My thoughts on SCOTUS leak

I've been suspicious of the USSC document "leak" which revitalized the liberals. Preserving Roe v Wade is the biggest Democratic issue of the past 50 years. I haven't seen liberals this fired up since the Iraq war. And yet I'm convinced it was the GOP's doing.

Why would Republicans want this? This had me stumped until I read a tweet this morning

"It [the Democratic party] exists to stop any real movement to the left and is the GOP’s greatest ally in preserving the capitalist oligarchy." Truer words have never been said.

The Democrats are facing a couple of precarious elections. Approval numbers for Biden and the rest are abysmal. The upcoming midterms could be a bellwether indication for a major upheaval in 2024. In the vacuum left after such an annihilation conditions would be right for a 3rd party or a leftist faction to get a foothold. It's even possible that a 3rd party movement could ignite before then.

And that is the last thing that anyone of either party in Washington wants.

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If Fox News is talking about it (the leak), then it's not important.

The abortion issue is also overblown because abortions are darn near illegal in a bunch of states as it stands right now.
If MSNBC is talking about it (abortion rights), then it's not important.

What actually does matter is that our financial markets are teetering on the edge of imploding because our leaders have so badly f*cked things up.

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bondibox's picture

@gjohnsit But you're talking about policy, not perception. Democrats love their cause du jours. That FOX and MSNBC are talking about it is just as much proof of its unimportance as it is proof that it's an important distraction. Our leaders f*cking up the economy is precisely why they need a gigantic hot button issue to dominate the public discourse.

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F the F'n D's

Lookout's picture

that it was leaked from one of the dim appointments in order to drive the party base to the polls. But that's a total guess. Doesn't really matter cause I think they (the dims) will be slaughtered in November.

Let's see, frying pan or fire?

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

The Liberal Moonbat's picture

If "a week is a long time in politics", how much use can they count on this being in 6 months...?

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

bondibox's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat Perhaps it's not so much to get a win in November as it is to weed out the sprouts of an insurgent grassroots party.

EDIT: I guess the article didn't really accurately convey my thoughts on the importance of the election. Whether the Dems win or lose in 2024 isn't as important as unifying the base while we're disgruntled.

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F the F'n D's

shaharazade's picture

@bondibox Don't think there is a base anymore. Most people have given up on partisan politics and are just freaked out at the state of this world we live in. Then there is the ongoing civil war in the US. Yikes! This it what there cultural war has led to. The Dems.are useless. It's a sick evil duopoly. What base it's just vote for the lesser evil although both parties are equally evil. Everybody knows that the dice are loaded.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IfmiKnZi3E

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leak then they've badly miscalculated as they violate the rule about not interrupting your opponent when he's in the process of destroying himself. If this is the Rs doing, they have thrown the Ds a major lifeline as they were about to be steamrolled in the midterms. Now with this leak and imminent ruling, they've given Ds the chance to pull themselves out of the water and actually make Nov 2022 an interesting fight.

More likely this is a liberal clerk's leak, seeking to rile up the public and possibly change one justice's vote before the case is officially decided.

Ds would be smart politically to play this to the hilt and not limit discussion to just abortion but rather expand it to warn about other major rights now in jeopardy -- access to contraceptives and the right to marry the person you want, gay marriage and even interracial marriage -- all of which also are based on an implied right to privacy in the Constitution.

Of course Ds haven't been very smart politically in recent times, and they are temperamentally disinclined to put up a good fight, so there is that to consider too.

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bondibox's picture

@wokkamile The GOP would want to save the Democratic Party in its current incarnation. If the dems get slaughtered it will give voters a "nothing to lose" attitude when it comes to voting 3rd party in 2024. The reason why congress is so perfectly ineffective is because it's only staged to look like opposing sides. Adding those who don't belong to either team would really throw a wrench in the works.

