Richard Rich, 1st Baron Rich
April 10, 2024
Donald Trump released a four-minute video attempting to thread the needle on abortion, and largely failed.
Abortion is proving to be an odd issue in this election. Following 1973's Roe v. Wade decision, the Democratic Party became increasingly pro death, with left the GOP as the pro-life default party. It was generally pro-life, as a conservative party, but it was more vague about it for many years than a person might suppose. This paid off for pro-life forces when the decision, which even informed left wing legal thinkers felt impossible to really defend, fell due to a Mitch McConnell influenced Supreme Court, appointed by Donald Trump. That was a long wished for conservative result, which Trump claimed credit for, not without some justification, but largely due to Trump giving McConnell free rein on Supreme Court appointments.
This has ended up being a hot election issue ever since, but it's still very poorly understood as to its impact. Various conservative states have enacted laws restricting or banning abortion (some old laws have just come back into operation) and it's ended up a ballot issue elsewhere. Democrats believe that the issue works in their favor, although how that squares with elected legislatures restricting it isn't very clear. Added to that, right wing Republicans began to push for a Federal nationwise restriction on abortion, which is something they haven't really fleshed out, thinking wise. A Federal law, while universal, seems to suggest a compromise on the topic, which is a topic that can't really be compromised on, at least on the pro-life side. That is, unless its just a nationwide ban, which seems to have little chance of passing. The various proposals make just about 0 intellectual sense whatsoever. A person either believes that all life has value, in which case it does from the first instance, or they believe it really doesn't, and should only be protected at an arbitrary point at which its too icky to admit to killing.
Enter the candidates on the issue. . .
Joe Biden, who is a Catholic and morally obligated to believe that all life is sacred, instead has opted for an apparent state of personal mortal sin and is for allowing the killing, with his campaign featuring that position, and he is still being allowed to receive Communion for some reason that's hard to grasp. Donald Trump, who has a predatory relationship with women to at least some degree, and who has been pretty keen on bedding women of a certain type, kept his views secret until earlier this week when, in a four-minute video, he came out for no Federal law at all.
No Federal law is the position of some conservative, but politically savvy, Republicans who aren't Trumpers. It is, for example, Chris Christie's position's was that the states should decide the issue for their states. But the concept of a nationwise ban has received increasing support in conservative camps due to some states enacting broad permissive abortion laws. It should be noted, others have enacted restrictive ones, like Wyoming (whose law is gummed up in court due to an incredibly dim witted paranoid law that enshrines personal medical choices as its supporters were rampaging paranoid about imaginary Obamacare "death panels".
This raises a lot of interesting questions, one being what does Trump actually think? Frankly, Trump doesn't appear to be a deep thinker on anything, but on this issue it's known that he's run the gambit in views, originally being in the pro death camp. His coming out the way he did appears to be in hopes of avoiding the issue, stating that it's a state rights issue. After giving his four-minute flat affect speech, he came out again today on the Arizona Supreme Court finding a territorial era statute banning abortion was constitutional and revised, which makes perfect sense legally. Noting that it was his appointees that brought the reversal of Roe finally around, he stated that the Arizona action, which again makes perfect legal sense, "went too far", which makes no legal sense but which reflects the view that most people have on courts which is that they're a policy legislature, which they aren't.
Life or death being a state's rights issue is lame in more ways than one. A person could argue it on a practical basis, that being that leaving it up to states is the only way for any peace on the issue at all, which is more or less Christie's position. Trump's view came out like a rambling mish mash of a confused intellect, which is a bit surprising as somebody must have written his statement for him.
Indeed, the fact that he read it brings up the issue of his mental status. Statements that he reads tend to come out with a very flat affect, which has yet to be explained. People continue to ignore the question of what's going on, organically, in his head.
All this has left some interesting fallout. Serious pro lifers are left wondering about who to support, with some having supported Trump in the past solely because of this issue. "He's better than Biden" seems to be the common reaction. But some are really upset. By the same token, Biden's designation of Easter as Transgender Visibility Day disgusted some who are fellow travelers on this issue. Pro lifers have been major supporters of the GOP since 1973, and now they have reason to question the party's loyalty to them.
