the ask@AAR: What issues matter to you in elections?
I’ve been reading endless articles about whether or not and, if so, how the probable overturning of Roe v. Wade in the United States could influence the 2022 midterms and the 2024 election. The answer seems to be: Not much. Most pundits think that despite the strong passions voters have about the issue, stricter limits on abortion, even criminalization, won’t inspire people to vote. According to a recent Gallup poll, abortion isn’t considered an important issue for voters–it ranks lower than many many other societal and economic issues.
What do voters care about? Inflation is the top concern. After that, women prioritise health care and prescription drugs; men, taxes and Ukraine and Russia.
Interestingly, the group most likely to decide elections may be women over 50. According to a new AARP poll, this voting bloc votes reliably AND hasn’t decided who to vote for. So I’m curious. Not about WHO you plan to vote for but WHAT. What issue(s) matter most to you when you vote?
I vote for supporting Ukraine’s fight for freedom and democracy, even though a part me wants to whine about high gas prices. Because in the balance – freedom or inflationary gas prices, freedom wins.
I vote for pro choice abortion legislation, because Republican candidates like JD Vance believe there should be no exceptions including rape or incest. I am made breathless by such male arrogance.
I vote for reasonable gun control, because I am tired of this country’s worship of guns being more important than the safety of our children.
I vote for candidates that put country above party and their own personal power.
I vote for voting rights for all, and against those who lie about voting and know what they say is a lie, but care more about their own personal interests, because we do not need such cowards leading our country.
I vote for those who believe that the working middle class is he backbone of our society, and know that without a healthy middle class, no society can survive.
I vote for an inclusive society. A society whose very diversity is what makes this country shine.
I vote for democracy because too many of our family, our ancestors have given their lives to fight against fascism, authoritarianism, and communism so that we might enjoy the freedoms that we cherish.
I vote. I vote. I vote.
I don’t understand not voting. And yes, voter suppression is real. That said, when I was younger and we didn’t have early voting, we’d have to occasionally stand in line for hours. My husband, who alway worked and couldn’t vote during the work day, would head to the polls after work and wait until as late as he had to in order to vote.
Again, I understand that voter suppression is real AND I believe it’s one of the most important things one can do.
In old parlance, Right On, Sister!!! Totally agree with what you say.
May I point out that Roe v, Wade was decided in 1973 by a Supreme Court that was entirely male. (This in reply to a comment way down about male control.) And the Supreme Court currently has three (soon to be four) women. It would be wonderful if they had the intelligence to argue successfully against the overturn. And abortions will not cease even if R v. W is overturned.. It will be left up to the individual States to set their laws. And I’m solidly pro-choice.
The economy is my number one issue tied with world safety (which are pretty much running hand-in-hand right now.)
I will never vote for a Republican. I don’t care if God himself were to come to Earth and say “I’m a Republican,” I still wouldn’t vote for him. That’s pretty much my single issue. But if I had to specify my biggest areas of concern, I would focus on voting rights, eliminating the Electoral College, and reforming the Supreme Court. A Democrat who vowed to do any and/or all of these things would get my vote. Because as far as I can see, until these three problems are fixed, we will be stuck living under minority rule, at the mercy of an increasingly politicized, radical court, and completely hamstrung to make any changes to any of it.
Like JCG who made the first comment on this topic, I am not in the USA either but in the UK, specifically England. But I was born, raised and educated in California and did my university degrees there in history and political science. Politics is a life-long interest and I am actively involved in the UK which has been my home since I was in my late 20s. I gave up the US portion of my dual citizenship just before the last US Presidential election due to tax issues – e.g. the IRS kept insisting I was working, self-employed, etc. when I have been fully retired for 11 years and never self-employed. I just could no longer bear dealing with them without any access to in-person, email or telephone support after they pulled out their implant in the US Embassy in London. So, if I were still a dual citizen and voting in US Presidential elections then I would be looking for someone who promised to streamline bureaucracy and make dealing with officialdom more accessible. It’s no good sending me a tax demand when there is nobody to contact for help. Thank goodness for H&R Block’s website – it was very helpful with suggestions about tax issues.
