Yes the #1 priority should be protecting the fetuses!! Fuck the poor and working class. Protect the ZERO number of kids being aborted at 8months and 3 weeks!!
Since YES THESE HAPPEN! According to the EXPERTS in congress with their economics and poly sci degrees. Thank your for protecting the fetuses and labeling my body property of the government! Experts indeed! #ProLife*
Democrats have a deep bench and lots of talent, Newsom, Whitmer, Raimondo, Shapiro, Beshear, Raskin, Goldman, Max, Garcia, and all those other young people in Congress. But we are stuck with Biden. I don't want to add to Biden bashing but choosing Harris for 2020 was the right decision (maybe?) but not so much for 2024. If she were a young white male, it would have been an easier sell to handover the baton to that person now, that is the ugly truth. Even Biden becoming the nominee in 2020 was a result of Bernie being in the race. Bernie did some remarkable damage to the two races. I am amazed at how these dominoes line up to where we are today. We just have to roll with it and choose the better option without weakening our side. Media does a lot of that anyway.
I particularly enjoyed when Bernie called women and POC :"Identity Politic voters." As if his priorities should take precedence over real issues that affect our lives (such as abortion, racism, etc.) And by enjoyed I mean thought he was an out-of touch condesceding dick. I do agree with him on other positions, however. Just not this one.
Following up from Jessica's blog and data from Jezebel, DemLabs created this map for the 119 Congressional and 26 Republican Senators pushing to ban abortion pills through the Comstock Act. The map also shows which of them is up fro re-election. Time to hold them accountable.
If I remember right WY still has abortion rights because the GOP was sooo mad about the ACA (or as it is known in them parts, ObamaCare, that they made a Constitutional Amendment saying the government couldn't interfere with healthcare. Now they want a "do over".
In better news a judge in MT struck down a 20 week ban and several other abortion laws.
We need major election reform. Get rid of gerrymandering and party-only allegiance primary voting. This would help break up the Republican super majorities in the state legislatures. That is how this happened.
What do you mean by "party-only allegiance" primary voting? Remember that primary elections have no legal status, they only exist as a gratuity to political parties which are strictly private organizations. If primary elections do not assist political parties in selecting a candidate, they have no reason to exist at all.
About the "chemical" versus "medicine" issue in describing pills that induce abortion. Obviously they are chemicals that induce abortion. What is not a chemical? But really, to describe them as medicine is intensely political and abuses the term medicine which is used to treat disease. Women who are pregnant are not sick. Abortifacient is the best word and has some history where it is used to describe herbs that have been known to induce abortion. Anti-abortionists have misapplied the word to describe IUDs and morning after pills, the problem there being that abortion really applies to terminating a pregnancy after implantation, a more difficult job.
Abortifacient is a word friendly to abortion, it classes substances ingested in the history of medical practice for that very purpose.
Except they are a medication, and abortion is healthcare, and many women suffer debilitating effects from pregnancy. "Chemical" could apply to all medication, but it is not a medical term for a reason. We should never adopt inaccurate non-medical language, to those of us who went to school for years to learn the accurate, correct terminology it proclaims ignorance. The terms exist legally for a reason.
Yes, abortion is healthcare. But even though women can suffer from the effects of pregnancy, this is not native to pregnancy. Pregnancy is not an illness. Pregnancy might induce an illness or aggravate an illness, but anything that aborts pregnancy is ending something that is itself not a disease. Anything ingested to this end is not medication, it is something entirely different. Abortifacient is the better term.
Pregnancies can also go wrong and this is where pregnancy itself becomes dangerous, but even then applying an ingested substance to induce abortion is not medicating, it is merely inducing something that the woman's body ought to do naturally in a miscarriage. Healthcare again.
Most abortions are elective abortions where the woman has decided that it is not in her interests to be pregnant. Healthcare again. Childbearing should occur in women who want to be pregnant and nothing less than that is a threat to her well being.
Word for word, here's what Biden should say about abortion. "Look, abortion may not be what everyone thinks is right but using the power of government to force women to give up their rights is plain wrong."