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F the F'n D's

bondibox's picture

@wokkamile The GOP would want to save the Democratic Party in its current incarnation. If the dems get slaughtered it will give voters a "nothing to lose" attitude when it comes to voting 3rd party in 2024. The reason why congress is so perfectly ineffective is because it's only staged to look like opposing sides. Adding those who don't belong to either team would really throw a wrench in the works.

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F the F'n D's

@bondibox it's about getting and maintaining power. In that sense, it does matter that it's they, and not the Ds, winning elections. Rs are a power hungry bunch. Gives them more control; cons and ultra-cons crave that. Control means avoiding disorder and chaos, which they detest.

Whereas Ds tend to think, somewhat naively, it's all about the issues. Actually it's more about how one speaks about issues, but ultimately it's about power.

That said, while certainly Rs and Ds share commonalities -- e.g. on compulsory vaccines, censorship (each side would like to censor the other if given power), elected officials bought and paid for, revolving doors, and of course foreign policy -- they differ substantially on some major social issues. Protecting rights for minorities, voting, gays, guns, religion in the public square, public schools. Thus there's still enough of a difference between the two parties to make me slightly more interested in the outcome of the upcoming elections as compared to prior to the Court news on Roe.

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Cassiodorus's picture

that they have an issue as they head into 2022 campaigns many of them will lose. Then all of the well-funded ones will go into consultant work while waiting for the Republicans to screw us some more.

I think the sticking point is when they recognize that they cannot escape the worsening world they've created.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

@Cassiodorus asking for $. This is more of the same, using abortion rights to raise money, and it will work well in an election year. Herd the sheeple back into the D pen.
Meanwhile, we head into WWIII and stock market crash and more austerity. Food shortages, and school closures. Hospital closures. Bridges falling down.
I call BS.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

it still will not help the Dems much. I've seen about a half dozen columns written by women who blame the Democrats for sitting on this issue and doing nothing when it was obvious that the GOP was gaining the power to topple Roe. They also are giving the finger to the symbolic vote that Schumer led the other day.

Bernie Sanders killed any hopes of a third party, and I for one, will never forgive him for how he messed that up.

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"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin

@Fishtroller 02 the progressive left has been a minimal force in the party and with the larger public. That public is therefore going to not hear or ignore or downplay any current prog-lefty complaints about previous D inaction on codifying Roe or the rest. This assumes a basic political competence level of the party in organizing around this case for the fall and keeping the emphasis on the GOP's role in turning back the clock to 1952 for women's rights. Total incompetence would be to get involved in an ongoing public debate about their failure to previously codify Roe.

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shaharazade's picture

@wokkamile @wokkamile A win for the Demorat's. I doubt it. Every one I know who are mainly pretty mainstream Dems. are really pissed at at the Dems. on every level, not just this issue. They like me don't like what they are up to. Which is nothing. Yeah do the filibuster nonsense one more time assholes. Get Chuck Schumer up there and let him do nothing. Nancy? yeah right. That will help. Its a duopoly and they are all in cahoots. Fuck them all and the horses they rode in on. This will not hold people have had enough. Fear can only work so long until it becomes absurd and it has. 'Propaganda all is phony'. Everybody knows.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

There is a lot of political nuance in everyone's opinions.

After reading the prior posts, I'm inclined to set aside a premeditated "political" motive.

Of course, the public reaction is a political one. Being political is how one stays in the game in DC. It's how the People are manipulated into self-opposing factions — and how they are distracted and propagandized over and over again, with the most preposterous misinformation that the intelligence industry and their DC think tanks can produce.

In my view, verything about the SC leak was amateurish. There was no planning, no guidance, no apparent strategy. I suspect the leaker did not see the issue as a political one. It's more about body sovereignty, which speaks for itself. However, the abortion draft decision is being wedged this way and that by the media, in an attempt to give it political spin that drives the news cycle. While abortion really cannot be reduced to a political issue when addressing intellectually developed people, it is treated in this cartoonish way in the US because the American culture has been debauched and savaged by its own corruption. Here, the unthinkable is entirely possible.