I am so horrified by the Roe v Wade issue that I am beyond appalled, being of the age to remember the older sisters of my junior high school friends going to Tiajuana for a botch-job. So I would be looking to vote for candidates who will uphold the rights of women that we have worked so damned hard for.
Looking across the pond at my home country, I am dismayed by the increasing polarisation in national life. Though I always voted Democrat in Presidential elections, I did nonetheless admire various Republican figures and on local issues sometimes voted for them if their stance met my own concerns. But the increasingly rancid, vicious, harsh and even violent confrontations in public and political life are appalling. The invasion of the Capitol Building was utterly shocking. I would also vote for anyone who could bring in real gun control and demolish the NRA.
Religion really plays very little part in British politics. Church attendance is, sadly, miniscule these days and any impact religion has tends to be concern about radical Islamism rather than the power of fundamentalist Christianity. The “Bible Belt” mentality seems to be playing a much more significant role these days in the US and to me it’s a real backwards step in a changing world.
I dislike and disagree with much of the so-called woke agenda but that, too, seems to be playing an increasing part in politics here, following along from the US. I only hope that the narrow-minded stupidity of it all will pass like adolescent acne as it’s making rational discourse more and more difficult, sometimes impossible.
My biggest domestic concerns in the UK are our huge and inefficient bureaucracy with indolent civil servants refusing to come back work creating huge backlogs everywhere; inflation; lowering of education standards; a National Health Service run by too many has-beens fired from one job, sequeing into another at more money giving rise to a lack of tight running of a huge maw of money-hunger. Finally, I fear that the Ukrainian situation will become even more of a nightmare as the mad man in Moscow runs more and more out of control with a huge box of nasty nuclear tricks up his sleeve. Maybe none of our “concerns” matter at all and there won’t be anyone around to worry about them if it all goes belly up.
This is an excellent article on why Alito’s writing is so threatening to women.
THIS:
American women have had this fight already, of course. And it took long enough, didn’t it? American freedom was conditional from the start. Only men were created equal, and only some of them at that. Women were not free. Enslaved people certainly were not free. One of the central hypocrisies of this great nation was always the exclusion of whole classes of people, their humanity waved away so casually, so cruelly. Unalienable rights and liberty—no, no, wait, not for you. When Roe was decided in 1973, women still couldn’t open their own bank accounts or get their own credit cards without permission from a father or a husband. Only if our country attempts to include all citizens in the expression of its values can the American idea even begin to be realized.
Alito, in his draft opinion, went looking for abortion in the Constitution, and used its absence as proof that abortion lacked constitutional protection. He went looking in a document from an era in which women could not hold public office, could not vote, and, as the writer Jill Lepore recently pointed out, legally “did not exist as persons.” The men who wrote the Constitution wholly and deliberately excluded women, and neglected to imagine them as part of their polity. No wonder Alito dismissed “attempts to justify abortion through appeals to a broader right to autonomy.” His refusal to consider autonomy as a constitutional principle spins us backwards in time, to an era in which the Constitution couldn’t perceive of women as equal citizens.
The thing is, the Constitution does not need to spell out that American virtue is derived from the ability to self-govern, that self-governance requires individual freedom, and that individual freedom requires bodily autonomy. We know that it is so. The moral questions posed by the reality of abortion are intricate, and the government already interferes with people’s bodies in many ways for many reasons—the state requires people to get life-saving vaccines; the state incarcerates people. But any conversation about abortion needs to begin with the recognition that bodily autonomy is a prerequisite for freedom. When the state is willing to seize the bodies of its citizens, it does so at an enormously steep price. For women, the price is freedom: the very essence of what it means to be American.
“When Roe was decided in 1973, women still couldn’t open their own bank accounts or get their own credit cards without permission from a father or a husband.”
Dabney, perhaps I misread the entire comment but I had my own bank account and my own credit cards in 1973. My name. No husband needed. No father needed.
I’m surprised at that. That would have been unusual at the time.