I find Biden really frustrating on abortion. It’s clear he doesn’t really get it. But then there’s another way to think of it- clearly, Joe Biden’s own personal understanding of Catholicism and life leads him to oppose abortion. Were he a woman and pregnant, he probably would not get one based on everything he has said. (Set aside the possibility that being a woman would help open his eyes to why it’s so important) But he’s still committed to protecting women’s bodily autonomy and not imposing his belief on women. Contrast with Trump who clearly gives zero fucks about abortion. Have one, don’t have one, he could care less. But he had NO problems using women’s bodily autonomy as the currency for his own political gain. First in 2016 by promising anti choice justices who would overturn Roe. Now by catering again to all the pro life nuts while trying to pretend he isn’t. So Biden’s ignorance may be incredibly frustrating, but I feel like we have to give him credit for not imposing his own moral beliefs on others. Isn’t that the heart of the whole debate at the end of the day? Biden’s like the woman who says I wouldn’t have an abortion but I have no right to tell another woman what to do with her body and life. Trump is a power hungry shithead who was all too happy to sacrifice a constitutional right of immense importance for his own gain. This contrast doesn’t get highlighted enough, but it goes to the very different characters on display.
This. I'm still traumatized by 2016, when too many people didn't vote for Hillary Clinton "on principle" because she "didn't deserve" or "hadn't earned" their votes and I'm seeing the same narrative growing around Biden. Somebody is doing a really good job of hanging Gaza and the "he supports genocide" narrative around Biden's neck while trump, who would be exponentially worse, gets left out of the conversation. Biden's wavering on abortion is really dangerous when too many people don't seem to grasp what a danger trump will be to women's rights. When I hear someone say they can't vote for someone who "supports genocide" on principle and they want to "send a message" or who responds to the reality of our binary choice by saying "I shouldn't have to vote for the lesser of two evils," I worry about people who will say "a pox on both your houses" and stay home or vote third party. (I'm also tired of having to defend a man I neither admire nor trust but have to support and vote for.)
That comparison of character is very insightful. I don't have a problem with Biden personally, but my issue is that I'm very concerned whether he has the political skills for this campaign.
I feel like we needed someone in 2020 who had empathy and kindness. In 2024, I think people want a progressive fighter. I think Biden might be more legislatively successful than such a person. But I don’t know if voters care.
Also… I don’t know if voters care, because most voters have no idea what he’s done. Imo he should consider firing his entire comms team.
I have no idea if his campaign is really ready for this. I have serious doubts.
I don't think he's where he is in the polls because he's not progressive enough. I think he's losing the middle. To be sure, the middle in 2024 might be different people from who it was in past election cycles. But I don't think progressives sitting out would be what costs him the election.
This Republican party is so insanely far to the right. But voters seem to think Democrats are too far to the left. A lot of that may be perception. But that's why we need a campaign that can argue we're the sane ones and they're the crazy ones. I'm not sure Joe Biden's campaign is capable of arguing much of anything.
Trump is pretending he doesn't care. He's barely smart enough to realize that it's a losing issue. But he loves being adored and the Christian Nationalists will do that if he makes sure that women have no rights. Just wait until day 1.
It's also the 'talent' pool from which he'd draw most of the staff for his administration, which matters a lot because he himself really isn't capable of much of anything; he signs what they tell him to sign.
My point was he doesn’t care personally. Will he sign every executive order drafted by the Alliance for Defending Freedom that passes his desk? Absolutely. But he could give two shits himself as to the morality of abortion.
Jessica, I was wondering if any of your legal sources have insight into a question I’ve had for a long time: would legal recognition of fetal personhood necessarily make abortion illegal? This feels like it’s the assumption of both sides, but I don’t think we should concede it as a given.
I’m not a lawyer, but I have thought a lot about the legal protections for living organ donors, because I am one. I donated a kidney--which means that I underwent a surgery with roughly the same risks of death or serious complication as pregnancy in order to extend someone else’s life--and right up until I was wheeled into the OR everyone was reminding me I was 100% within my rights to back out *even if that choice meant that the other person died.* By that same logic, even if an embryo had the same rights as any human being, a person couldn’t legally be forced against her will to use her organs to keep it alive. But of course the legal system isn't logical, so I am curious to know whether actual lawyers have made more researched arguments on this.
