The Choices Facing Democrats on Abortion
PLUS: Maybe the New York Mets Aren't a Dumpster Fire After All
Democratic activists have grown increasingly frustrated with what they see as the Biden administration’s slow-footed response to the demise of Roe v. Wade. The fact is, though, there is little Biden can do by way of executive action to salvage Roe or restore access to abortion services in states that have severely restricted the procedure. Purely symbolic gestures may rouse supporters, but they have little effect. Ultimately, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are right: This is an issue that will be settled at the ballot box and in legislative chambers. And it could very well take years—if not decades—for Democrats to get the outcomes they desire.
If Democrats play their cards right, however, they have a chance to restore access to abortion in most parts of the country relatively quickly. Recall how advocates for same-sex marriage were on defense in 2004 when numerous states passed laws banning the practice. Yet within a decade, 70% of the United States population lived in states that had legalized same-sex marriage. Today, same-sex marriage is mostly a settled issue and (thanks to the Supreme Court; keep your fingers crossed) legal in every state. While abortion remains a hot button issue in the United States, it’s possible, with the right political strategy, for Democrats to triumph on abortion in roughly the same amount of time.
A big part of Democrats’ success on the issue will hinge on finding a convincing message that can be used to bring persuadable voters to their side. Just as important will be a policy strategy. If Democrats get the policy wrong, they could end up wasting time and resources, leave too many women without access to abortion, undercut their own messaging, and even imperil access to abortion in jurisdictions where it is currently legal.
One of the first things Democrats will need to decide is whether they want to push for national abortion legislation or focus on legislative efforts in the states. The immediate temptation will be to pass a law at the federal level to restore Roe’s national reach and ensure that women in every state once again have access to abortion services. There are significant risks that come with that strategy, however.
To begin with, if Congress did pass a law legalizing abortion nationally, my guess is so long as there is a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, such a law would be deemed unconstitutional. Since the 1995 case United States v. Lopez, which found a federal law prohibiting the possession of guns within 1000 feet of a school unconstitutional, conservative justices have resisted efforts by Congress to enact laws that infringe on the states’ so-called “police power,” or the power to regulate behavior and enforce order for the sake of citizens’ health, safety, morals, and general welfare.
In the roughly sixty years prior to Lopez, Congress had relied on the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which grants the legislative branch the power to “regulate Commerce…among the several states,” to pass laws on a number of matters that earlier had been considered beyond the scope of federal legislation, including civil rights. (Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution defines Congress’ legislative jurisdiction.) The logic in this time was that so long as the focus of the legislation entailed an economic activity that could plausibly involve interstate commerce, Congress could regulate it. For example, Congress claimed it had the power to desegregate public accommodations because such places could serve out-of-state customers or sell goods imported from out of state.
That logic began to change with Lopez, however; now the Court began to prohibit Congress from passing laws that lacked a direct connection to commercial activity. In doing so, the Court reasserted the states’ police power, which had traditionally been reserved to the states via the Tenth Amendment. This trend continued in the 2000 case U.S. v. Morrison, in which the Court struck down portions of the federal Violence Against Women Act—specifically the provision that allowed women to sue their alleged assailants in federal court—on the grounds that the law was not directly related to economic activity even though Congress cited indirect economic consequences (i.e., an assault limiting a victim’s ability to participate in the job market, or costs paid by out-of-state health insurance companies for hospital care) to justify passage of the bill. Here the Court affirmed the police power—in this case, the power to police sexual assault—belonged to the states and not the federal government.
Some Democrats are already arguing a federal bill legalizing abortion could be justified using the Commerce Clause, since pregnancy and motherhood significantly affect women’s economic prospects. I have a hard time believing, however, that the conservative majority currently seated on the Supreme Court would consider a medical procedure a commercial activity the Constitution allows Congress to regulate.1 Even Chief Justice John Roberts—who ruled Congress could enact Obamacare’s individual mandate only via the Constitution’s Taxing and Spending Clause but not via the Commerce Clause—wouldn’t side with the Court’s three liberals on that one. It may be good politics for a Democratic Congress to acknowledge the demands of its base and pass a federal abortion law, but until the composition of the Court changes, my guess is that for all practical purposes it would be a waste of time and energy.
The other problem with pursuing a national strategy is that if it were to work—that is, if Democrats came up with a novel justification for a bill legalizing abortion throughout the country that gained the support of at least two of the Court’s conservative justices—a future Republican Congress could turn around and ban (or severely restrict) abortion nationally, including in states like California and New York where it is currently entrenched as law. Granted, that’s already something a lot of Republicans want to do,2 but a national ban on abortion may be a bridge too far for many principled “states rights” conservatives who have long demanded that the power to regulate abortion be returned to the people (although I acknowledge in our post-Trump, post-1/6 era, no bridge may be too far for the GOP.) States rights conservatives would certainly drop their objections to federal abortion legislation if Democrats made abortion a subject of federal legislation.