And I had my own account at a stock brokerage firm. I think it all might have been based on employment.
Didn’t mean this to sound snotty. I just meant that if you had a solid job and track record of income there wasn’t a problem to get credit as an individual.
It was legal to discriminate and would have varied greatly across the country. So saying “it wasn’t a problem” isn’t accurate. You didn’t have a problem, but thousands of women did.
Yes–watching Mad Men makes it clear that while there were women who were able to thrive financially, there were barriers even to them. And in the South, it was a very different story for most.
I think the average woman didn’t have control over her own finances easily. The stories from my friends whose parents got divorced in the 60s and early 70s are all financial nightmares for the moms. No credit, banks and landlords that wouldn’t deal with them without a man. My best friend’s mom had to have her ex-husband’s family give her a credit card and co-sign her first lease.
Probably depended on the bank. In 1982, I tried to get a credit card from my bank and they said no, because I wasn’t married. I pointed out that they had given a credit card to a man who worked for me (and made less money), who also wasn’t married, and asked if they wanted me to sue them for discrimination. They gave me the credit card.
That story amazes me. I had my own credit card in 1982 from USAA. Still bank with them today!
Wow – I was a student at university in 1982 and banks were falling over themselves to give me an account! Okay, it wasn’t a credit card, but still … and I didn’t have to have anyone sign off on it for me. I don’t know if there were any barriers to women having bank accounts in the UK in earlier decades – I’ll have to ask my mum!
Speaking of credit cards and marital status…I applied for a credit card with my local bank, when face-to-face interactions with loans officers was a thing in Canada back in the day. I was 27, newly married, co-owner of a house my husband and I just bought, had a really good paying job. and I was denied. The female loans officer saying, I kid you not “what if your husband up and left you?”
Silly question, I thought, offended. It was 19-freaking-92. My reply was: “I still own half the house and I’ll close my account.” She was speechless. Whether from me standing up to the patriarchy or losing an account of a large sum, I’ll never know. Frankly, I didn’t care, and didn’t ask. As I said, I was offended on behalf of my gender that a woman actually said that. In 1992!!
I drove straight to the bank which held my mortgage and the female loans officer, who asked “what limit do YOU want?” and gave me *her* best financial personal and professional advice: Always Keep a bank/credit card in you name; and never have a joint household bank/credit card account with your spouse. For when things go south (Death, divorce) it’s always to the detriment of the wife.
30 yrs later, I’ve adhered to that advice, and I have peace of mind knowing my credit rating is my own. If I suddenly find myself widowed, I won’t have a issue setting up/switching over utilities in my own name alone, for example.
As to what election issues matter: as a Canadian: I oppose poltical parties that are hell bent on eroding democracy, Indigenous, LGBT2S and women’s rights, who think (funding) public health and education somehow = big bad wolf socialism, yet have no issue with corporate welfare handouts, in the form of tax breaks in the millions, that takes funding away from social programs that help those in need.
Climate crisis is important to me, and has been for decades. And having lived in a petrostate province most of my life, we need to quit our dependency, our fixation, on oil.
When I lived in the Middle East, I had to get my father’s signed authorization before I was allowed to accept a job (in 2005). If I’d been married, my husband’s permission would have been necessary. That was one reason I was determined to get the hell out of there and emigrate to Canada.
Oh, and once I started working and needed to open a bank account, one of the questions I was asked at the bank was, “What’s your religion?” I was, and am, an atheist, but I was worried that this might make the bank deny me an account, so I said I was a Christian. Looking back on all that, I’m so relieved to have left it behind (and deeply sorry for women who are trapped in such countries and situations with no way out).
A bank asked what religion? Whoa.
It was the Middle East. Nothing surprises me when it comes to the way people (especially people of color) are treated there.
But I have now had dealings with four different banks in Canada and am happy to say that my religion or lack thereof was a complete non-issue for them!
Banks could refuse women credit or require a husband or father to cosign until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 was passed. It might have been possible to get credit before that, but it was not guaranteed and varied greatly with where you lived. The ECOA also banned discrimination based on race, age, gender, nationality or marital status.