To be clear, the other dangers created by personhood laws are already more than reason enough to fight them! But I think it would be valuable to have some clear-headed explorations of whether criminalizing abortion is necessarily one of the outcomes.
One way to interpret is that if a fetus is a person, then a woman isn't - coverture, legal invisibility - meaning therefore a fetus ought not to be a person.
But there is also the question of what if they are both persons. I would never concede fetal personhood because it's inane, but for the purpose of argument, why does a fetus being a person give it a right to another person's body. To your point, it's a 'right' no other persons have.
The only remotely reasonable answer is that it's some form of parental responsibility. (In which case a fetus must logically also have a right to its father's body). But if that is somehow so, it raises the question of what constitutes consent to parenthood. It can't just be 'because it happened'; otherwise, none of us have any rights. (Which, of course, is the exact position that the Christian Nationalist conservatives behind all of this are advancing).
I completely agree that these issues need to be discussed much more than they are currently being.
Wonderful, thanks for sharing! Yes, this is exactly what I was looking for. "Life has never been an absolute value in our legal tradition. People are allowed—even justified—to take someone else’s life in self-defense or in defense of others [...] Concomitantly, there is no recognized duty to rescue or to provide life-saving care." She even cites a moral philosopher making a kidney donation argument, as well as a decision upholding a person’s choice not to donate bone marrow to a dying relative: '“The common law has consistently held to a rule which provides that one human being is under no legal compulsion to give aid or to take action to save another human being,” wrote the court in the bone marrow case.'
I'd be really interested to learn more about how this argument has been received and whether other scholars are taking it up!
I and someone else here had asked Jessica to take a look at it with her legal sources. The last I heard Grace said it was like the arguments that if a fetus is a person then a woman isn't. That's why I wrote the sentence starting, 'One way to interpret...' I suppose that's the point of the whole term 'coverture'. But I never received any feedback regarding the 'what if they're both persons' question. I don't know if that means people on our side don't want to even entertain the idea, or if it's just an oversight.
I'm doubting we'll have Biden to worry about anymore after January; we're likely to have much bigger problems. Best to get a head start on the resistance.
And kudos to France for giving our own assholes support for their talking points. 14 weeks 🤬
It's usually a bad strategy to dismiss polling. Any one poll can be off or biased, but the consensus, the weighted averages, still has value. Or it always has in every previous cycle. There's no benefit to dismissing it, and the risk is that you reject information that could be helpful.
The consensus is that Trump leads Biden, both in the national vote and most of the swing states. That could be wrong, and the election is not until November, but it's the best guess of where the voters are now. And remember that it could be off in either direction. Biden might be ahead, but Trump could also be ahead by more than the polls suggest.
The polls were very good in 2018 and 2022 (the 'red wave' in the latter was predicted by pundits, not so much by the polls). In 2016 and 2020 they underestimated Republicans. Which is the last two times Trump was on the ballot. If that repeats, (because Trump voters are disproportionately sociopaths whom the polls can't reach), that would be scary. Alternatively, maybe pollsters have overcorrected for this cycle. That would be a more pleasant surprise.
One lesson of the midterms and special elections is that higher frequency voters now lean Democrat, likely because our voters skew more educated. So we can hope that it's the lower frequency voters we're doing worst with, and that maybe they're not as tuned in yet and are more persuadable. On the other hand, raw numbers tell us there are tens of millions of Americans who haven't thought it was important enough to vote since November 2020, despite everything that's happening in the country, but will vote again this November. They might think about things rather differently from the rest of us.
Democratic campaigns, particularly the presidential campaign, ought to be focused on the voters they got in 2020 who don't seem to be on our side this year, at least not yet, and figure out why, and whether there's anything they can do to bring them back. Otherwise you're looking to find new voters or pick off people who voted Trump or third-party last time. But all strategies should be pursued to the fullest extent possible. Denial and hope aren't strategies though.
It all depends though, most polls are weighted by the poll maker who wrote them. (right wing polls are notorious for that and are absolute junk science.) I have taken a few survey/polls that had no answer that I agreed with. Also it depends on who they are polling, sample size should never be less than 2000, I have read. Additionally the people that answer polls, tend to be people that answer their landline/cell phone to unknown or caller IDs that could be forged. On Robert Reich's substack we discussed that, the people with PHD's or less, in higher Ed said either they had never been asked, or woulldn't answer an unknown number. I fall into those categories as well.