As far as a policy strategy goes, the other major decision Democrats will have to make is whether to pursue laws that provide women with unlimited access to abortion services at any time during a pregnancy or laws that allow for certain restrictions on the procedure. It’s worth reviewing what Roe and Casey stated in this regard, as liberals often call for the codification of Roe. Roe found states could not regulate abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy beyond minimal medical safeguards. During the second trimester, states could regulate abortion so long as the regulations were narrowly tailored to protect the pregnant woman’s health. During the third trimester, the state’s interest in protecting fetal life became so compelling that a state could go so far as to ban abortion except when necessary to protect the health and life of the pregnant woman. Casey abandoned the trimester framework in favor of a viability standard that protected a woman’s right to have an abortion up until the point of fetal viability (approximately 24 weeks), after which states could regulate or even ban abortion. (Casey also allowed the state to regulate abortion prior to viability so long as the regulations did not pose an “undue burden” on the woman seeking the abortion.)
The point here is that neither Roe nor Casey explicitly banned abortion at any stage during a pregnancy; instead, they allowed states to ban abortion after a certain point in a pregnancy. That meant some states like Vermont and Oregon chose to make abortion legal at any stage during a pregnancy while other states banned abortion as soon during a pregnancy as either Roe or Casey allowed them to. Now that Dobbs has rendered Roe and Casey obsolete, states are free to ban abortion at any point during a pregnancy, including from the point of conception. (If you want to view an up-to-the-minute map illustrating the legal status of abortion in the United States by state, consult this Wikipedia page.)
The most straightforward strategy for Democrats would be to simply codify Roe/Casey. Recent polls suggest about 6 out of every 10 Americans generally support Roe, and restoring it or Casey would probably please most Democrats. It may not make political sense to do so, however. Because Roe merely allows states to prohibit abortion if they so choose, if Democrats were to recodify Roe at the national level, Republicans would argue Democrats are legalizing late-term abortion. That wouldn’t technically be true—Democrats would only being allowing states to legalize late-term abortions if they wanted to, meaning a state like Texas could still ban late-term abortions—but that’s an argument that would get lost on a lot of voters. Relying on the Roe/Casey framework would allow Republicans to shift the public debate about abortion to rare late-term abortions, which is not the ground Democrats want to wage this debate on.
The same holds true for states that attempt to return to the Roe/Casey status quo. While voters in many states—including some red ones—would initially be open to restoring the Roe/Casey framework, I suspect that over the relatively short period of time in which the bill would be debated, even laws that banned abortion starting at the beginning of the third trimester or after twenty-four weeks would come to be seen by most voters as too permissive. Pro-life advocates will always push back hard against any bill that allows for abortion at any stage during a pregnancy, but Republicans would have a field day attacking any bill that allowed abortion with few restrictions after the midway point of a pregnancy.
Polling the American public about their views on abortion is notoriously difficult. While about 25% of Americans support abortion without restrictions at any stage during a pregnancy and about 15% oppose abortion under all circumstances, the vast majority of Americans believe abortion should either be “legal in most circumstances” or “illegal in most circumstances,” and there’s a lot of overlap between those last two categories based on what different Americans assume those categories cover. Abortion is too complicated and contentious of a political issue to lend itself to unambiguous polling results. What is clear from polling, however, is that Americans generally grow less supportive of abortion as pregnancy progresses.
Consequently, if Democrats hope to direct abortion policy in the United States, they need to be willing to place restrictions on abortion as pregnancies progress. I’m not arguing here for something like a draconian 6-week abortion ban; many women don’t even realize they’re pregnant six weeks into a pregnancy, so any restriction on abortion has to actually grant women the opportunity to make a meaningful and thoughtful choice regarding their futures. That is absolutely essential. What I am urging Democrats to do, however, is figure out at what point during a pregnancy they might begin regulating abortion so that the greatest number of women have access to abortion services before popular support for abortion drops to a politically unsustainable level.