Until 1978 women could be fired if they were pregnant.
They could not take action in the work place for sexual harassment until 1977.
They routinely paid more for health insurance until the passage of the Affordable Care Act, although women still tend to pay more in some cases.
Birth control pills were not available to unmarried women for contraceptive purposes until 1972.
I have always been a single issue voter: Who is going to appoint and confirm Justices to the Supreme Court. I grew up during the Warren Court, which recognized fundamental rights that improved equality, voting access, and rights of the individual. I support officials at all levels who work to provide substance to the preamble to the US Constitution:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Inflation and federal government overreach/intrusion.
I spent the 1970s, as a teenager, jumping on a bus to Washington from Philadelphia to march for women’s rights, the ERA, and pro-choice issues. (I was born and raised in South Jersey outside of Philly.) I am disgusted by what’s now happening regarding a woman’s ability to control her own health and body. Unfortunately, I now live in Washington, DC — because I was a political science major and I used to love politics. As such, I have no rights anymore. We have our own D.C. city government and a mayor but Congress, under GOP control, constantly inserts themselves into the governance of the District, denying our ability to spend OUR OWN tax dollars the way we want. I foresee that they will do this again if the Congress goes back into GOP hands. They will deny our ability to provide proper healthcare to women even though the District is over 90% Democratic and would be happy to use our taxes to provide it. The GOP will force a district full of citizens more liberal than some of the bluest areas of the states to their will because they get a kick out of treating us like puppets.
DC’s lack of agency is a blot on our democracy.
Our democracy is kind of a Jackson Pollock painting tbh.
gas & food prices
Do they believe that all human beings must have equal access to all human rights? This rules out a shocking number of people.
Ron DeSantis just declared,”Our rights come from God and not from the government.”(Hialeigh Prayer Breakfast). If that statement doesn’t chill you to the bone then you aren’t paying attention. I agree with DDD that we are moving towards a white, nationalist, fascist, patriarchal theocracy. I homeschooled with many conservative republicans for over two decades. I’ve heard them planning for this, spouting Dominion Theology (look it up) and a return to “biblical” punishments (death penalty for many different “crimes”). Honestly, I thought they were nut-jobs, but here we are ,two decades later fighting for our democracy against people who think “God” is on their side and that gives them all the rights they need to oppress other viewpoints.
My biggest worry right now is voting rights, because if they continue to suppress votes rights and pass laws that give them the right to change an election outcome they don’t like, then how do we come back from that? Honestly, I’m pretty scared. I have disabled children and LGBTQ+ kids and I’m seeing compassion and rights eroded here. Not for the first time I’m finding myself not sorry that I don’t have any grandchildren to worry about.
Genuinely curious, if you are inclined to share: What do you consider the source of our rights?
From our existence as humans. All you have to do to deserve, for instance, health care, or control over your body, is to exist as a human. Government exists to protect our rights, not to grant them to us or decide what they are.
Personally I overlap a lot with John Locke so his philosophy is a good place to start on questions like this if you want to read more. Locke is the originator of “life, liberty, and property” as the three main natural rights, which became Jefferson’s “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.
Thank you for your comment. You and I agree that our rights don’t come from the government. I’d like to better understand the idea of health care as a right. It seems like saying that I have a right to health care means that I have a right to the proceeds of your labor if I’m not able to pay for it myself. How do you think about it?
The same way I feel about public schools being available for children who aren’t mine, or people in other parts of my country getting roads to drive on that I don’t need, or fire fighters putting out fires that aren’t at my house. That’s a reason we organize into a government – so that we can pay, via taxes, for programs which we all should have access to.
But I am not entirely convinced based on what I’m reading in your comments that you are asking these questions with the intent of learning or being convinced of anything. Asking people to endlessly defend themselves, and to demand ideological purity, is a common troll tactic for grinding down and exhausting people. It is also offensive to ask people to justify their right to the same rights others experience. How do you think about that?
It’s my hope that all who comment at AAR are doing so with good intentions.
