What's the matter with Kansas?
Red state, Trump state rebukes the extremist Supreme Court on Roe.
The extremist United States Supreme Court was rebuked yesterday by, of all people, the supposedly conservative voters of Kansas.
Sixty percent of primary voters, reflecting the nation in most national polls, voted against changing the language of the Kansas constitution that permits abortion.
The Kansas legislature put the issue on the primary ballot assuming a low turnout made up of mostly conservative Republicans. They misjudged and in addition to a larger than usual turnout, even many of those conservative Republicans voted for the right to have the medical procedure.
American individualism.
It cuts both ways.
It includes a reactionary streak that is often anti-government for the wrong reasons.
But apparently is also says to the government that it can’t tell people who are pregnant what they can do with their bodies.
The vote is a win.
Unfortunately, without Congressional action to make abortion legal on a national level the fight for abortion rights must be fought in each individual state one at a time.
That seems untenable.
Democrats must get it together and stop running away from progressive social issues.
In 2004 journalist Thomas Frank wrote a widely discussed book called What’s the Matter with Kansas?
Frank, a Democrat, explained the rise of conservatism in Kansas and other red states on the ability of Republicans to use social issues like abortion, Gay marriage and affirmative action as a wedge issues.
Working-class Kansans would vote for Republicans (and for MAGAs) even though these same Republicans enacted economic policies that were not in workers’ class interest because they were in agreement with conservatives on social issues.
Some used this as an argument that Democrats should abandon the abortion issue, LGBT+ rights and social justice issues and focus exclusively on economic issues to win back states like Kansas.
The abortion vote in Kansas yesterday was just one election in just one red state.
I think it may have larger implications.
The Centrists in the Democratic Party have attacked the Left in the Democratic Party as being out of touch with heartland Americans.
They dismiss those like AOC as only representing only the Bronx and Queens.
But now the question might again be, what’s the matter with Kansas?