Consider this: According to the CDC, in 2019, 93% of all abortions in the United States occurred during the first trimester/12-13 weeks of a pregnancy. Only 1% of all abortions occurred after the 21st week of pregnancy. If Democrats decided to advance a bill that placed no limits on when women could get an abortion, such a bill would protect 100% of all women seeking an abortion but stand little chance of becoming law. Yet if Democrats decided to advance a bill that prohibited abortion after 20 weeks except in cases in which the pregnant woman’s life or health was in jeopardy, such a bill would protect at least 99% of all women seeking an abortion yet stand a much better chance of becoming law. Even if Democrats settled on a law prohibiting most abortions after 12 weeks, they’d still end up ensuring that more than 9 out of every 10 women would be able to get an abortion. I’m also guessing such a bill would win the support of a solid majority of Americans in all but the nation’s most conservative states.
I’m not going to insist that would be an ideal law, but it might not be a bad place to start now that Roe is gone. Furthermore, based on what I’ve read about abortion trends in the past, I suspect most women who seek abortions between the 12th and 21st weeks of pregnancy do so either for medical reasons or because they could not access abortion services during the first trimester of their pregnancy. If Democrats wrote a law restricting abortion somewhere between 12-20 weeks with provisions guaranteeing women easy, relatively local access to abortion services and allowing abortion at any stage during a pregnancy if a pregnant woman’s health or life was at risk, then I’m guessing 97-99% of all abortions that occurred over the past decade would still be permitted under the new legal regimen. Again, such a law may not be perfect, but it would win over a lot of voters, offer something for future generations to build upon, and protect nearly every woman in the United States seeking an abortion.
In fact, Democrats might want to start with bills limiting abortion after fifteen weeks. Why? Because the Mississippi law at the center of Dobbs banned abortion after 15 weeks. If that was the law a state like Mississippi went all the way to the Supreme Court to defend and that the pro-life movement used to end Roe, how could conservatives reasonably object to that number? Furthermore, look at the spot Republicans would find themselves in if they rejected a fifteen-week ban and began demanding a lower limit. Republicans would find themselves divided between political pragmatists willing to allow abortion under some limited circumstances and pro-lifers determined to ban the practice outright (even in cases that are currently shocking the nation.) Whatever position Republicans landed on, the window they would allow for an abortion would either be too big to satisfy strict pro-lifers or too small to satisfy a majority of Americans in most states. That would allow Democrats to emerge as the reasonable party to this debate, paint Republicans as extreme by many Republicans’ own standards, ensure that the public debate was not waged over the more precarious politics of late-term abortion, and, if they win, likely secure access to abortion services for at least 19 out of every 20 women who seek an abortion. Given the current state of abortion politics in the United States and how such a debate would likely lead the public to trust Democrats on abortion policy going forward, I would consider that a meaningful win.
A fifteen-week limit with few restrictions on access to abortion services and allowances after the limit for the health and safety of the mother would also not be out of step with many western-style democracies with strong protections for human rights. Consider the following limits other countries place on abortion:
Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Switzerland: Legal up to 12 weeks
France, South Korea, Spain: Legal up to 14 weeks
Sweden: Legal up to 18 weeks
Japan: In practice, legal up to 22 weeks
Netherlands, United Kingdom: Legal up to 24 weeks
Canada: Legal up to 12-24 weeks (varies by province)
Australia: Legal up to 16-24 weeks (varies by states)
Of course, most of these nations also have fully-funded national health care systems that grant citizens access to contraception, family planning services, and pregnancy care. But a debate over abortion policy in the United States could also open the door to a debate over publicly-funding such services.
It’s possible the American people would allow Democrats to be more ambitious than I’ve recommended: A Wall Street Journal poll from the beginning of June found that 57% of Americans said women should be able to obtain an abortion for any reason, which is the highest that number has been since 1977. It may also be, however, that that poll captured the public’s general outrage over the Court’s impending ruling in Dobbs. As the debate over abortion unfolds in the coming month, my suspicion is Americans’ views will moderate somewhat and that the public will seek more of a reasonable middle ground on the issue. I could end up being wrong about that, though.
Consequently, if Democrats hope to shape the future of abortion policy in the United States, it will be imperative for them to come across as a reasonable participant in that debate. Democrats still have some time to figure out a policy strategy on abortion, but it’s worth noting Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia has proposed a bill that would prohibit abortion (with some exceptions) after 15 weeks. (He’s open to 20 weeks if that’s what it takes to win over Democrats.) So long as Youngkin’s bill guarantees access to abortion services, Democrats need to seriously consider backing that bill, especially if it protects between 95-99% of women seeking abortion in Virginia, as I suspect it would. My advice to Democrats is to let Republicans self-destruct over Youngkin’s bill—Youngkin is already catching flak from GOP pro-life Rep. Bob Good, who derided Youngkin’s compromise proposal by stating, “Republicans ought to stand openly, boldly, and unashamedly for life from conception and to protect all life in the womb”—use the chaos within Republican ranks to bolster Democrats’ own standing on the issue, and pass a bill that would go a long, long way toward securing the rights and well-being of women.
