Inattention

"If you're not angry (and/or outraged) you're not paying attention."

It's an old trope, but it's having a day again in the aftermath of the recent United States Supreme Court rulings in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., Et al. v. Bruen, Superintendent of New York State Police, Et al. and Dobbs, State Health Officer of the Mississippi Department of Health, Et al. v. Jackson Women's Health Organization Et al.

My favorite variation on the theme this time out is: "If you aren't angry AND terrified, then you're part of the problem." But as I've said before, it is possible to pay attention, and not be outraged, because comprehension does not require emoting. Furthermore, anger and outrage 1) don't change anything, and 2) are neither a substitute nor prerequisite for effective action to bring about change.

But in this case, I would make the point to people who are upset about the Supreme Court's stances on guns and the right to abortion, is that their current outrage is born of inattention six years ago. Had former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton carried Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all states carried by President Biden, the Supreme Court would not have a 6 to 3 partisan lean in favor of Republicans. It would, in fact, be the opposite. And it's not like the desire for Conservatives/Republicans to have a Court that would back their plays was a secret. It's a project that's been in the works pretty much for the past 50 years.

In the end, the culprit is likely threefold (at least). Fold one is the negative partisanship of the broad American public, and the effect this has on the "two-party" system. Put simply, if one is not a Republican, the only viable option in the majority of the country is to be a Democrat. There's the odd independent here and there, like Bernie Sanders (who tends to be a Democrat just long enough to run in the party's Presidential primary), but for the most part, "third-parties" (of which there are actually several), are more or less hopeless when it comes to Federal or statewide offices; the big-name independent and third-party candidates that get anywhere or make a splash in the attempt tend to be running on personal name recognition. The upshot of Democrats as simply being pretty much everyone who wants to be politically active or engaged but doesn't want to vote Republican is that the Democrat's "big tent" is large enough to include groups who aren't otherwise on speaking terms. It's said that there's a "moderate wing" and a "progressive wing" of the Democratic Party, but that implies that they're firmly attached to the same bird, a characterization that I am dubious of. And the infighting between the two has prevented

The second fold is the segregation of Democratic and Republican voters at the national level. Recall that while Secretary Clinton lost the Electoral College vote, she won the popular vote. The clustering of "Blue" voters in high-population states hurts Democrats at the national level, as the size of the House of Representatives is capped at 435 seats, and all states must have at least one. States with populations of less than 750,000 or so wind up pulling House seats, and thus Electoral College votes, from the larger states. And each state receives two Senators, regardless of size, and so the fact that there are simply numerically fewer reliably "Blue" states than "Red" ones can make winning the Presidency difficult for Democrats.

Fold the third was the unwise adoption of a philosophy that "demography equals destiny." As Democrats assured themselves that the White grievance politics that appeared to animate the Republican Party would drive away everyone who wasn't White, Rural, Old, Male and Evangelical, they stopped looking for ways to court the voters who didn't fit that profile. And when it turned out that many people from Latin American backgrounds had come to associate Progressivism (and Democratic Socialism... remember that term) with the disastrous socialist dictatorships that had prompted their families to come to the United States in the first place, the fractious party had nothing else ready to offer them outside of motivated misunderstandings of Trumpian rhetoric.

And none of this is new. These are things that could have, and should have, been addressed years ago. But they weren't. Anger and outrage over their consequences won't turn back the clock and fix them, either.