All of sudden abortion law in this country since the Supreme Court threw out its Roe v Wade ruling, is no longer a federal issue at all. It is entirely a matter for the states. Unless Congress were to codify those protections into federal law, there is not a damn thing President Biden can do. There is no action he can take. He can’t issue any blanket pardons. He can’t draw up and sign an executive order. I’m seeing a lot of people on Facebook and Twitter who think that Biden can save the day here, but he cannot, not on this. There is no easy way out of this except by winning more seats in congress, enough to get legislation passed. it’s not up to Joe Biden, it’s up to the voters in districts currently held by Republicans. Thus November we need to win several of those seats for this to change, while holding onto the seats we have. That is the only way to change this. As it is, yesterday’s decision stands.

Republicans for years now have been outsmarting Democrats on this stuff, and you can blame us entirely for somehow winding up with more votes but less power. We handed most of the (small d) democratic process over to them, from local government on up. We couldn’t be bothered. They made most of their gains in the 80s and 90s when so many of our people could scarcely be bothered to vote. We’ve been paying for it since. We won the presidential elections—two of the last three times this century that they won the electoral college they lost the popular vote—we win the House, we even win the Senate, but look at the state races. We’ve gotten creamed. Is it any wonder that the abortion laws in a majority of states could have been written the Federalist Society? We handed them the keys to the state governments, from the governor’s office to the legislatures.

Meanwhile, they’ve been following the same gameplan they’ve been working with since the Goldwater campaign in 1964. Seriously, this strategy first came together in 1964. It didn’t work then, but by 1980 it won the White House and began to win statehouse after statehouse. Meanwhile, our side’s voting numbers in the 80s and 90s plummeted. We’re looking at the results now of 58 years of a basically continuous conservative game plan. They certainly never kept it a secret. They even brag about it. But have we caught on yet? Is it any wonder they think we’re stupid? Are we?

Not saying it’s permanent. Millennials et al are voting in higher numbers than anybody their age has in decades, and are decidedly not voting Republican. Come back in twenty years and see what they’ve done. We boomers will nearly all be gone by then, thankfully. We talk Woodstock but we voted Trump. I can’t explain that, and I was born right smack in the middle—1957—of the post war baby boom.