I’ll cut to the chase: Biden should step down. His performance in the national 6/27 debate was incoherent and abysmal, and it shook the nation’s confidence in his ability to perform in another term as president. If this election is as monumental as we all believe, we need a stronger candidate top of ballot.
That being said, I will vote the Democratic ticket, up and down ballot, no matter who the candidate is. Why? Because whether it’s Biden or someone else at that top of the Democratic ticket, I know I would rather live in a world under a Democratic Administration than I would under a Trump GOP Administration.
I say this for many reasons, but right now I’ll focus on just one: The Supreme Court. Since the onset of the Roberts Supreme Court in 2005, we have seen the ideological bent of the court move further and further to the right, with this court regularly overturning established, 50 to 100-year precedents, laying the groundwork for power further concentrated in the hands of the fewer and wealthiest, and with new opportunities for corruption and authoritarianism to flourish. And while change is often good, with several key rulings, especially those remanding jurisdiction back to the states and the lower federal courts, the Court has only added to the growing divisiveness, litigiousness, inequality, and unrest in our country.
Let me offer examples:
The 2010 Citizens’ United decision, which gave greater political influence to wealthy donors and corporations. The decision reversed 100-year-old campaign finance restrictions, maintaining that the freedom-of-speech clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for political campaigns by corporations, nonprofits, labor unitions, and other associations.
In removing these limits on political communication from these groups, the Court opened the door to the creation of super PACs, which empower the wealthiest donors; the inflow of dark money from organizations that don’t disclose their donors (including foreign donors); a massive flood of political spending on ever-more divisive advertising for ever-longer campaign cycles; an undermining of democracy, with wealthy special interests using unlimited secret spending to drown out the voices of everyday Americans; and an incredible lack of transparency, because voters can no longer get detailed information about the true sources of campaign spending.
Ruling in 2013 that it was unconstitutional to use the coverage formula of Section 4(b) of the Voter Rights Act to determine which jurisdictions are subject to the preclearance requirement of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Due to their history of racially discriminatory voting practices, nine states (AL, AK, AZ, GA, LA, MS, SC, TX, VA) and specific counties and townships in another six states (CA, FL, MI, NY, NC, SD) were required to submit any changes in their election laws and policies or electoral district maps to the federal government for advance review before putting them into effect. After the Court’s Shelby County decision, which removed these preclearance requirements from these jurisdictions, many of these states and, according to reporting in Vox, the nation saw “… an uptick in legal actions taken against states, increased costs for monitoring and pursuing litigation over voting restrictions, and, perhaps most significantly, more laws creating new requirements in the voting process—many of the disproportionately affecting black voters and other communities of color.”
The Dobbs Decision of 2022, which overturned the Roe v. Wade Decision, a precedent of 50 years. The Court’s 1973 Roe Decision held that the abortion right is part of a right to privacy that springs from the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments. The Roberts Supreme Court, however, decided that “the right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition,” and overturned Roe. Since the decision, a patchwork of extremely restrictive abortion laws have sprung up across the nation, with women and girls suffering unwanted, imposed, and life-threatening pregnancies; IVF becoming another target of restrictive legislation—with contraception potentially up next; and the Trump GOP speaking openly of a nationwide abortion ban to be imposed in a second Trump presidency.
The Chevron Decision, which struck down a 40-year precedent and cut back the power of federal agencies to interpret the laws they administer, ruling that courts should rely on their own interpretation of ambiguous laws. As a result, executive branch agencies will have more difficulty regulating the environment, public health, workplace safety, and other issues that affect the health, safety, and well-being of the American people. And the courts will be flooded with lawsuits, further holding up the government’s work on behalf of the American people.
Each of these Supreme Court decisions has spawned a cascade of consequences over the last 20 years: Today, the wealthiest in our country have the most political power; highly personal decisions and even privacy (see the recent menstruation- and travel-tracking-of-pregnant-women proposals) have become the business of legislators – the very ones who claim to hate big government; and the safety of our air and our water and food supply, transportation, and more can now be undermined by decisions made by nonexperts. But perhaps the greatest outcome of these Supreme Court rulings has been to dis-unite our States of America, with a patchwork of inequitable state laws now in place that erode the rights of our citizens.
Democrats want to use the White House and a necessary congressional majority to rectify the impacts of some of these Supreme Court decisions with laws that will apply across our nation, strengthening our democracy and supporting most of our citizens. Meanwhile, while paying lip service to prioritizing state’s rights, the Trump GOP and its wealthy special interests, both at home and abroad, want to impose THEIR vision for the nation on ALL citizens, outside of the political process, by concentrating ever-more power in the hands of the few—including the Supreme Court—until they can bring it all home with the federal laws THEY want—such as a national abortion ban.
When it comes to the Supreme Court, this next election IS consequential; we are likely to see two conservative justices retire. So, even if we think Joe’s gotta go, and we don’t yet know who will be the presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket, I believe that if we want to preserve and further restore our democracy, we must vote in Democrats, up and down the ballot in November 2024.
It’s not a partisan choice. Stop Trump and Project 2025: Vote for Harris/Walz for President/Vice-President; vote for Democrats up and down the ballot.