The Time for Democrats to Go Nuclear Was Yesterday

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:
b-boy bouiebaisse
@jbouie
"One party is so committed to its ideological objectives that it is willing to violate the Constitution to achieve them. The other is so ambivalent about its own goals that it fetishizes procedural obstacles to their enactment."

The Time for Democrats to Go Nuclear Was Yesterday
If conservatives can subvert the Constitution to gut abortion rights, moderate Democrats can abolish the filibuster to protect them.
nymag.com
5:34 AM · Sep 3, 2021

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/sb8-texas-abortion-democrats-filibuster-manchin-voting-rights.html


In the U.S., constitutional law guarantees pregnant people the right to have an abortion without “interference from the state.” Judicial precedent also empowers Americans to preempt any state law that flagrantly violates their constitutional rights: Even before an illicit statute takes effect, individuals can seek a court order barring state officers from enforcing it.

The pro-life movement abhors these legal niceties. In recent years, red states have routinely enacted de facto repeals of Roe v. Wade, only to see their unconstitutional laws nipped in the bud. Of course, conservatives did not respond to these setbacks by revising their agenda to better fit the demands of law and procedure. Rather, they used every tool at their disposal — including unprecedented violations of Senate convention — to assemble an anti-abortion Supreme Court majority. Meanwhile, in Texas, Republicans devised a cockamamie scheme for nullifying abortion rights immediately — with just a small favor from their friends on the high court.

The Texas GOP passed a law that effectively bans abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy — before many women even realize they are pregnant — but outsourced enforcement of this ban to private citizens. Under the law, known as SB 8, “any person, other than an officer or employee of a state or local governmental entity in this state,” can sue anyone who “knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion” after the sixth week of pregnancy. In other words, any doctor, clinic staff member, nonprofit, or even taxi driver who consciously helps someone end their pregnancy could be legally liable. The law entitles plaintiffs who win such suits to at least $10,000 from the defendant.

This is an unusual way to enforce a law. It turns every private citizen in the state of Texas into a potential hybrid of spy and bounty hunter. It threatens to besiege the state’s court system with lawsuits. But it also offers the judiciary a pretext for sitting on its hands as a blatantly unconstitutional law is implemented. Precedent empowers individuals to block the enforcement of unconstitutional laws by suing the state officer tasked with enforcing those measures. In the case of SB 8, however, no such state officer exists. So there is none to sue.

*snip*

[spanone]

1. K&R

[dalton99a]

2. The bad guys are plotting their rampage while the good guys argue among themselves about purity and

perfection and seek ways to avoid offending the bad guys

[WhiskeyGrinder]

3. .

K&R.

[MontanaMama]

4. Kick.

[CrispyQ]

5. Our party is not paying attention.

snip...

In February, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon called on Trump supporters to avenge Trump’s stolen reelection by seizing control of the Republican Party from the bottom up: By taking lowly “precinct officer” positions in critical swing states, they could influence the selection of poll workers and election-oversight boards. As ProPublica reports, it appears that a great many Republicans heeded this call: GOP leaders in 41 battleground counties have seen an unusual influx of precinct officers. Altogether, at least 8,500 new officers have joined these county parties. No parallel surge has occurred among Democrats.

We've dropped the ball before. That's partly why we're where we're at.

[JohnSJ]

6. We are here because of 2016

[kcr]

7. Yep

We're supposed to just let that go and pretend it's all the Dem's fault now, even though there's little they can do because of... 2016. Yeah, I'm not going to do that. I will put the blame squarely where it belongs.

[wackadoo wabbit]

9. Unless you have control over time and space, 2016 is over now and there's nothing we can do about it

So you, and I, and all of us, have a choice before us: 1) we can just roll over and play dead, while complaining about what might have been; or 2) we can accept where we are now, and get out there and work, calling our senators daily to demand that they pass the For the People Act as a first step.

The choice is yours.

[kcr]

10. False choice

It's as if the people from 2016 just up and disappeared. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to pretend those same actors aren't going to try that shit again. In fact, they already are. Same script in fact.

[Magoo48]

8. Yup. Yesterday and a hell of a lot of yesterdays before that.