Signals and Noise
Let’s begin on a light-hearted note. You know those “I Voted” stickers you get when you vote? Ulster County, New York, held a contest for youth to design their own sticker and then let the public vote on their favorite. The winner would be printed on stickers for the upcoming election. Fourteen-year-old Hudson Rowan’s submission, pictured below, is winning in a massive landslide; he’s actually received more votes than there are active voters in Ulster County.
The bipartisan county elections board of commissioners is overjoyed with the submission. Said Hudson: “Politics right now in the world is all kinds of crazy, and I feel like the creature that I drew kind of resembles the craziness of politics and the world right now.”
Here’s another picture of political crazy:
Last Thursday, Manchin basically squashed a revived six-month effort to pass some aspect of Biden’s Build Back Better plan. By all accounts, Manchin and Chuck Schumer had been making major progress toward a deal on a scaled-back version of BBB, but then Manchin tore up what he had worked out with Schumer by telling the Majority Leader he would no longer support the package’s tax hikes and climate provisions. That led Schumer and Biden to end negotiations with the West Virginia senator. Biden now hopes to pass a bill that would lower prescription drug costs and shore up Obamacare. (For more on how Manchin scuttled this legislation, read this article by Burgess Everett in Politico.) It’s important to note here Manchin was basically negotiating with himself and still couldn’t get the deal done. Liberals in the Senate had essentially said they were fine with whatever deal they could get from Manchin, and Manchin would have had the final say over the bill. Try as he might, Manchin can’t hang his failure to get himself on board with this bill on Bernie Sanders, progressives, liberals, Chuck Schumer, or Joe Biden. This is the ultimate proof that Joe Manchin is a terrible politician.
“Come back the first of September and pass this if it’s a good piece of legislation. I’m being as sincere as I can be: I want to help this country.”—Joe Manchin, ostensibly to Chuck Schumer, during a radio interview in West Virginia this past Friday
Democrats, this coming September, if they take Manchin at his word:
“It’s important that every young person, every activist, the majorities of this country who are demanding climate action understand very clearly this is not the Democrats. This is one man named Joe Manchin. When it comes to the most important existential issue of our time, this man is a wrecking ball.”—Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) in an interview. I would note this extends to more than just climate change. The popular proposals in Build Back Better were supported by the overwhelming majority of Democrats in the House and Senate and in the White House. Nearly every Democrat besides Manchin found a way to go along to get along on Build Back Better; I had erroneously assumed Manchin would have turned out to be a team player and somehow find himself a way to get to yes. Beyond uncooperative Republican congressional caucuses, it turns out the main obstacle to enacting Biden’s agenda has always been Manchin, even when he was given the leeway to craft the bill himself. Democratic voters around the country need to remember this fall that while they can’t vote Manchin out of office, they can render him obsolete by making sure Democrats retain and build their majority in the Senate while defending their majority in the House.
For your consideration: Should Schumer bring Build Back Better to the floor and make Manchin vote against it so other Democrats can go on record for its provisions? It might not be a bad idea to get Democratic legislators on record on this before the election and on the off-chance that they retain control over both houses of Congress.
By Coral Davenport and Lisa Friedman, for the New York Times: “How One Senator Doomed the Democrats’ Climate Plan” (“Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, who took more campaign cash from the oil and gas industry than any other senator, and who became a millionaire from his family coal business, independently blew up the Democratic Party’s legislative plans to fight climate change. The swing Democratic vote in an evenly divided Senate, Mr. Manchin led his party through months of tortured negotiations that collapsed on Thursday night, a yearlong wild goose chase that produced nothing as the Earth warms to dangerous levels….Mr. Manchin’s refusal to support the climate legislation, along with steadfast Republican opposition, effectively dooms the chances that Congress will pass any new law to tackle global warming for the foreseeable future — at a moment when scientists say the planet is nearly out of time to prevent average global temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.”)
Related: “Mother Nature Dissents” by Ronald Brownstein, for The Atlantic
Jonathan Chait at New York argues the main villain in this episode is actually Democratic New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer, who has opposed the tax hikes Democrats hoped to use to fund Build Back Better.
“President Trump is a 76-year old man. He is not an impressionable child. Just like everyone else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices. As our investigation has shown, Donald Trump had access to more detailed and specific information showing that the election was not actually stolen than almost any other American. And he was told this over and over again. No rational or sane man in his position can disregard that information and reach the opposite conclusion. And Donald Trump cannot escape responsibility by being willfully blind.”—Liz Cheney, during last week’s January 6 Committee hearing.