Also they start with quoting the polls horseshit way too far out, two years in advance is useless, so much can happen in a year, let alone two. Mostly it is lazy reporters using some poll to push a narrative. Only committed involved people that follow politics pay attention that far out, and we sadly seem not to be a majority.
Yeah, I'm just basing what I say on the track record. Given all the challenges it's surprising that the polls can even be as good as they are. I just hope the Biden campaign - and all the other Democratic campaigns - understand the challenges they're up against. There's no guarantee that voters understand how much more dangerous voting Republican is this year than any other year in the past.
jessica, at your suggestion i read cecile richards’s excellent column in “time.” at the end it mentions a chatbot called “charley” that can be used in every american zip code for abortion information. it may be my own ignorance, but it was news to me. the chatbot is at: https://www.chatwithcharley.org/
I recommend reading the New Republic article cited in the newsletter.
"Thinking the anti-abortion movement is about babies is like thinking the Civil War was about states’ rights." 💯
Yes the #1 priority should be protecting the fetuses!! Fuck the poor and working class. Protect the ZERO number of kids being aborted at 8months and 3 weeks!!
Red mist is all around me guys…
Since YES THESE HAPPEN! According to the EXPERTS in congress with their economics and poly sci degrees. Thank your for protecting the fetuses and labeling my body property of the government! Experts indeed! #ProLife*
*unborn only
Sent Time article to my 10 friends, then asked THEM to send to their 10 friends each -- force multiplier!
Democrats have a deep bench and lots of talent, Newsom, Whitmer, Raimondo, Shapiro, Beshear, Raskin, Goldman, Max, Garcia, and all those other young people in Congress. But we are stuck with Biden. I don't want to add to Biden bashing but choosing Harris for 2020 was the right decision (maybe?) but not so much for 2024. If she were a young white male, it would have been an easier sell to handover the baton to that person now, that is the ugly truth. Even Biden becoming the nominee in 2020 was a result of Bernie being in the race. Bernie did some remarkable damage to the two races. I am amazed at how these dominoes line up to where we are today. We just have to roll with it and choose the better option without weakening our side. Media does a lot of that anyway.
I particularly enjoyed when Bernie called women and POC :"Identity Politic voters." As if his priorities should take precedence over real issues that affect our lives (such as abortion, racism, etc.) And by enjoyed I mean thought he was an out-of touch condesceding dick. I do agree with him on other positions, however. Just not this one.
That's the one that matters though. If you don't have human rights, and you don't have civil rights, the rest is just deck chairs on the Titanic.
Thank you! Economic instability is important, yes, but bodily autonomy is number one issue for me.
Following up from Jessica's blog and data from Jezebel, DemLabs created this map for the 119 Congressional and 26 Republican Senators pushing to ban abortion pills through the Comstock Act. The map also shows which of them is up fro re-election. Time to hold them accountable.
https://thedemlabs.org/2024/03/04/maga-republicans-push-abortion-pill-ban-through-comstock-act/
If I remember right WY still has abortion rights because the GOP was sooo mad about the ACA (or as it is known in them parts, ObamaCare, that they made a Constitutional Amendment saying the government couldn't interfere with healthcare. Now they want a "do over".
In better news a judge in MT struck down a 20 week ban and several other abortion laws.
https://billingsgazette.com/news/state-regional/government-politics/montana-abortion-ban-struck-down/article_c4ecfd74-6e07-5afa-b7bf-b18f16e73025.html
Also the John Lewis Voting Rights Act needs to be passed.
Yes, it does! And the ERA.
We need major election reform. Get rid of gerrymandering and party-only allegiance primary voting. This would help break up the Republican super majorities in the state legislatures. That is how this happened.
What do you mean by "party-only allegiance" primary voting? Remember that primary elections have no legal status, they only exist as a gratuity to political parties which are strictly private organizations. If primary elections do not assist political parties in selecting a candidate, they have no reason to exist at all.
