Coop Scoop: Three Takeaways on the Alito Abortion Draft

This won't be the first constitutional right to be taken away by the court

May 6, 2022

By Marc Cooper

Oh my. Just look at who is upset that Deputy Pope Sam Alito’s feverish jeremiad against the sin of abortion was secretly leaked from the Supreme Court. 

They’re the same hooligans, bullies and hucksters who have systematically turned that court into one big stinking pit of nasty partisan politics who are now weeping over its violation.

There’s a lot of panty-twisting going on about how the “hallowed traditions,” the “sanctity,” the very “mystery” of the highest court in the land has been so terribly soiled by that leak.

Oh please.  This unaccountable, radically unrepresentative, arrogant and detached gaggle began seriously slipping into the sleaze decades ago.  From seating Clarence Long John silver Thomas, electing Dubya as President, to hobbling the ACA, defanging the Voting Rights Act, to Republicans ignoring Obama’s pick then fast-tracking religious fanatic Amy Coney Barrett, to tolerating the wife of one justice who advocates overthrow of the government, and now systematically wrecking 50 years of societal advance on reproductive rights, just exactly what credibility or seriousness did the court have in any case?

Praise and glory to The Leaker!  Apart from everything else, it was a public service to expose what a nasty little bitch Sam Alito is -- a bitter, misogynistic, Catholic ideologue who bolsters his argument by quoting a 17th Century philosopher who also opposed abortion and who, by the way, called for execution of women witches.

The Alito Draft, while likely to be sanded and smoothed down during the final edit process leading to its publication in a month or so, marks a serious inflection point in our political life and future.

Takeaway One:  There is no immediate way to block the coming abortion ban

Let’s get one thing clear immediately.  This IS the real beginning of the end of legal abortion in at least half the states.

Democrats are publicly breathing fire, vowing they will spare no energy in defending abortion.  Chuck Schumer has set next Wednesday for a Senate vote that would codify Roe, making it a federal statute legalizing abortion coast to coast. 

That is expected to pass, immediately after the Senate approves expropriation of all banks and the passage of all major industry to worker’s control.

The usual Democratic suspects have already said they will not vote to modify the filibuster, a pre-requisite for moving to codify abortion,.  And even if there were no filibuster, the Democrats lack the 51 votes necessary for that. There are numerous abortion deniers among the Democratic ranks.

So, while we will hear screeching to the heavens over the next few weeks that it is Republicans standing in the way of over-riding the court, it is, in fact, Republicans and some Democrats that are the obstacle to legalizing abortion.

Takeaway Two: This is just the beginning of a new offensive

Conventional Wisdom projects that very soon, maybe by summer, America will be divided into Abortion Deserts and Abortion Havens. Washington State, where I live, is just one of several pro-choice states that is already taking measures to serve abortion refugees that will be streaming in from neighboring Republican strongholds.

Maybe that will be the final outcome of this terrible decision. Maybe not.  It might get worse. Republicans will control congress starting next year and there is every reason to believe that neo-fascists in the party will be pushing for a national ban on abortions.  A President Biden can veto such a move and Democrats can use the filibuster to stop it, but one can also be sure that one day there will be a total GOP government with no obstacles to such a ban.

In the meantime, consider the Alito Draft a first shot in a new, prolonged and all-enveloping culture war. The Republicans have exactly no popular programmatic policies to put forward. They are going to relentlessly pound away on cultural issues as the easiest route to expanded political power.

The logic used by Alito –simply that rights not specifically mentioned in the constitution cannot automatically be covered by interpreting the privacy provisions within it—kicks the door wide open to repealing gay marriage, inter-racial marriage and contraception.

Alito wrote that those areas would remain protected even though he effectively removed the constitutional umbrella over them.  It’s not hard to imagine a whole lot of states acting on that first part of Alito’s opinion while ignoring the second.

Anybody, then, who believes they live in a “safe” state or who does not believe this is just an opening gambit in a much broader push, is not paying attention.