Absolutely, Dabney! I enjoy this site. I really do like to know what people think, although I rarely ask directly. Thank you all for a pleasant and informative conversation.
Thank you for commenting!
I live in Canada and I work in health care. I also have no objections to my taxes paying for health care because to me, that’s a benefit for everyone. If I have TB because I couldn’t afford treatment, that puts others around me at risk. I think it’s a good idea to do whatever is necessary to eliminate or reduce such risks.
Also, the government already decides that other people have a right to the proceeds of my labor under certain circumstances, and to me, public health is as important as public schools, public defenders, public transportation and so on. But I prefer this to an existence where I live off-grid and far from everyone else so that the government can’t tell me what to do.
Oh, and as a point of comparison, before emigrating to Canada, I worked in a Middle Eastern country where there was no income tax. The proceeds of my labor were all mine.
One day I visited the sole public library in the country’s business capital. The library was a single room with a dozen shelves of old, worn paperbacks.
So I’m fine with my taxes contributing to a large, modern, diverse and useful public library system too.
My dad used to complain about the property taxes I paid in my liberal state. I pointed out to him my fixed roads (there was literally a news story in his red state about a car who hit a pothole on an overpass and their tire went through. Held traffic up for a day) my gorgeous public parks, biking/hiking trails, sidewalks, fantastic libraries, schools that ranked among the top in the nation, low crime rate — the list could go on. Most people who complain about their taxes don’t understand what they get in exchange for them.
I agree. I live in the highest property tax county in the American South! But it’s worth it–our schools are very good, our roads function, we have stellar libraries, and people feel safe.
Our rights are intrinsic to our humanity. Everyone has the right to equal access to education, healthcare, justice, etc. I do not think our religious beliefs should be the source of our rights as citizens. To base “rights” on someone’s interpretation of their religious beliefs is dangerous, as we’ve seen with religious extremists all over the world. Christian religious extremism isn’t any “nicer” than Islamic, or Hindi, or any other religious extremism. Saying “This is what God wants” is fine. But in a democracy forcing one person’s view of “what God wants” on the entire country is overstepping. This is why we have separation of church and state. It was to protect both religious institutions AND the secular state. We are a democracy and no one interpretation of God and Bible speaks for everyone. And it shouldn’t. That’s foundational to who we are as a country!
Think back to prohibition. Those laws were passed on religious grounds, because religious people thought drinking alcohol was a sin. That’s a prime example of forcing an entire country to live a certain way because you (generic “you”) think your God has said so, and that you have the right to force your views of what God wants on everyone else. This is where we are again in this country, only worse, because other parts of historic Christianity are being thrown to the side, like feeding the poor, welcoming the stranger, and caring for the sick. Now it’s about saying “God said so” in order to gain power and money.
If anyone thinks that a “Christian” theocracy is going to be a kinder, gentler type of theocracy, they are fooling themselves. Theocracies are authoritarian and unyielding because the men (and it will be men) in power can evoke the power of “thus says the Lord.”
Thank you for your reply. You and I agree that our rights don’t come from the government. To me, “our rights come from God, not the government” is a reference to the founding principle of the American system of government. I think many Americans agree with that statement in its classical liberal sense. I think you’re saying that in this context (prayer breakfast) you hear a call for instituting (or maybe re-instituting?) a theocracy. I get why that’s concerning.
Re prohibition, the laws were passed through our democratic process (I know technically we are a republic); 46 of 48 states ratified the 18th amendment. Our system has some checks to prevent the majority from trampling the minority. Do you think this was a case of a minority trampling the majority? If so, how would you protect against it? With prohibition, the same democratic process eventually returned the country more-or-less to its previous state.
The United States, by consensus international definitions involving the ability of the population to participate, was not a democracy until, at best, the 1960s. So anything that happened until then can be categorized as minority rule.
How would YOU protect against minority rule, for instance, in cases of pro-lifers (a minority) stacking the court to rule against abortion?
Exactly. We are being controlled by a minority right now.
