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**JUNE 24, 2022**
Kuttner on TAP
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**** Will This Week's Events Rouse
the Electorate?
The right is at odds with public opinion-on abortion rights, gun
violence, and democracy itself. Do voters care more about the price of
gas?
The fictitious bartender and commentator Mr. Dooley, a creation of the
late-19th-century satirist Finley Peter Dunne, famously wrote, "The
Supreme Court follows the election returns," meaning that even if the
justices denied it, they paid attention to public opinion. Except the
Roberts-Trump Court obviously doesn't.
If the Court were paying attention, it might have noticed that an
overwhelming majority of Americans support abortion rights and are
appalled by gun mayhem. But that didn't stop the Court majority from
holding that New York's gun control law violates the Second Amendment,
or overturning
**Roe**.
As a number of critics have pointed out, the Court's ruling today does
a lot more than criminalize abortion. It turns states into inquisitors,
compelling women to prove that a miscarriage or stillbirth was not an
abortion. It puts doctors on the defensive and makes it far harder for
women to get routine care where reproductive health is concerned. It
allows individual vigilantes to claim bounties for tracking down women
who might have used abortion pills, and their enablers. As Jia Tolentino
writes
in
**The New Yorker**, the closest analogy is the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act.
The criminalization of abortion also makes it more difficult to train
ob/gyn residents in states where D&C procedures are illegal. These and
other ramifications of the Court's action will gradually sink in over
the coming weeks, and public opinion should become even more opposed to
the ruling.
If the right's contempt for public sentiment on abortion and gun
control were not enough, on Capitol Hill the drama playing out before
the Select Committee displays another area where Republicans have
isolated themselves from most citizens. So the future of our democracy
may well turn on the question of whether ordinary non-MAGA voters have
had enough.
Will the combination of these court rulings and the revelations about
January 6th finally create the mass mobilization of sane Americans
we've been waiting for, and seriously put Republican House and Senate
candidates on the spot? Many campaign debates this fall will offer
dialogues that boil down to something like this:
"Do you support the Supreme Court's criminalization of abortion?"
"What about $5-a-gallon gas?"
"Do you favor banning assault weapons?"
"What about $5-a-gallon gas?"
"Do you defend Donald Trump's actions on and leading up to January 6,
2021?"
"What about $5-a-gallon gas?"
Barack Obama wrote of the audacity of hope. I worry about the perversity
of despair. Too many activists, dismayed that Joe Biden did not deliver
everything on our wish list, have given in to resigned passivity. The
events of this week should wake them up and motivate progressives to
turn outrage into mobilization.
~ ROBERT KUTTNER
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Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter
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Getting Real About the Post-'Roe' World
There was never any reason to be complacent about the end of legal
abortion, nor should we think that the impact of the Supreme Court's
latest ruling will be muted. BY SCOTT LEMIEUX
Fighting for Abortion Rights All Over Again
This Supreme Court decision is a call to action. And the key message
is-ALWAYS-if we organize, we can change this world, and we need to.
BY HEATHER BOOTH
They're Not Just Investigating a Riot. They're Investigating an
Attempted Coup.
The January 6th Committee is beginning to connect the dots. BY HAROLD
MEYERSON
Schools. Teachers. Kids. Guns. Carnage.
The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act will not stop gun violence in
schools or anywhere else. BY GABRIELLE GURLEY
America's Middle East 'Withdrawal' Breathes Its Last Breath
What was once a policy of disengagement has now become a policy of far
more dangerous entanglement. BY SARAH LEAH WHITSON
Altercation: Will the Oligarchs Who Own the U.S. Media Save Democracy?
Don't Bet on It.
CNN's move to the 'center' is more bad news for news the country
can really use. BY ERIC ALTERMAN
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