By Susan Glasser, for The New Yorker: “A President Asking for a Civil War”
ICYMI, from Vox: “Trump’s totally ‘unhinged’ West Wing meeting”
The January 6 Committee does appear to be having an effect on people’s understanding of Trump’s attempts to steal the 2020 election.
Liz Cheney announced at the end of this week’s 1/6 Committee Hearing that Trump had attempted to contact a potential witness, which could amount to witness tampering. Newsmax host Greg Kelly hypothesized Trump’s phone call may have been nothing more than a butt dial. CNN reported the person Trump reached out to was a support staffer; maybe the staffer who was present when Don got so angry he started throwing his dinner around the White House? It would be one hell of a coincidence if the person Trump’s ass called on accident last week happened to be the same person Cassidy Hutchinson alluded to in her testimony. With an ass that big, I guess anything is possible.
Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who testified before the 1/6 committee about how Trump tried to pressure him into overturning Arizona’s 2020 presidential election results, has (almost) walked back his reasserted support for Don Trump: “I don’t know what I’ll do. But I’m not inclined to support him. Because he doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the morals and the platform of my party.” The key word there is “inclined.”
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC)—the corpse of Goose to John McCain’s Maverick—is determined to fight a judge’s order for him to testify in the grand jury probe into whether Trump attempted to overturn the results of Georgia’s 2020 presidential election. Said Goose on FOX News Radio: “If we open up county prosecutors being able to call every member of the Senate based on some investigation they think is good for the country we’ll ruin the place.” You know what else will ruin the place, Goose? Senators attempting to subvert elections. (Graham asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger if he could throw out ballots in counties with high-rates of non-matching signatures.)
By Jonathan Chait, for New York: “Ron DeSantis Would Kill Democracy Slowly and Methodically” (“Whether a President DeSantis would be more or less dangerous than Trump is not a question I can answer with any confidence. Trump poses a greater danger of triggering an immediate constitutional crisis, while DeSantis is more likely to methodically strangle democracy through a series of illiberal Orbanist steps like he has modeled in Florida. I suppose the threat of a quick death is more dire than the threat of a slow one, but I have little confidence in projecting out these comparative dangers. The only meaningful conclusion I can make about the choice of Trump versus DeSantis is ‘neither.’”)
And by Tim Miller for The Bulwark: “If Ron DeSantis is Actually Less Dangerous Than Trump, Maybe He Should Say So” (“To be clear—saying someone is less of an existential threat to democracy than Donald Trump might be the faintest praise ever uttered in American politics….But what has struck me about this debate is less the hypotheticals than what is missing from it: any acknowledgement from Ron DeSantis or his staff that they believe he would be less dangerous than Donald Trump. If it’s true that DeSantis is not a threat to our democracy, then why is this a proxy debate and not an explicit one?”) (I don’t know, but if people are trying to figure out whether a candidate is pro-democracy or not, maybe that’s a sign the guy isn’t qualified to be president. Kind of like how if you wouldn’t let someone stay in your house if you weren’t sure they wouldn’t set it on fire. Hard pass, right? But this is bound to end in another instance of Republicans defining deviancy down: “DeSantis may be an authoritarian, but at least he’s not a violent authoritarian like Trump.” Point/counterpoint, I suppose.)
The influential conservative group CPAC has asked authoritarian Hungarian leader Viktor Orban to headline its upcoming conference in Dallas.
Check that: The
influentialauthoritarian conservative group CPAC has asked authoritarian Hungarian leader Viktor Orban to headline its upcoming conference in Dallas.Get ready to start hearing a lot about “decoupling,” or the idea that voters will not base their votes for legislative or gubernatorial candidates on their assessment of the president’s performance.
That said, rough poll numbers for Biden from the New York Times: 33% of voters approve of the job he’s doing as president, and 64% of Democrats would prefer a different nominee for president in 2024. Yet Biden still beats Trump 44-41% in a hypothetical match-up, which is simultaneously a relief and depressing. (Trump’s support among Republicans appears to be plummeting but he remains in a strong position to win his party’s re-nomination. A Politico poll finds 61-64% of Americans want neither Trump nor Biden to run for re-election.)
Jonathan Bernstein offers some good perspective on Biden’s struggles as president and concerns about his age. He also notes that in our age of polarization, dumping Biden probably wouldn’t help Democrats’ prospects. I would challenge that argument, though, as it doesn’t account for how a different candidate may motivate disillusioned Democrats.
“We have bigger problems than that. We’ll have a little more beachfront property. That’s not the worst thing in the world.”—Donald Trump, on climate change
Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker is just as dumb as Trump: “Since we don’t control the air our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air so when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then now we got we to clean that back up.” This wasn’t just some off-the-cuff comment either; he’s repeated the line at multiple campaign stops.