The founding fathers had no idea what assault rifles and abortions were when they wrote the constitution. Constantly living via their principles when it’s been hundreds of years of development down the line between our deaths and their framing of the constitution is ludicrous.
Yes, do see prohibition as a minority controlling the majority. (And it was overturned because it affected men.) And that’s been the case for every Republican president for the past 20 or 30 years. They have all been elected with a minority vote.
This is how Republicans are doing it, in part.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/5-egregious-voter-suppression-laws-2021
If they can continue to control who votes,then they can remain in power indefinitely,even if the majority of people in the country don’t agree with them.
Good example: every poll, either by prolife or prochoice groups, show that a significant majority of Americans believe abortion should be legal, usually with some restriction. Almost all believe in exceptions for health/life of the mother and rape and incest. Yet bills being passed by Republicans around the country exclude these provisions, and several are trying to make any abortion murder.
Why am I scared for our future? Because “abortion” is how you treat miscarriages that the body does clear. It’s how you treat ectopic pregnancies, it’s how you treat septic uterus, etc. It’s how you save a woman’s life instead of choosing a nonviable fetus over a living woman and letting her die. I just read an article in the NYT today where activists are quoted about where they go from here: a national ban on 100% of abortions. And again I say, if you don’t think they can do it, then you haven’t been paying attention the last 30 years.
A national ban would be wildly unpopular in the way state’s bans aren’t.
An opinion in the WaPo yesterday explains why there’s less voter backlash in Texas than one would expect.
I’ll be interested to see if post 2022 midterm polls show that abortion was a big factor for voters.
The state-by-state right to decide really worries me. Perhaps I am overthinking it or thinking through it wrongly but this has a whiff of the Jim Crow Era about it to me, where your basic human rights are determined by what state you live in. I think it is dangerous to allow the states to determine what rights we have. I have no problem with them setting speed limits or local ordinances but I have all kinds of trouble with them determining something as fundamental as whether a woman has the right to a life-saving procedure or whether a fetus that is poisoning the mother has more right to life than that woman herself. And I just can’t see this not being used as a precedent to roll back LGBTQ+ and Civil Rights. I don’t want that kind of power in the hands of individual states.
I also question how long we can remain the United States of America if we become completely divided in how we view basic human rights. Maybe I am overthinking things or thinking wrongly but I can’t see anything but increased hostility between our opposing sides/views coming out of this.
I agree 100%. I’m just saying my bet is that voiding Roe v. Wade won’t be the ballot box miracle Democrats hope it will be. Which is IMHO a bummer.
It is a bummer. I think Democrats do – and have done- a piss poor job of getting out the messages that matter. Whereas Republicans are marketing geniuses – they have convinced entire swaths of people that taking away rights means less government interference, when the opposite is actually true. It amazes me.
It’s a bummer, but completely unsurprising. Over the past four decades (not coincidentally since the Reagan Administration overturned the Fairness Doctrine which had previously required that all news outlets using the public airwaves allot equal time to air both sides of an issue), the right-wing media in our country has successfully demonized and “otherized” Democrats, liberals, feminists, people of color, the LGBTQIA community, scientists, medical professionals, and immigrants (documented or otherwise). No matter how much Democrats try to convince red-state voters that by voting for the GOP they are voting against their own economic self-interest, they can’t make inroads because ALL Democrats are perceived as the enemy, along with the other groups mentioned above, and this message is hammered home incessantly on various right-wing outlets. As Dr. Johnson once observed, “You will never reason a man out of something he wasn’t reasoned into in the first place.” Sadly, no one was “reasoned” into this level of visceral hatred—and they won’t be reasoned out of it. Mark my words, there are dark days ahead…and the overturning of Roe v. Wade is just the tip of the iceberg.
/Dismounting soapbox now.
I live in a purple veering to red state. I talk to a lot of Republicans. The group that hates all things Democratic is about as big as the progressive wing that hates all things Republican.
I hear a lot about how Washington isn’t reflective of the world rural Republicans live in, about how Democrats don’t respect our traditions and trash our country. I hear that Democrats hate religion and don’t care about traditional families.
