I don't know if you've seen it, but I just saw Trevor Noah's monologue about RvW, and I am so angry right now, and I'm not even from the US. He has a huge platform and influence, to the point where things he said on the show were quoted by protesters back in the BLM protests. Usually he says incredible things, but he just went on a rant on how the democrats in power "haven't done anything" to stop this and to protect the right for abortions and that basically we shouldn't donate to democratic nominees anymore before they show us proof of their success, and the crowd cheered so hard. And i'm just. So fucking angry. That's NOT how politics work and saying this the way he did is actively harming the cause. Sorry, I just had to rant, and it felt like you would understand my frustration.
Ugh. I haven't seen it, but that is, as you point out, deeply disappointing, since Noah is a respected political commentator with a large audience and a considerable platform to influence the debate. I would think that he's definitely one of the people who knows better, and is just mobilising the misdirected anger at the Democrats to get quick likes and kudos, which a lot of other irresponsible clout chasers are doing; someone like him should do better than that. Or he genuinely feels that this is the case, in which event then he needs to sit down and think about the whole situation a lot harder.
I am all for pressuring Democratic elected officials, especially those who currently do hold all three branches of Congress/the executive, to DO MORE in response to this. But withholding fundraising or punishing them for the decision itself, rather than trying to help them respond effectively to the aftermath, is beyond asinine. There is literally nothing that anyone in the American government, apart from the Supreme Court itself, can do to stop or overrule its decisions. The fact that the opinion even leaked ahead of time was utterly unprecedented and triggered a furious witch hunt among the court insiders. Otherwise we would have just been dropped with it like a bomb out of the clear blue sky and that would be it. We would have had no forewarning, even though people like me and a lot of other politically plugged-in people were warning that it was coming. This is the result of the bad-faith, extremist right-wing, nakedly partisan Court we were stuck with as a result of the Trump presidency. Anything else is straight up and disingenuous disinformation.
People like AOC are shouting at the Democrats to "restrain judicial review," as if this is the Democrats' fault for not preventing SCOTUS from carrying out the function appointed to it by the Constitution. The fact that SCOTUS did its job is not the issue; the fact is that SCOTUS was staffed with terrible personnel by a terrible president and a terrible Senate majority leader, that this was a direct result of their win in a terrible election in 2016, and if you can't or won't draw that distinction, you don't have any business commenting on American politics right now. If Hillary had become president and appointed 2 or 3 SCOTUS justices, this would never have happened, we would have a liberal majority on the court for the next generation, and all the damage of the Trump years would have been avoided. Alas, you kinder timeline. I want to live there so bad.
American democracy is not designed to guard against a personal, evil, deliberate, wide-ranging bad actor like Trump. As long as he occupied the office, he was entitled to exercise its prerogatives, however terribly and corruptly he did so. People like me warned throughout the 2016 campaign season that even aside from being the worst human being alive, he would be able to fill likely multiple SCOTUS seats with the help of an increasingly reactionary and fascist Republican party. Once again, that is exactly what happened. There is a direct line from A to B to C. It's not a mystery or some nebulous clusterfuck where Both Sides To Blame!!! We know exactly what happened in this specific instance, and how. It's really discouraging to see people whitewashing it so thoroughly in their psychotic quest to blame the Democrats for everything. If you don't remember what happened only six fucking years ago, there's no way you can ever muster a coherent response to the actual situation, rather than yelling slogans and blaming the wrong people and continuing to make everything worse.
Anyway. As I said, this is deeply disappointing, especially from someone with such a platform/influence. So the Republicans took away Roe, and we should... punish the Democrats for it, take away their ability to effectively respond, and make it more likely that the Republicans will win actual elected office as a result. Sure. Seems entirely smart and logical and progressive. Or, you know. Not.