By Amanda Carpenter, for The Bulwark: “Team Normal Is Doing It Again” (“Just as they did with former President Trump, instead of letting voters see [Herschel] Walker for who he really is, the professional Republican class is devoting itself to coddling the candidate and covering up for him. And when it gets too icky, they dish quotes to their favorite reporters to make themselves feel better about their life choices. These people aren’t stupid enough to believe that their candidates are fit for office; they’re just trying to trick voters into being that dumb.”) (Walker’s campaign is frustrated with the candidate because they know he lies to them all the time.)
VOTER FRAUD ALERT: This time, it’s a Republican (surprise!) congressional candidate in New Hampshire.
POLITICAL PEDOPHILE ALERT: Republican congressional candidate Carl Paladino has hired a convicted sex offender to serve as an assistant treasurer on his campaign.
From Vox: “The Battleground House and Senate Races Where the End of Roe Could Have the Biggest Impact”
“The womb is the only organ in a woman’s body that serves no specific purpose to her life or well-being. It is truly a sanctuary.”—Montana state Rep. Brad Tschida (R)
By Judd Legum: “The Right-Wing Smear Campaign Against a Doctor Who Helped a 10-Year-Old Rape Victim” Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita intends to investigate the doctor. The Indiana attorney who drafted model anti-abortion legislation for Republican lawmakers has emphasized his law would prohibit a 10-year-old rape victim from undergoing an abortion. “She would have had the baby, and as many women who have had babies as a result of rape, we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child,” he said.
Asked if he would support Democratic efforts to codify rights like access to contraception and same-sex marriage, Senator
Frank DrebinCharles Grassley (R-IA) replied, “Nothing like that should even be thought about by anybody because it’s not endangered in any way. I don’t know why people would come to that conclusion.” Yeah, I don’t know, either, Chuck! I encourage everybody to not even think about nothing like that.Missouri has weird laws. Here’s one I’ve never heard of before: In Missouri, married couples cannot divorce if the wife is pregnant. Why? Because Missouri law does not recognize fetuses as humans subject to visitation rulings and child support payments. Such laws only apply to children that have been born. Kind of complicates Missouri’s logic when it comes to abortion restrictions…
Good article by Maya King and Jonathan Weisman for the New York Times on what may be the key to Democrats’ near-term electoral success: “Young Voters Are Fed Up With Their (Much) Older Leaders” (“Interviews with these young voters reveal generational tensions driving their frustration. As they have come of age facing racial strife, political conflict, high inflation and a pandemic, they have looked for help from politicians who are more than three times their age. Those older leaders often talk about upholding institutions and restoring norms, while young voters say they are more interested in results. Many expressed a desire for more sweeping changes like a viable third party and a new crop of younger leaders. They’re eager for innovative action on the problems they stand to inherit, they said, rather than returning to what worked in the past.”)
Meet Penny Mordaunt, oddsmakers’ favorite to become the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Let’s end on the big picture: Here’s one of the first images from the new James Webb telescope. Those flecks of light aren’t stars; they’re whole galaxies. Space is big.
Garbage Time: Maybe the New York Mets Aren’t a Dumpster Fire After All
(Garbage Time theme song here)
One of the benefits of being a Sprint customer following its merger with T-Mobile is that I now get free access to MLB.TV, which lets me watch nearly every out-of-market Major League Baseball game. As a result, I’ve watched waaaaaaay more baseball this year than in years past.
With so many games to choose from, it can be hard to figure out which game to watch, but I’ve found that since there’s a lot of downtime during 3+ hour broadcasts, it’s best to choose by announcer. There’s no point spending a lazy summer evening with the inane chatter of a play-by-play guy and a color commentator just shilling for the home team.
That means I watch a lot of Chicago White Sox and New York Mets games. Most White Sox games are called by Jason Benetti and Steve Stone. Benetti is a total nerd (he’s got a J.D. from Wake Forest and is the play-by-play man for ESPN’s analytics-driven alternate Statcast broadcasts) which pairs nicely with Stone’s uncanny ability to predict what’s going to happen during a game. They constantly lean into how dorky they are, with Stone retaining his tendency from my time listening to him as a Cubs analyst to slip in snide and ironic commentary on poor player performances. Their brainy boothwork has a completely different tone than any other MLB broadcast, which makes any White Sox game they’re calling a delight despite the South Sider’s underwhelming performance so far.