These are all things that the Democratic party could do a vastly better job of addressing in its messaging than it does.
Republican voters say those things about Democrats because that’s what the media they consume tells them, 24/7. How would the Democrats manage to get their message to those people? By going on Fox News or Newsmax or talk radio? You can only address people if you have a way into their media. I’m sure Fox and its imitators (like OAN or the Sinclair stations) would be thrilled to open their airwaves and give free time to the Democrats and their message. It’s easy to say the Democrats have done a bad job on messaging—and I’m not disputing that some of their messaging has been anemic at best—but one of the biggest problems Democrats face is the intractability of the right-wing media and the fact that most people who consume that media are absolutely uninterested in listening to any message, no matter how targeted or nuanced, from the hated Democrats.
What I’m most concerned about are swing voters–Democrats have done a shit job reaching out them IMO.
I was thinking of things like Defund the Police, which Republican pundits made much of, saying democrats wanted us to live in a lawless society where there were no police when in fact very few people meant that. What was meant was Refinancing Policing, a much less catchy phrase but one which describes the idea of taking some of the money we spend on giving cops assault weapons and funding social workers who can deal with the mentally ill etc.
I will try to tread carefully in how I say this so if it is offensive at all, please know that is not my intent. However, I feel these statements are often politely worded and completely lacking in truthfulness. For example, Democrats don’t care about traditional families. What does that mean? Typically, when I’ve asked that question the response I’ve received boils down to the idea that if we give LGBTQ+ and single-parent families the same rights as traditional families, we are trashing/tarnishing/
destroying traditional families. A few years ago my Facebook page filled up with people talking about how Democrats were trashing religious freedom. This was a catchphrase for a baker/florist/whatever not being allowed to discriminate against LGBTQ+ couples. “Trashing our country” refers to critiquing it and seems almost blasphemous to me coming from folks who defend storming the capital. So I’m not sure messaging is the issue in these cases so much as reminding them that rights aren’t pieces of pie – more rights for me will be more likely to result in more freedom for you, not less.
I think every issue has nuance that our conversations tend to elide.
For example, almost 3 out of 4 Americans do not believe race should be a factor in college admissions–this group includes the majority of Blacks and Hispanics. But Democrats can’t talk about affirmative action critically without incurring the fury of the far left. if you’re a Republican, I think you might be justified in saying the Democrats aren’t at all democratic when it comes to racial preferences.
The vast majority of American are baffled by the idea that there are no viable distinctions to be made based on biological sex and yet questioning that is verboten in much of the Democratic party.
I’m not saying that the vast majority are right but rather than unless Democrats figure out a way to talk openly to those who don’t share their views, they’ll lose because their views are unpopular. Again populism isn’t always a good thing but people’s cultural values drive much of their behavior.
I agree with you that people on both sides need to learn to express themselves better. One problem is that the marginalized maniac makes for a good news story, so we are often forming our opinions of each other based on people who hold a minority view. Regarding racial preferences in schooling, my son majored in education, my dad, grandmother, best friend, two aunts and several uncles are all teachers/college professors and whatever polls may say I know from talking to them there is good cause for affirmative action in college admissions. I had the chance to listen to and speak to several of my son’s professors on the subject and there was great concern around this issue and about the education the bulk of minority students receive in this country.
Most democratic countries have multiple parties and I wish we did as well. Limiting ourselves to two polarized views has, imo, destroyed the nuance in all our conversations and left many people with no real political party home.
On a side note, I can’t recommend enough the book Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein. It explains a lot about our dysfunctional democracy.
I don’t want to turn this conversation religious but I do want to point out that when Jesus Christ defined the faith He was offering us he told us that we have two inherent rights – the right to love our God and the right to love our neighbor. When asked what neighbor we should love he chose someone who was despised to depict that whosoever is least among us is our neighbor and said that our love for that neighbor should transcend the law (the priest and Levite didn’t stop because of what the law said about touching the dead or dying). So I would ask what God people mean. Because the rights often spoken of by men like Ron DeSantis are not those given to me by my faith but instead act against it. My apologies if this is too religious.
