Will Dobbs galvanize the left?
Sometimes, defeat is just what a party, or a movement, needs. Hard lessons are learnt, uncomfortable realities are acknowledged and the group in question emerges more serious, more competitive, more potent a political force.
In recent years, liberals and conservatives have often failed to learn the right lessons from their losses because they won’t accept defeat in the first place. From crackpot theories about Cambridge Analytica swinging 2016 for Trump to the idea that 2020 was stolen by Joe Biden four years later, both sides of America’s political divide have opted for comforting fictions over hard truths.
But Dobbs represents unambiguous victory for the conservative movement and impossible-to-ignore defeat for progressive America. The imposition via trigger law of strict abortion bans in states immediately after the decision is just one of the ways which the decision’s consequences and its very real consequences will hit home — and perhaps force the left to reckon with defeat.
Betting on Dobbs changing the American left is one thing. Predicting exactly how it might do so is another matter. One theory is that the removal of a nationwide right to abortion will shock left-wingers out of some the outlandish and obscure identity politics in which it has indulged. As others have pointed out, a movement that can’t even use the word “woman” or agree on its meaning may not be well-equipped to protect women’s rights.
As Phoebe Maltz Bovy writes on the site, “If you’re looking to sort out how the ostensibly pro-choice side got complacent enough to let the right to choose get overturned, look no further than the sorry state of contemporary feminism.”
And so Dobbs may prove to be the start of a fight for a more mainstream, old-timey feminism and liberalism. In other words, prepare for a revenge of the Karens: white, middle-class liberal women may lose patience with the polite intersectional apologizing and acknowledgments of their privilege. They may be less tolerant of pointless transgender word games that stamps out any acknowledgment of the biological differences between men and women.
While it’s possible that it empowers more moderate voices, Dobbs could also prove radicalizing in ways that are ultimately counter-productive. First, within the abortion debate, the ruling could drive the left even further towards a pro-choice permissiveness. The Democratic Party is already a long way from Bill Clinton’s “safe, legal and rare” middle-ground, often arguing for abortion rights that go a lot further than most European countries. Dobbs-induced anger could drive things further in that direction, ultimately alienating the left from the moderate middle on the issue.
More generally, there is a strong chance that Dobbs serves to convince the left that the rules of American politics are rigged against them, and that now is the time for radical action: abolishing the filibuster, packing the court, calling on the federal government to ignore the law of the land.
One possibility is that the ruling, and the multitude of coming abortion fights — in courts, in state legislatures, and beyond — simply intensifies pre-existing debates on the left. Some will argue that the need for mainstream electoral competitiveness and moderation matters more than ever. Others will claim that now is the time to escalate: direct action, extralegal pro-choice mobilization and so on. In this scenario, the same intra-left split will simply deepen. The effect would be a movement that gets angrier, crazier, less organized and less electorally palatable.
But anger can be a helpful emotion too. And it certainly seems possible that the summer of 2022 ends up being a galvanizing time for American liberalism, and that a more focused, motivated and ruthless left emerges from this defeat.
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DeSantis’s dilemma
Now that abortion is in the hands of the states and the voters, few politicians face a trickier tight-rope walk on the issue than Florida governor Ron DeSantis. It goes without saying that, as a main 2024 contender, perhaps even the frontrunner, DeSantis’s words and actions on this freshly salient issue will be closely scrutinized. But as a governor seeking re-election in a purplish state, there are risks to burgeoning his credentials among conservative Republicans with a hardline abortion stance.
Florida is set to introduce a ban on abortions after fifteen weeks passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature earlier this year. That will make the Sunshine State home to one of the more moderate Republican-designed abortion regimes in the country. Will DeSantis try to go further? DeSantis dodged a question about the Supreme Court decision on Friday and has been vague on what approach he would favor. But he can only play for time for so long.
G7 complacency
With America fixated on Dobbs and its fallout, Joe Biden is in Europe for a G7 summit. Western leaders have used the meeting to agree on a broadening set of further sanctions against Russia, including a ban on the import of Russian gold.
If the meeting has a prevailing mood, it’s dangerous complacency. Infused in the public statements and mood music is a sense that the good guys are winning — and that the world is taking decisive action against Vladimir Putin. Biden tweeted that the G7 is “demonstrating the strong global leadership it will take to maximize the costs to Putin and his enablers and address the impact of his war on the global economy.”
Sanctions haven’t hit the Russian economy as hard as many expected. The West may be severing ties, but much of the rest of the world — China, India, most of Africa — has been happy to fill the void. The Financial Times’s Ed Luce has a good column on our delusions of global unity. That leaders are set to press for a price cap on Russian oil this week, which at least demonstrates an awareness of some of the ways in which the existing sanctions have not had their desired effect.
What you should be reading today
Mary Kate Skehan: Sheryl Sandberg leans out
Grayson Quay: Thinking of Seinfeld as Roe v. Wade ends
Teresa Mull: Stop trying to make the four-day workweek happen
Jennifer Calfas and Deanna Paul, Wall Street Journal: Abortion providers confront new landscape after Roe
Ross Douthat, New York Times: The end of Roe is just the beginning
Josh Gerstein, Politico: How Roberts lost control of the court
Poll watch
President Biden job approval
Approve: 39.1 percent
Disapprove: 56.4 percent
Net approval: -17.3 (RCP Average)
Is the end of Roe a step forward or backward for America?
A step backward: 52 percent
A step forward: 31 percent
Neither: 17 percent (CBS News/YouGov)