The New York Mets have a more traditional set-up with play-by-play man Gary Cohen and color analysts Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez. Listen to this team, though, and you’ll get an education in baseball. One senses there is a slight rivalry between Darling and Hernandez, former teammates on the great Mets teams of the mid-to-late 1980s, to see who can make the more insightful comment or propose the better strategic move. When they both land on the same idea, their commentary acquires the authority of a divine edict. These guys spew more knowledge in one inning of baseball than a lot of other broadcasters manage in a week’s worth of games.
I don’t know what it was like in years past for the trio of Cohen-Darling-Hernandez to call a season’s worth of games for a woefully bad Mets team, but I suspect their broadcasts have been enhanced this year by the contributions of the Mets’ new manager, Buck Showalter. Showalter is a really smart manager who in the past had been hired by front offices to develop a team’s talent and teach players the fundamentals of the game. With the Yankees and the Diamondbacks, he was fired a year before both teams won a World Series title. Showalter spent much of the previous decade managing Baltimore, a small-market franchise that relies more on home-grown talent than big-name free agency signings. Despite making the team more competitive and leading them to the postseason three times, Showalter was fired by the team in 2018 after its fortunes began to slide yet again.
Showalter is the right manager to rebuild a young team, but at this point in his career he deserves the chance to turn a good team full of talent into a contender. He has that opportunity now in New York. In recent years, the Mets have been screw-ups. Subject to atrocious management both on and off the field as well as nasty streaks of bad luck, they always should have been better than they actually turned out to be. Here’s how I described the Mets’ prospects earlier this year in my MLB preview:
But having watched a lot of Mets baseball this year, I can report the Mets are actually pretty good! And not just throw-a-bunch-of-talent-on-the-field good, but talent + brains good, which Showalter can probably take a fair share of the credit for. He’s got them playing smart baseball and doing the little things that translate into wins. Consider this moment in the 6th inning of a game last month against the Marlins:
I was watching this game so I know the highlight reel leaves out some of Hernandez’s commentary in which he points out that on a rainy day during spring training, Showalter actually brought his players into the clubhouse to review this very situation with his team. That’s why baserunner Brandon Nimmo knew to slide when the second baseman moved to tag him to start the double play. (I’d actually been taught to stop and backpedal in that situation to give the batter more time to get to first, but sliding is probably better the closer the runner is to second.3 Hernandez added during the broadcast that when he was a player, as a baserunner in that situation, he would have been expected to stiff-arm the second baseman into left field and that he had been chewed out once by St. Louis manager Whitey Herzog for not doing exactly that.)
It doesn’t surprise me at all that Showalter was prepared to talk to his team about this situation. As ESPN analyst Tim Kurkjian explains in this article from last year, baserunning has become a lost art in analytics-obsessed, homer-happy baseball. One of the people Kurkjian talked to about this problem was Showalter, who shares how players these days don’t know what foot they should hit first base with, what they should do as soon as their foot touches first base, what a delayed steal is, or how to avoid getting doubled off on a line drive. Good stuff.
Now compare Nimmo’s heads-up play to a baserunning blunder the following day in the fourth inning by the Marlin’s Garrett Cooper:
As the Mets’ commentary would have informed you, Cooper takes too big of a turn around second and then completely botches the slide by not aiming for the corner of the bag even though he can see the third baseman straying off the base to snare the off-target throw in front of him. The third base coach doesn’t really help the runner, either. While I will give them credit for those unis, which are fuego, if you watch a team like Miami over the course of a series with a crew of perceptive announcers, you’ll start to realize the Marlins just aren’t doing the little things that can make a difference in close games. (BTW: If you want to see some atrocious baserunning, check out this dog cooked up by the White Sox for the Fourth of July.)
The Mets are a good team playing heads-up baseball, which is one of the reasons I’m starting to believe this just might be their year. Maybe there’s some familiarity bias creeping into that assessment, but unless the Padres and Phillies catch fire late, the only other team in the National League that I think can hang with them over the course of a seven-game series is the Dodgers. Los Angeles owns the NL’s best record and leads the National League in runs differential (a massive +163; second place is +84), but I also think they’re starting to show their age a little bit. Despite the presence of Mookie Betts, Trea Turner, and Freddie Freeman, the rest of their regular lineup doesn’t seem quite as fearsome as it was in years past. I’ll be interested to see if LA’s rotation, which is missing Walker Buehler at the moment, will hold up through October. As for the Mets, Pete Alonso, Francisco Lindor, and Starling Marte feel poised to bust out. More importantly, though, the Mets just got Max Scherzer back, and Jacob deGrom is set to make his season debut after the All-Star game. When those guys are locked-in—which is often—they’re unhittable.