I did a substack on this,
https://paulpikowsky.substack.com/p/trumps-primary-problem
The better term is closed primary. I agree. They help the parties/politicians more than the voters/citizens.
Vive La France!!! 🇫🇷
Bien sur!!
Thanks to France, for enshrining abortion rights into the constitution but only up until 14 weeks, please!
About the "chemical" versus "medicine" issue in describing pills that induce abortion. Obviously they are chemicals that induce abortion. What is not a chemical? But really, to describe them as medicine is intensely political and abuses the term medicine which is used to treat disease. Women who are pregnant are not sick. Abortifacient is the best word and has some history where it is used to describe herbs that have been known to induce abortion. Anti-abortionists have misapplied the word to describe IUDs and morning after pills, the problem there being that abortion really applies to terminating a pregnancy after implantation, a more difficult job.
Abortifacient is a word friendly to abortion, it classes substances ingested in the history of medical practice for that very purpose.
Except they are a medication, and abortion is healthcare, and many women suffer debilitating effects from pregnancy. "Chemical" could apply to all medication, but it is not a medical term for a reason. We should never adopt inaccurate non-medical language, to those of us who went to school for years to learn the accurate, correct terminology it proclaims ignorance. The terms exist legally for a reason.
Yes, abortion is healthcare. But even though women can suffer from the effects of pregnancy, this is not native to pregnancy. Pregnancy is not an illness. Pregnancy might induce an illness or aggravate an illness, but anything that aborts pregnancy is ending something that is itself not a disease. Anything ingested to this end is not medication, it is something entirely different. Abortifacient is the better term.
Pregnancies can also go wrong and this is where pregnancy itself becomes dangerous, but even then applying an ingested substance to induce abortion is not medicating, it is merely inducing something that the woman's body ought to do naturally in a miscarriage. Healthcare again.
Most abortions are elective abortions where the woman has decided that it is not in her interests to be pregnant. Healthcare again. Childbearing should occur in women who want to be pregnant and nothing less than that is a threat to her well being.
Word for word, here's what Biden should say about abortion. "Look, abortion may not be what everyone thinks is right but using the power of government to force women to give up their rights is plain wrong."
I wish you wrote his speeches on that subject.
Glad so many of you liked this - please send to every democratic official you can. I sent this to the national party.
I find Biden really frustrating on abortion. It’s clear he doesn’t really get it. But then there’s another way to think of it- clearly, Joe Biden’s own personal understanding of Catholicism and life leads him to oppose abortion. Were he a woman and pregnant, he probably would not get one based on everything he has said. (Set aside the possibility that being a woman would help open his eyes to why it’s so important) But he’s still committed to protecting women’s bodily autonomy and not imposing his belief on women. Contrast with Trump who clearly gives zero fucks about abortion. Have one, don’t have one, he could care less. But he had NO problems using women’s bodily autonomy as the currency for his own political gain. First in 2016 by promising anti choice justices who would overturn Roe. Now by catering again to all the pro life nuts while trying to pretend he isn’t. So Biden’s ignorance may be incredibly frustrating, but I feel like we have to give him credit for not imposing his own moral beliefs on others. Isn’t that the heart of the whole debate at the end of the day? Biden’s like the woman who says I wouldn’t have an abortion but I have no right to tell another woman what to do with her body and life. Trump is a power hungry shithead who was all too happy to sacrifice a constitutional right of immense importance for his own gain. This contrast doesn’t get highlighted enough, but it goes to the very different characters on display.
Unfortunately his blind spots—abortion and Gaza—will loom larger and larger as the year goes on.
This. I'm still traumatized by 2016, when too many people didn't vote for Hillary Clinton "on principle" because she "didn't deserve" or "hadn't earned" their votes and I'm seeing the same narrative growing around Biden. Somebody is doing a really good job of hanging Gaza and the "he supports genocide" narrative around Biden's neck while trump, who would be exponentially worse, gets left out of the conversation. Biden's wavering on abortion is really dangerous when too many people don't seem to grasp what a danger trump will be to women's rights. When I hear someone say they can't vote for someone who "supports genocide" on principle and they want to "send a message" or who responds to the reality of our binary choice by saying "I shouldn't have to vote for the lesser of two evils," I worry about people who will say "a pox on both your houses" and stay home or vote third party. (I'm also tired of having to defend a man I neither admire nor trust but have to support and vote for.)
very well said!!!