Takeaway Three: The Alito Draft is a golden opportunity for the Democrats, and they will most probably blow it

The last people I look to save me is the Democratic Party. But you’d think it was self-interested enough to save itself.  You would probably be wrong.

The Democrats seem to be blithely waltzing toward the midterm buzzsaw without a care in the world.  It’s not just that Biden is a “poor communicator.”  It’s not just that the “messaging” is off.  It’s not just a debilitating split between “centrists” and “progressives.”  No, it’s about a governing party that seems to have no visible program, no visible agenda.

High level Democrat consultants, like the Obama team of David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs have spent the last couple of months urging the party “to pick a fight, any fight.”  Picking a fight on a major issue. –any piece of the shipwrecked Biden agenda—would allow the Dems to engage and mobilize their voters and produce a better turn out.

Midterm elections, left on their own, inevitably turn into an up-down referendum on the incumbent president and his party. And when that president in question has an approval rating bobbing around 40%, the outcome can be catastrophic.

To mitigate the coming damage, Democrats needed to turn the midterms into a “choice” not a referendum.  That’s done by highlighting the differences between the parties and directly warning of the negative consequences in electing Republicans, especially Trumplicans.

To date, Democrats and Biden in particular, have done a piss poor job in this regard. While the Republicans go chugging along blocking all administrative initiatives, refusing cooperation with the 1/6 committee, still kowtowing to the Great Moron in Florida, outlawing abortion in red states and busily putting into place a pro-coup team for 2024, here’s Joe Biden, still shuffling around, mumbling about “my Republicans friends in the Senate,” and praising the Gods of Bipartisanship.

I guess you can say Sam Alito and the The Mystery Leaker have done the Democrats a big favor. They have not waited for the Dems to pick a midterm fight. They dropped the Mother of All Culture War battles right on their heads.  And just to make sure that Democrats understand the opportunity, a number of Republican governors and candidates in swing states have remained conspicuously mute on the Alito bombshell. They know the Court’s intention to outlaw abortion is opposed by 80% of Americans and that includes voters in their state.

The Democrats can and should capitalize on the leak by making abortion rights a central part of a broader front of anti-Republican campaigning.  There has to be very tough comparisons made and it must be made clear what the country is in for – not just on abortion, but on social welfare, education, race relations and democracy itself—if Republicans are given Carte Blanche.

On the other hand, the first time Joe Biden publicly uttered the word “abortion” since becoming nominee and now president was this Tuesday! It’s with this quota of fear that Dems join the fight dropped on them.

It's not just Democrat leaders that have to take this moment seriously. So do those of us who do not feel represented by either major party. 

We have to be honest with ourselves and we must assess where we are at while looking ahead down the road (something usually avoided in politics).  The highwater mark of the Biden administration was reached more than a year ago when the big COVID package hit.

Since then, the administration has quickly folded in on itself and the Trump Right has persevered.  There has been remarkable job growth but the recovery has been hollowed out by inflation and inequality. Buying a house has become a chimera for most. I have no idea how somebody with three kids puts them through college.

The great reforms promised by the Biden election have come to naught. There is no police reform.  No immigration reform.  No labor protection.  No child care tax credit.  No free child care. No expansion of medical care.  No reduction of drug prices. No reform of the Supreme Court (remember?).  BLM has lost any traction it might have had and is now subsumed in self-dealing and corruption.  The great Racial Reckoning has been supplanted by Woke stupidity.  In its stead we have a full force backlash against “CRT” and a wave of increased funding of police.

And now, for the first time in history, the US Supreme Court has initiated a new era of taking back citizen rights instead of expanding them by erasing reproductive rights.

This will not be the last constitutional right or civil liberty that will be expunged in this new era.

I don’t lay all this out to get depressed. Or to say, hey, it’s all over. 

Within the shock of emotions released by this affair, there is also a certain bracing clarity. We can very clearly see our enemies, those who act in the name of the people but against the interests of the people. And we can see political paths that lead to progress and others that are but a disappointing dead end. ++

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