems than war. That’s what European history was all about between 1945 and today.

C: What do you think ultimately happens with Ukraine?

M: We’ll have a deal that nobody likes. Russia will lick its wounds for a few years. We have to make sure they don’t try it again after that.

C: How do you do that?

M: By creating some new security machinery that provides the Russians with both carrots and sticks.

C: Will the Germans go along with that?

M: Good question. I’m working on that.

C: Merci for your time. (I leave)

The prevailing narrative after the Vance victory is that Trump still maintains his control over the GOP. The reality is more nuanced than that.

Vance won a clear plurality, but nothing like a majority, when faced with opposition you can clearly identify with the PBP and CL factions of the GOP. As a result, his victory looks a lot like Trump’s victories in the 2016 primaries, when he rarely received a majority of the votes.

The problem, of course, is that the Reactionaries are using their plurality to dominate the GOP, and the more moderate, principled groups are doing nothing to stop them. In that sense, it doesn’t matter whether Trump has the support of the entire GOP or not.

We know that Alito’s draft may change before the final opinion is issued. What makes this situation unique is our ability to compare the draft with the opinion, and to speculate as to the reasons for any changes.

I don’t expect to see many meaningful differences. What you should be looking for is any revisions to the language which emphatically distinguishes abortion from other culture war legal issues in spite of a mode of analysis that potentially encompasses far more than abortion. It would be extremely embarrassing for the majority to accept the current language and then find a few years later, for example, that same-sex marriage is a recently invented, bogus right that didn’t exist at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified.

If the distinction language is watered down, and you’re gay, be very afraid, because the Court is coming after you.

Of him, not the French people.

The populist wave is still growing. Macron increasingly looks like a solitary figure with his fingers in the dyke. What happens when he’s gone? Who will keep France from going full MAGA then?

France won’t be politically healthy until it has viable center-right and center-left parties again. Macron needs to be thinking hard about how to get from here to there during his second term.

They should be dancing in the streets; after all, this is the hour that they have dreamed of for 49 years. And yet, the GOP is whining about the breach of protocol instead of gloating. Why?

This is the party of Donald Trump, so you can immediately dismiss the idea that the GOP holds our institutions in some special reverence. This is purely about self-interest. Either the Republicans fear that an overwhelmingly hostile public reaction will scare Barrett or Kavanaugh into retreating to a more moderate position, or they believe the decision will cost them votes in the upcoming elections.

It’s yet another case of being careful what you ask for, because you might get it.

The Texas abortion vigilante law owed its unusual construction to the state’s desire to immunize it from federal court review. After Dobbs, there will be no constitutional right to abortion, and thus no apparent need for vigilantes. Will the law, and others inspired by it, disappear?

Not immediately, because state governments will have difficulty, as a practical (not a legal) matter, enforcing the new restrictions, due to a lack of resources. Highly motivated vigilantes can fill in the gap.

The problem, from a red state perspective, is that the blue states can retaliate by adopting their own vigilante laws on issues such as gun control. California has already shown some interest in doing this. Look for this fairly appalling way to push the legal envelope to vanish once the blue states get into the act.

As I’ve noted many times before, the vast majority of self-proclaimed “pro-life” reactionaries are actually just anti-abortion; they are less interested in protecting the unborn than in controlling the sex lives of women, who are viewed as latter-day Eves tempting men and leading them astray. That said, there are some genuinely pro-life people who follow the teachings of the Catholic Church on issues such as the death penalty and compassion for immigrants as well as abortion.

This should be their moment. With Roe gone, they should be fighting furiously to expand the welfare state to protect the interests of the women who will now be forced to give birth against their will. They should be doing it with the same energy that they used in the struggle against abortion.

So where is the uproar? Where is the blizzard of columns advocating for poor women in the NYT? Where are the rowdy demonstrations directed at the leaders of the GOP? Do you see and hear them?

Silence. The true pro-lifers know they have no power over the GOP. Widespread misery and social dysfunction are not their goal, but they are a price worth paying to save the lives of fertilized eggs.

It is a deal with the devil.

Whatever you may think about the reasoning in Roe, you can’t call it a partisan decision; most of the justices in the majority were appointed by Republicans, and one of the dissenters was appointed by JFK. Whatever you might think of the draft decision in Dobbs, on the other hand, it clearly is a partisan decision. Alito probably doesn’t care, but it isn’t a good look for the Supreme Court.

I read somewhere this morning that GOP members of Congress are already discussing legislation to enforce a nationwide ban on abortion. Don’t say I never warned you.

