Red & Blue States Are Moving Further Apart? Guess Which Ones Are Moving Faster

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- Daily Kos, April 4, 2022. - Ed.

Political polarization is increasingly reflected in state laws, & the specifics are … telling, as is the media’s treatment of it.

“After the governor of Texas ordered state agencies to investigate parents for child abuse if they provide certain medical treatments to their transgender children, California lawmakers proposed a law making the state a refuge for transgender youths and their families,” The New York Times reports. “When Idaho proposed a ban on abortions that empowers relatives to sue anyone who helps terminate a pregnancy after six weeks, nearby Oregon approved $15 million to help cover the abortion expenses of patients from out-of-state.”

Unfortunately, the Times doesn’t understand how a lot of the worst Republican laws work, writing, “The moves, in an election year, have raised questions about the extent to which they are performative, as opposed to substantial. Some Republican bills are bold at first glance but vaguely worded. Some appear designed largely to energize base voters.” The vagueness is part of the point. It gives Republicans semi-plausible deniability—plausible to some reporters, anyway—that their laws were meant to intimidate or harm the people they were definitely meant to intimidate or harm.

But teachers in states that have passed broad but vague prohibitions on teaching about race that might upset white people have explained that the vagueness of those laws makes them even more scary, because no one knows quite what is or isn’t allowed, leaving teachers at risk from basically any complaint, no matter how ridiculous.
As the Times headline has it, red states and blue states may be moving further apart, but the big moves are almost all on one side.

The overall effect of the recent polarization of state lawmaking is that GOP state lawmakers are passing brutally restrictive laws targeting vulnerable people, & Democratic state lawmakers are trying to mitigate the harm. That’s a worthy goal, but Democrats should stop playing defense & pass more laws actively making life better for people. Putting the right to an abortion in state law, as Colo. & VT have recently done, is an important & necessary response to SCOTUS’ anticipated overturning of Roe v. Wade. But making sure a right that’s existed for nearly 50 years isn’t rolled back isn’t exactly moving anyone forward. Some other states have expanded access. But every blue state should be doing that...

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