And it all shows how compromised the values of politicians are in general.
April 12, 2024
The Trump campaign, which avoided debates in the primaries, wants more debates in the general election and wants them to start soon.
Trump is likely worried that a lot of his speaking coming up will be in the form of testimony, and wants to distract from that. Also, Trump no doubt feels he's a better speaker than Biden.
In actuality, neither of them are good speakers. Biden has had a lifelong stuttering problem which makes his speech a bit odd, and Trump's speech suggests that he's in the early to early-mid stage of the onset of dementia. Absent a spectacular performance, or spectacular failure, by either candidate, debates probably aren't going to matter much, but contrary to common belief, Trump, who really goes off the rail if he departs from the teleprompter, is more likely to say something extraordinarily off the mark, weird, or incoherent.*
Cont:
Governor Gordon rightly rejected Secretary of State Gray's new voting rules.
Gray, who is clearly running for Governor and keeping populist heat turned up as a result, will undoubtedly reply with something shortly.
Elsewhere:
April 13, 2024
Secretary of State Gray has an op ed in today's Trib entitled "Only Wyomingites Must Vote In Wyoming's Election".
It's a crime not to be a resident and vote in Wyoming's election, so this is a bit silly, but it's part of the Gray effort to whip up a frenzy in the populist right in part of his aim to run for Governor in 2026. It's also more than a little ironic, as Gray is not a Wyomingite, and most of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus isn't either. Jeanette Ward barely qualified to run for office when she ran for the seat Gray abandoned, as he tried first for the House and then for the SoS office.
Of course, "only Wyomingites" isn't what Gray means.
As always, Gray cited "radical left wing" activists as being his opponents.
Wyoming Democrats will caucus for the President today, not that it's going to matter. They'll choose Biden, and Biden will lose in Wyoming.
A Park County representative still wants all ballot counting in the county to be done by hand, but is being ignored as its a phenomenally bad idea.
Republican Dale Zwonitzer, a major House member from Cheyenne, is facing a run from Steve Johnson, Populist. Zwonitzer has faced open hostility from the Populist right the last several years.
Colorado will have an abortion ballot initiative in the fall.
April 15, 2024
While hardly newsworthy, Joe Biden won the Wyoming Caucus Saturday.
April 16, 2024
Donald Trump's criminal trial regarded to the paying of hush money to three people, two of them pornographic personages, began yesterday in New York.
The favorite of the Evangelical right is accused of paying Stormy Daniels, a pornographic actress, and another person, a former Playboy playmate, hush money prior to the 2016 election so they'd keep their mouths shut abut his fucking them. The third person is a doorman. The crime is asserted to be election interference, I guess, which is frankly a little hard to grasp in this context.
A jury has not yet been selected.
April 18, 2024
Senator Barrasso announced yesterday that he's running for reelection to the Senate.
I frankly thought he'd already announced, as he was obviously running for reelection. He has an opponent in the primary, Reid Rasner, who is running from the populist right.
I've mentioned the primary contest before, but I dismissed Rasner's campaign. Frankly, I was in error to do so as at this point I think Rasner has a serious chance of beating Barrasso, and Barrasso obviously fears that as well. Barrasso has been putting out hardcore populist, Trumpite, messages now for weeks. I strongly suspect that he doesn't believe in what he's tweeting, but he's taking this position, like almost every Republican political figure, in order to hang on to their jobs, even though it's killed the GOP.
Therefore, at the primary election, Wyoming will be presented with a contesnt between a genuine populist and a fake one. Actual conservatives will vote for Barrasso, not for what he's saying, but what they suspect he actually believes. Some populists will as well.
Footnotes:
*Something you'll sometimes hear from Trump supporters is that "he talks like us". I fear that might be true, which is we're beginning to sound mildly demented and addled as a society.
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