Intellectually speaking, the energy surrounding abortion is actually a 'religious' issue. It has a psychological dimension that brings up identity and esteem issues. Abortion tends to be outlawed in small, undeveloped countries that are steeped in superstitious ignorance and primitive misogyny. The kind of places that give rise to brutal, abusive leaders and extra-judicial murder by the State.

The United States certainly belongs on this list. And that tells me that the leak is an organic, spontaneous occurrence — and is probably not part of a political strategy.

As for speculation on the political motives, here, most are familiar political strategies that are being used to make sense of things. But they are rarely a good fit. 'Third Parties' are structurally impossible due to many, many legal barriers put in place during the past century of duopoly rule. Also, domestic matters may seem important to the American people, but the US is fullyand completely engaged at the international level. Domestic issues are of little importance to Our Overlords. The media has captured the minds of the population, so these things can be managed automatically and the people easily distracted.

IMO, abortion restrictions will remain with us in the future. The US is very much a model of the Taliban, and the US Supreme Court is a cluster of lifetime political appointees. There are plenty more where they came from. The Democrats will not be making any amendment-level laws, even if it were possible to open that door. As for the Constitution, it is entrenched and can no longer be amended. Don't take my word for it. Look it up.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Pluto's Republic My sense is you are correct:

And that tells me that the leak is an organic, spontaneous occurrence — and is probably not part of a political strategy.

Not following in detail abortion laws, it seemed that a number of states were skirting Roe-Wade and putting restrictions on abortions making them hard to get. This is a consequence of democrats losing state and local elections. Over turning Roe leaves the possibility of total bans at the state level. But states like Oregon and Washington can be free to make it more permissive.

Maybe it is the bubble of the people and groups that I will look up, but the democrats look like even more politically inept.

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@Pluto's Republic 1) if leaked from a liberal pro-choice clerk, the strategy would be to try to get one Justice to re-think their anti-Roe position prior to the opinion becoming official by noting the extent of the public outcry and taking notice of the potential political backlash against that Justice's presumed party. 2) if leaked by an anti-Roe clerk, the strategy would be to push the draft opinion out in the public as a done deal and thus make it harder for a Justice to change his/her mind.

But in any case I don't see this at all as being "organic and spontaneous" as leaks of SupCt draft opinions are extremely rare. The odds greatly favor it being a deliberate leak either to change one vote or to lock in the 5-4 majority.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@wokkamile

1) if leaked from a liberal pro-choice clerk, the strategy would be to try to get one Justice to re-think their anti-Roe position prior to the opinion becoming official

Something very close to home. Something personal. Something possible.

To sow doubt and reluctance in one justice.

I think that's the way change has to come in the future. Not through public action. This avoids opposition.

By 'organic' I meant a personal and private motive — and not about politics or winning the next election. That's why I say there is no elaborate plan to alter the political landscape.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Pluto's Republic private motive, why act to make the opinion public? Leaks from an active insider and not someone already ousted are almost always about achieving a larger objective and not to assuage a private matter. If it was purely private, why not just resign and thereby avoid some serious repercussions such as being fired and having your law license put in jeopardy.

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@wokkamile n/t

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Pluto's Republic's picture

@wokkamile

Let's say you are dedicated to your job. It's important work. You love what you do. You care deeply about the country.

You see a decision drafted. You believe it is reactionary and is bad for the country, but what's worse, it will reflect badly on a Judge you respect, who may not realize how much this will ruin his legacy. You are proud of his life's work, and proud you could participate in it.

You fear that if you had this conversation with the judge, he will still go along with the others. He's much weaker than in the past. He is inclined to go along with the new power-group on the Bench. He is unable to fully empathize with the complex life decisions of a pregnant woman in a highly compromised situation. The Judge's imagination has failed him in his old age. You know that if you discuss this decision with the Judge, there will be nothing more you can do. Your beliefs will have been exposed.