It’s not too religious. It’s interesting to me as an utterly non-religious person, how different people define what God said. I often think that much of evangelical Christianity in the US is a muscular Old Testament faith which is very different than the liberal Christ’s teachings faith I was raised on in the Episcopal Church.
Jesus words are Old Testament teachings (Deut. 6:5, Lev. 19:17-18) though his interpretation of neighbor could be viewed as liberal. While the Religious Right has tried to rebrand themselves with several names like Evangelical Christian there are books about why they don’t fit that label in the academic/theological sense of what that label means. Conservative Christians in the U.S.are not really practicing a form of Old Testament or New Testament Christianity but a political faith that espouses Conservative white values. It’s frustrating because it pushes people who actually do believe in Jesus to constantly look for a new label for themselves so we can separate from those who practice politics over faith.
I’ll just say that the liberal churches I grew up in avoided all the eye for an eye stuff in the Old Testament and stuck with love thy neighbor sermons. To this day, the Episcopal church is a place I feel comfortable.
Yes. The question we all need to ask when faced with the idea that our country should be run by the “rules of God” is, Who’s God? Who gets to interpret what God said? What if I also believe in God but vehemently disagree with the “God” being presented by the politicians? The reason we need separation of Church and State is just this: No one group of religious believers in this country should get to speak for everyone.
I think what surprises me most is that many people forget the folks who founded this country were being persecuted by Christians and that’s why we set up the separation of Church and State. There are hundreds of Christian sects with arguments deep enough over doctrinal issues that we can’t even worship together. A recent attempt to redo the Apostle’s Creed showed we were more, not less, divided than ever before. Also, the majority of the so-called Founding Fathers didn’t believe in God. They were universalists or agnostics who believed in Providence/Fate/A Guiding Spirit which should be very far from what any Christian believes. Randall Balmer does a great job of explaining how the current Religious Right was formed in his book Thy Kingdom Come, and Daniel K. Owens does a thorough explanation of it in God’s Own Party – a bit long and dry but a really good historical look at the forming of the Christian Right. I also really recommend Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez to anyone who wonders why a lot of religious Americans don’t like anything like Christians.
I am 72 years old and will never again vote for any Republican. They are a disgrace. I have always worked for women’s rights and I am not changing now.
I hear you. And yet I know lots of moderate sane Republicans. I think those the party puts forth are often an extreme. Primary based elections have skewed the politics of those who win.
[Subdued political rant ahead] Because I have always felt that the anti-abortion movement was never about “saving babies” and all about oppressing women, I have no problem making a woman’s right to control her reproductive destiny a top voting priority. I was 15 when the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down and my entire adult life has been spent watching that ruling get dismantled piece-by-piece. I have also spent that same amount of time watching as one of the two major political parties in our country moved closer and closer to advocating a fascist, patriarchal, white nationalist theocracy. January 6, 2021, proved they have almost succeeded. Suffice to say that no matter whom I vote for, it will not be anyone allied with that particular party.
Abortion is a top voting issue for me. I’m old enough to remember when Roe passed and when I was unable to get credit card without a man’s signature. I do have some concerns that young women take for granted these essential rights but I think Alito’s opinion has awoken some, at least the those who pay attention to US affairs.
Inflation is definitely a concern and a real kitchen table issue, much of it propelled by a red hot economy (wage increases were overdue and welcome but changed business’s budgets significantly) and the war in Ukraine which affects gas/oil and wheat prices. I’m hoping interest rate increases will cool things a bit and that the Russians are soundly defeated. Putting aside any policy or position, I don’t at this time see myself voting for a party who still insists the ex-President won the last election and who are so deeply in bed with traditional and realistic enemies of the US. Russia, in fact.
I’m not an American but we’re heading into our own elections here in Australia. For me, a track record of honesty and compassion is most important. Policies can change and promises can be broken, but how politicians have behaved previously is a predictor of how they may behave in the future.
Not an American, but if I were my most important issue would be NOT voting for the party doing their utmost to dismantle democracy in the country.