That comparison of character is very insightful. I don't have a problem with Biden personally, but my issue is that I'm very concerned whether he has the political skills for this campaign.
I feel like we needed someone in 2020 who had empathy and kindness. In 2024, I think people want a progressive fighter. I think Biden might be more legislatively successful than such a person. But I don’t know if voters care.
Also… I don’t know if voters care, because most voters have no idea what he’s done. Imo he should consider firing his entire comms team.
I have no idea if his campaign is really ready for this. I have serious doubts.
I don't think it is his coms team, I think it is the shithead MSM, who bury his achivements on page 32 under the obituaries.
I don't think he's where he is in the polls because he's not progressive enough. I think he's losing the middle. To be sure, the middle in 2024 might be different people from who it was in past election cycles. But I don't think progressives sitting out would be what costs him the election.
This Republican party is so insanely far to the right. But voters seem to think Democrats are too far to the left. A lot of that may be perception. But that's why we need a campaign that can argue we're the sane ones and they're the crazy ones. I'm not sure Joe Biden's campaign is capable of arguing much of anything.
Trump is pretending he doesn't care. He's barely smart enough to realize that it's a losing issue. But he loves being adored and the Christian Nationalists will do that if he makes sure that women have no rights. Just wait until day 1.
oh, God, I hope not!!
You should read the January/February edition of the Atlantic where a series of articles describe what would happen if trump wins.
It's also the 'talent' pool from which he'd draw most of the staff for his administration, which matters a lot because he himself really isn't capable of much of anything; he signs what they tell him to sign.
My point was he doesn’t care personally. Will he sign every executive order drafted by the Alliance for Defending Freedom that passes his desk? Absolutely. But he could give two shits himself as to the morality of abortion.
Exactly. Voters seem to be focused on the second when the first is the only thing that matters.
Jessica, I was wondering if any of your legal sources have insight into a question I’ve had for a long time: would legal recognition of fetal personhood necessarily make abortion illegal? This feels like it’s the assumption of both sides, but I don’t think we should concede it as a given.
I’m not a lawyer, but I have thought a lot about the legal protections for living organ donors, because I am one. I donated a kidney--which means that I underwent a surgery with roughly the same risks of death or serious complication as pregnancy in order to extend someone else’s life--and right up until I was wheeled into the OR everyone was reminding me I was 100% within my rights to back out *even if that choice meant that the other person died.* By that same logic, even if an embryo had the same rights as any human being, a person couldn’t legally be forced against her will to use her organs to keep it alive. But of course the legal system isn't logical, so I am curious to know whether actual lawyers have made more researched arguments on this.
To be clear, the other dangers created by personhood laws are already more than reason enough to fight them! But I think it would be valuable to have some clear-headed explorations of whether criminalizing abortion is necessarily one of the outcomes.
Not only that but 14th Amendment of the US Constitution specifically says: All Persons Born
Thank you, and no slavery except for imprisonment.
Yes yes yes. If I recall the Caren Myers Morrison piece on fetal coverture brings this up:
https://virginialawreview.org/articles/state-abortion-bans-pregnancy-as-a-new-form-of-coverture
One way to interpret is that if a fetus is a person, then a woman isn't - coverture, legal invisibility - meaning therefore a fetus ought not to be a person.
But there is also the question of what if they are both persons. I would never concede fetal personhood because it's inane, but for the purpose of argument, why does a fetus being a person give it a right to another person's body. To your point, it's a 'right' no other persons have.
The only remotely reasonable answer is that it's some form of parental responsibility. (In which case a fetus must logically also have a right to its father's body). But if that is somehow so, it raises the question of what constitutes consent to parenthood. It can't just be 'because it happened'; otherwise, none of us have any rights. (Which, of course, is the exact position that the Christian Nationalist conservatives behind all of this are advancing).
I completely agree that these issues need to be discussed much more than they are currently being.