If the Mets make it to the World Series, they seem destined to face off against the Yankees, who sport MLB’s best record along with a league-leading +188 runs differential. The Astros might have something to say about that and I still think Toronto has what it takes to put together a run, but New York, led by Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, absolutely clobbers the ball. (Aaron Judge hit two more home runs as I was writing this article, bringing his season total to 33, which is the most home runs a Yankee has hit this many games into a season as one Roger Maris.) As of a few weeks ago at least, they also led all of MLB in comeback wins, something they’ve done in at least a third of their victories. In other words, they make opposing teams work for all 27 outs.
Following the conclusion of the All-Star Game Tuesday, the main drama in baseball will involve the looming August 2 trade deadline. The Mets could use another bat either to complement or tee-up Alonso (who leads baseball with 76 RBI.) The Yankees are pretty complete, but they might want to shore-up their bullpen or add an arm to their rotation. There’s talk the Yankees will go after Cincinnati’s Luis Castillo. I could see the Mets trying to land Pittsburgh’s Bryan Reynolds, Washington’s Josh Bell, or Cincinnati’s Brandon Drury.
But this is New York City, the Capital of Baseball, and we’ve got two teams who should be in win-now mode. Let’s dream big. The National’s 23-year-old star Juan Soto just turned down a 15-year, $440 million offer from Washington, which would have made him baseball’s highest-paid player. (He presumably wants more money and a bigger stage.) Soto’s got two-and-half years left on his current contract. Both the Mets and Yankees (and the Dodgers and any team hoping to win the World Series this decade) should be working the phones harder in DC than Chuck Schumer.
And why not get really crazy while we’re at it. Mike Trout deserves better than los Angeles. So long as he’s patrolling centerfield for a moribund team in Anaheim, he’ll always be Mike Trout, the greatest player of his generation. Put him in centerfield somewhere in New York and the comparisons to Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays become unavoidable. (Baseballreference.com actually says Trout, at the age of 29, is most similar to Brooklyn centerfielder Duke Snider, but Mays comes in second. In his previous six seasons, he was most analogous to either Mantle or Frank Robinson. Soto, at age 22, most resembles a 22-year-old Trout.)
Does the New York baseball market deserve such spoils? Not really. But so long as there isn’t a chance they could end up in a Cubs uniform, do I really care? Nope. Rumor has it, too, that St. Louis would love to sign Soto, to which I respond no way in hell no no no no no nein nyet non no no no. Juan Soto is cool. The only time the St. Louis Cardinals have ever been cool was back when Osborne Smith was doing backflips on his way out to shortstop. If Hal Steinbrenner or Steve Cohen want to pay Trout or Soto the GDP of a small country not to play in St. Louis, I’d consider that a service to the game.
Exit Music: “Pull Up to the Bumper” by Grace Jones (1981, Nightclubbing)
In fact, either to cover his bases or to simply rub liberals’ faces in their argument, Alito’s opinion goes so far as to assert that pregnancy is no longer an economic burden for women; see pages 33-34 in Dobbs.
If Republicans did pass national anti-abortion legislation (and it’s far from clear Republicans would be able to assemble a majority in Congress to do that) that law would likely end up in front of a conservative Supreme Court that has spent its time since Lopez shifting power from the federal government back to the states. Would the Court’s conservative rump stand up for California’s right to regulate a non-commercial activity like abortion as it sees fit? I’m highly skeptical. At that point, I wouldn’t be surprised if a conservative Court suddenly found that Congress was acting to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment (“nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”) by enacting a national abortion ban designed to preserve “fetal life.” Never mind Dobbs’ paean to democratic processes nor the fact that the official instrument the federal government has used since 1790 to count people in the United States—the census—has never counted fetuses in its tally: I’m sure Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas would cough up dozens of pages of originalist bullshit to justify their ruling. And at that point, I would have no problem with packing the Court full of liberal justices to rein them in. But I digress…
I’ve only seen this play happen once in person and it turned into one of the most messed-up things I’ve ever witnessed on a baseball field. In high school, my brother’s team had runners on first and second when the batter hit a ground ball to the left of the third baseman. The third baseman fielded it and went to tag the runner, who smartly stopped and began backpedaling. But before the third baseman tagged the runner—and the third baseman wasn’t close enough to tag him, so there was no way the umpire could possibly believe the runner had been tagged—the umpire called the runner out, effectively turning the entire base path into an area where a fielder could make a force out. If I remember right, the umpire said the runner was out for running backward, which is mos def not a rule, since if the runner at first was forced out, the runners who started the at-bat on first and second could run back to the bases they started at. That seventeen-year-old kid was just too smart for that umpire. Totally nuts.