Last week, when I read about the expulsion of two Black male legislators in Tennessee, and the near-expulsion of a white female colleague and ally, I had the thought that the infraction with which they were charged was more or less the political equivalent of "contempt of cop" in the world outside politics. On the street, it's legal to be rude to a cop, but cops will make you face serious consequences if you are, especially if you're young and Black. Similarly, what the two expelled Tennessee legislators did in response to gun safety protests shouldn't have led to expulsion -- but they expressed contempt for the majority Republicans and the guns Republicans hold sacred, so a severe punishment was meted out.
Then we have Republican judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who badly wanted to overturn the FDA's approval of the abortion drug mifepristone, so he used the 1873 Comstock Act the way bad cops use laws against driving with a busted taillight to pull over Black motorists they want to harass and brutalize. Hey, whatever it takes, right?
On the subject of abortion, I'm reading pieces with headlines like "The Abortion Ban Backlash Is Starting to Freak Out Republicans" and "Abortion Was a 50/50 Issue. Now, It’s Republican Quicksand" -- and yes, the Republican-backed candidate in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election lost by double digits to the pro-choice liberal. But Republicans still have overwhelming control of the Wisconsin state legislature, as well as legislatures in quite a few other purple states. White people still vote Republican by comfortable margins nearly everywhere in America. If there's a backlash against the GOP, it still isn't showing up in 2024 general election polls: In the Real Clear Politics average, Donald Trump leads Joe Biden by 1.8 and Ron DeSantis leads Biden by 2, while Republicans lead Democrats in two of the three most recent generic-ballot polls for Congress. I guess Democrats are waiting until it's closer to election time to remind voters that GOP = abortion bans and GOP = AR-15 massacres, but maybe it would be helpful to point that out now, too.
Democrats have shown the ability to win just enough votes to keep complete GOP control at bay, but they should be doing better if Republicans are in "quicksand." Regrettably, it's still true that most white voters can't imagine an alternative to the habit of voting GOP, the way they can't seem to imagine an alternative to having terrible cops. I'm reminded of a slogan from my '60s childhood:
Beyond the obvious counterculture-bashing, this slogan suggests an arrogant complacency: You don't like the way we do our job? Well, we're your only alternative, so we don't care. There actually is an alternative to the GOP, just as there are alternatives to traditional policing, but Republicans, like the cops, assume white America will reject the alternatives and stick with the status quo. And so Republicans don't have to do better, any more than the cops do. They can get away with being the same bastards they are now until the white majority rejects them. I hope that happens soon, but I'm not holding my breath.
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