Wonderful, thanks for sharing! Yes, this is exactly what I was looking for. "Life has never been an absolute value in our legal tradition. People are allowed—even justified—to take someone else’s life in self-defense or in defense of others [...] Concomitantly, there is no recognized duty to rescue or to provide life-saving care." She even cites a moral philosopher making a kidney donation argument, as well as a decision upholding a person’s choice not to donate bone marrow to a dying relative: '“The common law has consistently held to a rule which provides that one human being is under no legal compulsion to give aid or to take action to save another human being,” wrote the court in the bone marrow case.'
I'd be really interested to learn more about how this argument has been received and whether other scholars are taking it up!
I and someone else here had asked Jessica to take a look at it with her legal sources. The last I heard Grace said it was like the arguments that if a fetus is a person then a woman isn't. That's why I wrote the sentence starting, 'One way to interpret...' I suppose that's the point of the whole term 'coverture'. But I never received any feedback regarding the 'what if they're both persons' question. I don't know if that means people on our side don't want to even entertain the idea, or if it's just an oversight.
I would very strongly second your last sentence.
I'm doubting we'll have Biden to worry about anymore after January; we're likely to have much bigger problems. Best to get a head start on the resistance.
And kudos to France for giving our own assholes support for their talking points. 14 weeks 🤬
Why he has been doing way better than the phony polls suggest?
It's usually a bad strategy to dismiss polling. Any one poll can be off or biased, but the consensus, the weighted averages, still has value. Or it always has in every previous cycle. There's no benefit to dismissing it, and the risk is that you reject information that could be helpful.
The consensus is that Trump leads Biden, both in the national vote and most of the swing states. That could be wrong, and the election is not until November, but it's the best guess of where the voters are now. And remember that it could be off in either direction. Biden might be ahead, but Trump could also be ahead by more than the polls suggest.
The polls were very good in 2018 and 2022 (the 'red wave' in the latter was predicted by pundits, not so much by the polls). In 2016 and 2020 they underestimated Republicans. Which is the last two times Trump was on the ballot. If that repeats, (because Trump voters are disproportionately sociopaths whom the polls can't reach), that would be scary. Alternatively, maybe pollsters have overcorrected for this cycle. That would be a more pleasant surprise.
One lesson of the midterms and special elections is that higher frequency voters now lean Democrat, likely because our voters skew more educated. So we can hope that it's the lower frequency voters we're doing worst with, and that maybe they're not as tuned in yet and are more persuadable. On the other hand, raw numbers tell us there are tens of millions of Americans who haven't thought it was important enough to vote since November 2020, despite everything that's happening in the country, but will vote again this November. They might think about things rather differently from the rest of us.
Democratic campaigns, particularly the presidential campaign, ought to be focused on the voters they got in 2020 who don't seem to be on our side this year, at least not yet, and figure out why, and whether there's anything they can do to bring them back. Otherwise you're looking to find new voters or pick off people who voted Trump or third-party last time. But all strategies should be pursued to the fullest extent possible. Denial and hope aren't strategies though.
It all depends though, most polls are weighted by the poll maker who wrote them. (right wing polls are notorious for that and are absolute junk science.) I have taken a few survey/polls that had no answer that I agreed with. Also it depends on who they are polling, sample size should never be less than 2000, I have read. Additionally the people that answer polls, tend to be people that answer their landline/cell phone to unknown or caller IDs that could be forged. On Robert Reich's substack we discussed that, the people with PHD's or less, in higher Ed said either they had never been asked, or woulldn't answer an unknown number. I fall into those categories as well.
Also they start with quoting the polls horseshit way too far out, two years in advance is useless, so much can happen in a year, let alone two. Mostly it is lazy reporters using some poll to push a narrative. Only committed involved people that follow politics pay attention that far out, and we sadly seem not to be a majority.
That said, I agree with your last paragraph.
Yeah, I'm just basing what I say on the track record. Given all the challenges it's surprising that the polls can even be as good as they are. I just hope the Biden campaign - and all the other Democratic campaigns - understand the challenges they're up against. There's no guarantee that voters understand how much more dangerous voting Republican is this year than any other year in the past.
jessica, at your suggestion i read cecile richards’s excellent column in “time.” at the end it mentions a chatbot called “charley” that can be used in every american zip code for abortion information. it may be my own ignorance, but it was news to me. the chatbot is at: https://www.chatwithcharley.org/