As I predicted even before the 2020 election, the most powerful Joe in Washington is Manchin, not Biden. As a result, the Democrats’ agenda is bottled up in Congress. In the meantime, red state legislatures are having a field day imposing their culture war views on the left, frequently in the name of “freedom.”

Is it any wonder that the left is demoralized?

I read the opinion on Politico this morning. My reactions are as follows:

1. My initial assumption was that the opinion was leaked by one of the clerks for a liberal justice, but, on further reflection, I have doubts about that. This could very well be a signal to red state legislatures that there is no risk in moving ahead with total abortion bans as quickly as possible. If so, the leaker probably works for a right-wing justice.
2. With one notable exception, the opinion is consistent with the predictions I made several months ago. It contains lots of analysis about history and text; it is very pro-democracy and states’ rights; it emphatically does not touch Griswold; it nods to the “personhood” argument without making any commitments; and it addresses the Ginsburg equal protection line of reasoning at some length, primarily by making the same points that Barrett did during the oral argument.
3. Assuming, for purposes of argument, that this draft serves as the basis for the final majority opinion, I was wrong about the identity of the author. I thought the majority would prefer Barrett as the author in an effort to protect the Court from charges of rank sexism. It would appear that Alito’s desire to make history was more powerful than the majority’s concerns about public opinion.
4. I have predicted that Thomas will write a gloating, obnoxious concurring opinion. We don’t know the answer to that yet.

And so, the ambiguity is gone. To return to the slavery analogy, we are now turning to the “popular sovereignty” phase of the debate. The real question is whether the red states will succeed in imposing their will on the blue states through extraterritorial provisions in their new statutes. That issue will take center stage very quickly.

Oh, and I wouldn’t want to be Susan Collins today. She’s going to get a lot of difficult questions about her vote for Kavanaugh.

As I predicted months ago, red states are trying to give their anti-abortion regulations extraterritorial effect. You didn’t think the great state of Texas would tolerate any division of opinion on abortion, did you? For their part, blue states are approving regulations that are intended to nullify the extraterritorial parts of the red state legislation.

Where is this headed? The red state legislation impacts rights and regulations that have their source in the federal government. The right to travel to another state, even for an abortion, is protected by the First Amendment. The use of the Postal Service to provide abortion pills is controlled by the federal government. The idea that a nonresident can be sued in a red state just for putting information online is inconsistent with traditional notions of jurisdiction and due process. And so on.

This is going to get really interesting, from a legal and political perspective, faster than you think.

Tucker Carlson, and those of his ilk, typically get very angry when they are accused of racism. Do they have a case? As usual with disputes like these, it depends on your definition of racism.

Carlson, along with most contemporary reactionaries, does not defend slavery or de jure segregation. He does not argue–at least not openly–that people of color are genetically inferior to white people. What most people refer to as “racism” is based on the following positions:

1. All Americans, including people of color, are entitled to equal treatment from their government.
2. Black people have been free from slavery since 1865, and free from various kinds of legally imposed discrimination since the 1960s.
3. Whatever claim they had to special treatment from the government has expired with the passage of time. They should be treated just like everyone else. MLK said so.
4. Instead, they just whine about racism, demand handouts and affirmative action, and vote for politicians who pick the pockets of hardworking Americans for their benefit. They are the real racists in this picture.
5. Their inferior economic status is due to their own, shall we say, cultural inferiority, which has been exacerbated by coddling by politicians of the left. What they really need is tough love, which will instill a love of enterprise in them that doesn’t exist today.
6. As to immigrants of color, there are just too many of them, and their culture is antithetical to ours. They cannot be assimilated. They will annihilate our culture and poison our politics if given a chance.

Of course, most of these statements are clearly inconsistent with the facts. American culture has always been in a state of constant flux, and has been disproportionately influenced by people of color. Furthermore, it is obvious to any reasonably objective observer that the impacts of slavery and discrimination over centuries of American history still exist in the form of wealth disparities and unequal access to education and housing. Immigrants still assimilate over time, as they always have. Finally, affirmative action programs only impact a relative handful of people, and do not fully compensate for the lingering effects of discrimination.

The bottom line here is that making a patently false argument, in essence, that people of color are culturally, rather than biologically, inferior is still racist.

The pre-Ukraine consensus that force should not be used to change international borders was the product, not of abstract rules, but of the following:

1. Lingering memories of the destruction caused by World War II, and a general desire not to repeat the experience;
2. A principled rejection of colonialism; and
3. American military power as a backstop.

All three of these things have waned over time to varying degrees; hence, the invasion of Ukraine. One has to hope that the images of the destruction in Ukraine, and the failures of the Russian military in the face of Ukrainian courage and NATO weapons, will revive them.