“Move your bloomin’ arse!”
Democrats’ reflexive answer to the Supremes overturning Roe is more of the same. Go vote in November. With all the passion of a Business 101 lecture, Democratic leaders say, “Elect us to Congress and we’ll fight for you.” That ain’t cutting it (Washington Post):
To an increasingly vocal group of frustrated Democrats, activists and even members of Congress, such responses by party leaders have been strikingly inadequate to meet a moment of crisis. They criticize the notion that it is on voters to turn out in November when they say Democrats are unwilling to push boundaries and upend the system in defense of hard-won civil liberties.
“We have Democrats that are doing the opposite, you know? They just aren’t fighting,” Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) said. “When people see that, what’s going to make them show up to vote? We can’t just tell people, ‘Well, just vote — vote your problems away.’ Because they’re looking at us and saying, ‘Well, we already voted for you.’”
Progressive lawmakers including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) demand action. Build abortion clinics on federal land. Provide funds to women seeking out-of-state abortions. LImit court jurisdiction or expand it.
“We can at least TRY,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.
“People need help immediately,” Warren said in an interview.
“We are dealing with one side that is undermining the very essence of what it means to be a country that roots itself in this philosophy of equal protection under the law. You cannot battle that if folks on the other side are always moderating, modulating and compromising. It’s not the age we’re in,” said the Rev. William Barber, a North Carolina preacher who is co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign.
“You fight a crisis until the crisis is over,” Barber added. “You can’t overreach when you’re at the bottom, and these folks have taken us to the bottom.”
Americans pull for underdogs. They pay good money to see unlikely heroes struggle against overwhelming odds. Frodo takes the Ring to Mordor. How many Rocky movies did Stallone make? People want to be inspired, not reassured. Yet leading Democrats’ first instinct is always to put the Recent Unpleasantness behind them. Like the Munich Agreement, that never works out well.
Kurt Bardella, a former Republican who now consults for Democrats, said party leaders cannot be afraid of bold actions because of potential legal challenges.
“Democrats start with the question of, ‘Are we allowed to do this or not?’ And I think Democratic voters will forgive you if you try and later on it turns out a court strikes it down,” Bardella said. “But at least you tried in the meantime to keep things in place and head toward the next election. What they won’t forgive is if you keep asking them to keep you in power but you don’t do anything with it, or at least try to do something with it.”
Democrats’ voters won’t turn out in November for wimps.
“People don’t want to hear, ‘Vote for Democrats,’” says Nelini Stamp, director of strategy and partnerships for the Working Families Party. “They want to hear what folks are going to do. We want Biden to use the full power of his administration, even if he might get the court’s pushback. We want to see people fighting for us.”
“Move your bloomin’ arse!” said Eliza.
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