You must be this patient to win this fight
The conservative jury is still out on whether the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade in June. Slate’s Jordan Weissmann notes the irony in a how a court stacked with conservatives has stacked the deck against a majority of Americans.
“The court now ready to decree that women’s reproductive rights should be decided democratically has also disempowered voters by allowing states to continue gerrymandering, while also gutting the protections of the Voting Rights Act. How convenient,” Weismann writes.
Should the Alito wing prevail, the obstacles to Democrats restoring women’s legal autonomy over their own bodies are daunting. Yes, voting is important, Weissmann says, restating the obvious. But Democrats “must also make it clear to pro-choice voters that they need to prepare for a long march if they want to restore abortion rights.” Not election cycles. Years. Perhaps decades.
Digby regularly reminds readers that shamelessness is conservatives’ superpower. But it is not their only one. Relentlessness is another. Studies suggest that the liberal mind is much more open to novelty. It also means we are too undisciplined to repeat progressive messaging enough for it to take root in the public mind even when on rare occasion the left actually hits on a half-decent message. We’d rather show off our creativity.
Should Roe fail, we face a long slog. Relentlessness is what will make our America great again. Learning relentlessness will be a challenge.
The decades-long fight for women’s suffrage is one model. So is the civil rights movement. Those people, people with less privilege than those in political power, only won those fights with grit and tenacity after long years of struggle. The rest of us, progressives included, are accustomed to quick fixes and instant gratification. Get over yourselves. Buy a good pair of marching shoes and clear your weekends.
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