Now what do we do?
After the Supreme Court released its ruling Friday overturning Roe v. Wade and 50 years of precedent, protests broke out across the country. President Joe Biden condemned the ruling and urged protesters to remain peaceful. There were scattered arrests.
Rep. Eric Swalwell of California won the internet.
After the anger and outrage aside, then what?
Blogger Susie Madrak tweeted, “Advice from my 30+ years of politics: Taking part in actions without a strategy or a specific goal is a waste of time. Actions without progress result in burnout.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York confronted protesters outside the Supreme Court Friday morning with an angry, yet sober assessment of what lies ahead.
“This is not something that is going to be solved in a day, in an election, or in a year. Because we gotta strap in. This is a generational fight,” AOC said. “This is not instant gratification.”
“Elections are not enough…. We need sand in every damn gear,” she added. “But elections alone are not going to save us. We need to show up at the ballot box, but that’s the bare minimum.”
Democratic Party officials insisted, as they will, that turnout, electing more Democratic senators this fall, is the way to turn the situation around for women’s rights. But elections are their answer to everything. Every election is the most important in history. And here we are.
When AOC said this is a generational fight, part of the problem she’s identified is a generational one. Conservative billionaire-funded think tanks and supported activists have worked relentlessly toward this moment for decades. The current leadership of the Democratic Party, whatever their accomplishments and skills, idled along and assumed progress was irreversible.
Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill, in the White House, and in state houses across the country learned politics in another century and another America. Politics changed. The world changed. They did not.
Within the Democratic Party. Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, for example, drew exasperated responses with his passionless response to the overturn of Roe:
“I support Rep. Clyburn but he isn’t grasping the situation,” tweeted a Navy veteran. “We di [sic] need to galvanize and correct this but this statement is inadequate for the moment”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s response drew mockery on Twitter:
“Our gerontocracy is simply not fit for this moment,” tweeted Amanda Litman of Run For Something in response to both.
Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins) of This Modern World had an even more cold-eyed assessment of what the demise of Roe means:
He went on:
It’s real hard to let go of your old life — trust me, I have some experience here. But it’s gone. All this bullshit about the sacred filibuster, the tradition of a nine member court, Republicans might say mean things about us if we challenge any of it — gotta let it go.
If you want people, young people especially, to “vote harder,” you have to inspire them, show that you’re living up to your end of the bargain, fighting like a motherfucker. I don’t know if the institutionalists in leadership can ever comprehend this.
It’s disingenuous as fuck to say “Democrats control all three branches, this is on them,” because the stupid 60-vote problem, the Manchin/Sinema problem, these are real. But it’s learned helplessness to say, “nothing can be done so why bother trying.”
I’m just thinking out loud of course. I don’t know what the answer is. but we just got kicked down to the bottom of a well, and either we give up and die, or we try to figure out a way out. Those are the options.
I mean, I do know what the answer is — eliminate the filibuster, expand the court, stop bringing a water pistol to a nuclear confrontation. But I don’t know how we possibly get from here to there.
(correction to one thing, without breaking thread: Dems obviously do not control all three branches, but the not-pedantic among you understand what I was trying to say.)
Democrats need new leaders prepared to do battle under current realities, not the old ones. AOC and others lower down the pecking order get that. Politics as usual is gone. But “as usual” is the only kind the current leadership knows. They still want to party like it’s 1999.
The standard benediction is, “We thank them for their service.”
Update: Added one last thought, second to last paragraph.
Second Update: AOC making my point.
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