It’s nice to see the Democrats are back on track. It only took an upheaval turning women into second-class citizens, the possibility that the Orange Menace could be re-elected, and an out-of-control Supreme Court.
With all that, the Dems seem to be pulling even.
There’s still a better-than-even chance they could lose the House. If they’re lucky, they’ll hold on to the Senate; and for that they would have to thank the Republicans for putting forward horrible candidates.
President Joe Biden’s ratings have gone up, from very bad to not good, with the base cheering on “Dark Brandon” - the meme that presents an evil version of the president. But the really positive news is that most Democratic Senate candidates are more popular than he is.
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The Democrats have managed to come alive in the last few weeks, actually passing stuff in Congress. After watching the country drown and burn, Joe Manchin freaked out that he would be single-handedly blamed for climate change and made a deal with Chuck Schumer. But the Democrats are still barely keeping their heads above water. They just can’t match the Republican crazy. Unfortunately, a considerable chunk of this country is acting insane, believing that Democrats are all paedophiles who are drinking babies’ blood.
Democrats have to stop fighting a conventional war. It’s just not a conventional time.
Trump seems nervous, but he has wiggled out of a lot of jams
Ironic that Friday was Women’s Equality Day, designated so by Congress in the 70s. At a time when women all over the world should be blossoming, we’re seeing stunning setbacks. There’s a bizarre trend of punishing women, Saudi-style, for their sexuality.
Sanna Marin, Finland’s 36-year-old prime minister, is under fire for dancing with her friends in a country that always gets named “the happiest country in the world” in the United Nations-sponsored World Happiness Report. What a grim, still-sexist world this is, when Marin is forced to tearfully apologise — and take a drug test — after video leaked of her letting loose.
The Helsinki Times tut-tutted that she was the “Prom Minister” and dismissed the music she was dancing to as “plebeian”. But the amazing Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand, defended her Finnish counterpart, asking, “How do we constantly make sure that we attract people to politics, rather than — perhaps as has been historically the case — put them off?”
Rahm Emanuel, the US ambassador to Japan, tweeted about the double standard: the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, was cheered for chugging beers at a public concert while Marin was under fire for dancing at a private party. “Everyone just back off!” Emanuel wrote.
“She’s getting hit for being immature,” Emanuel told me. “But she’s mature enough to lead Finland into Nato. That’s a hard day’s work. I’d need a little party, too!”
Biden seemed to see how abnormal things were when, at a rally in suburban Washington the other night, he got bold enough to denounce the MAGA gang for a philosophy that is “almost like semi-fascism.”
But, keening about Roe’s reversal, he oddly said of Mitch McConnell: “Even if he’s not as extreme as some,” he “was able to, quote, ‘pack the court’ legitimately.”
It is wrong to say McConnell acted legitimately just because he didn’t break the law. McConnell bent and broke the rules; he held off an Obama nominee for a year and then, with a week to go before the 2020 election, jammed the religious zealot Amy Coney Barrett on to the court.
Barrett was a “handmaid” in a Christian group called People of Praise, in which men are decision makers over their wives. Now, Barrett is making decisions for all the women in the country, and it’s an outrage. The Guardian reported on another leaked video of a recent get-together — far more scary than Marin’s. It shows the wife of the tyrannical leader of People of Praise saying some women in the group cried so intensely because of their subservient roles, they had to wear sunglasses.
[ Roe v Wade: US supreme court strikes down abortion rightsOpens in new window ]
Women who thought that Roe would never really get tossed out, or if it did, it wouldn’t have that much impact, are now realising what an earthquake this is.
Tudor Dixon, a Donald Trump acolyte who is the Republican nominee for governor in Michigan, told a local Fox station that abortion should be illegal even in the case of minors who are raped. She suggested that having the baby could be “healing.”
Many women are angry and many are registering to vote. Trump seems nervous, but he has wiggled out of a lot of jams. Democrats can’t rely on his spontaneous combustion. Just as women boosted Biden into the White House, now women have to rescue us again, from a bunch of crazy conservatives determining our health care — and how we live our lives. And maybe soon, whether we can be Dancing Queens.
— This article originally appeared in the New York Times