So you say nothing and leak the draft quietly and invisibly, as others like Seth Rich have done in the past. You hope that the public reaction to the draft decision will give the court pause. But no matter what the outcome, no one will ever know what you did. It was not a cheap political manipulation to give you an advantage. You feel obligated to do the right thing. It's personal to you because you have a stake in your own life's work and your own judgement. It may not work out the way you want it to, but at least you have made an effort. And no one has to die on a political/ideological hill. It's personal because you are the only one who will ever know.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

1, hard line single issue voters on Roe are already reliable D votes. The Ds can expect a few 19 year olds to come out but that will be a pathetically small number. Likewise an attack on Roe will energize very few religious right non voters to turn out for Rs. All told it will be a wash.
2, the thought that Roe will force D voters to redouble their fear of risking a new party has merit. A 50 or 60 House, 5 or 6 Senate seat wipeout could have led to a new party that would possibly have returned government to the people. Now a similar wipeout will lead to an electorate too afraid of the R gains to risk a new party, while a return to the status quo would do simply just that. The Rs would prefer 200 quisling D House members to 150, as that would be too few to effectively scapegoat.
3, I was wrong however. Bernie's failure to run as an independent in 2016 was indeed fatal, but not as I predicted. the Rs did not gain 20 or 30 house seats in 2018 and the Ds regained the Presidency, but 2022 and 24 will return the prediction to track, just with less possibility of salvation. My original prediction was for Bernie to have effectively formed a new party in 2016 and won. He would have been forced to destroy the obstructionist remaining Ds and hopefully establish a survivable America and world before ecological extinction. Today that hope is pollyannaish in the extreme.

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On to Biden since 1973

@doh1304 #1: It's the very rare SupCt case (in modern times) which takes away long-held rights, as this draft opinion signals. Therefore, more people are going to be energized to show up to vote against the party responsible for taking away those rights, thereby hoping to have those same rights restored, than those voting to applaud the taking. This would especially include socially moderate Rs, and women and single women generally under-40, many of whom haven't voted before though eligible. It will not be a wash. Advantage Ds.

It's a shame Obama just didn't act aggressively in 2016 by fitting Garland for robes as soon as it was clear the senate would not fulfill its constitutional role.

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TheOtherMaven's picture

@wokkamile
in the face of all his lying promises about what he would do once elected. That includes codifying abortion rights into Federal law, which he promised would be his highest priority - and threw away as soon as he took the oath of office.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

@TheOtherMaven never an accurate descriptive for the mild mannered, soft-spoken, conciliatory Obama. And campaign promises -- easy to make 'em, easy to break 'em.

And sometimes you get into office and realize it's especially hard to fulfill them with having to deal with a filibuster-prone senate where 60 votes are required to proceed. I can understand his political calculus, esp as his ACA was about to be unveiled and he needed support from the conserative wing of his party. Meanwhile the left was rather quiet, iirc, about the inaction on or failure in codifying Roe. It was the beginning of his historic presidency, and liberals mostly just swallowed their complaints and disappointments in order to show support. In that sense, they failed the FDR test of I agree with you; now go out there and make me do it.

It would have been easier for him politically in 2016, but not temperamentally, to act boldly to seat Garland right away. But he kept rather quiet about the nomination after making it and after McConnell's statement, perhaps assuming Hillary was a shoo-in and would take care of the matter.

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@wokkamile
before the midterms. It won't happen that fast. It will happen slower and more gradually, and the public will be too busy complaining impotently about inflation to have the epiphany you predict.
And FYI: in the mid 1980s I read that "the average American was 850 miles from the nearest abortion provider. Roe is already dead." This may or may not have been technically true, but it was essentially true. No woman born after 1960 has truly had the "right" to an abortion, it'll be easy to shrug off.

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On to Biden since 1973

@doh1304 or essentially true, the fact is that most Americans perceive that abortion rights existed in much of the country prior to this latest, and perceptions trump everything in politics.

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@wokkamile
and that's why we have already lost and are going to lose again - because the only people who perceive themselves at risk are already determined to waste their vote on the quislings no matter what.

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On to Biden since 1973