I could offer reasons enough to have my blog become all politics, all the time. But let me focus on one reason in particular: the Supreme Court. Its six-member conservative super-majority spent last term making one terrible ruling after another, and is poised to do even worse this term (if you can imagine that). Voters need to make sure that for the foreseeable future, any new justice appointed (thorough vacancy, or should the need for court rebalancing become even more obvious) must be appointed by a Democratic president and Senate.
You are of course aware of the Supreme Court's ruling last term in Dobbs, a case which overruled Roe vs. Wade, removing the nationwide right to an abortion. That wholesale degradation of women's freedom would be bad enough all its own. And yet, that ruling was in fact so appalling, drawing so much focus, that it covered for several other rulings that, in any other term, would be the headline-making disaster on everyone's mind.
Right around the same time the Supreme Court was ruling that women should only have rights that would have been recognized two-and-a-half centuries ago (a time when they had almost none), they also released these rulings. They restricted how concealed firearms can be limited in public spaces. (Not their own court, of course.) They declared that the right of someone to pray publicly supersedes the rights of those who might feel coerced to participate because of power disparity. They ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency lacks the agency to protect the environment from power plant emissions (under the specious theory that it's a "major question" that a gridlocked Congress must weigh in on).
And those cases all just come from a period of a few weeks. Don't overlook "highlights" from earlier in last year's term. The court blessed a scheme to take away individual rights, so long as it's rooted in bounties collected by private citizens. It eroded laws separating church and state in a case requiring states to fund religious schools. It ruled that a state can violate your constitutional rights in a criminal proceeding, so long as the state assures that such violations don't affect the jury. (Also, they can search your property without cause if you're close enough to a border, and you can't sue anymore if they fail to detail your Miranda rights.) Plus, if a defendant with a bad lawyer should get another bad lawyer to argue that fact? That's your fault; you have no recourse.
If all that isn't enough to make you mad, here are the cases which the Supreme Court has already heard in just one month of its current term -- and the rulings they seem likely to make, based on attitudes during the oral arguments. They will likely rule that universities have no interest in ensuring that their enrollment looks like a cross-section of the country's population. They seem likely to allow even more gerrymandering of congressional districts, ruling that even openly racist drawing of district lines is legal so long as a half-hearted non-racist justification can be offered. Odds are they'll allow the wealthy to pollute the nation's water supply under the theory that it's just too hard to know what water is actually part of the nation's water supply.
Then there are the cases that still lay ahead this term. The Court will be hearing a case that could give a state's gerrymandered legislature final say over election administration -- over any election officials, the governor, or even judges. They will rule on an argument that laws prohibiting discrimination against LGBT+ people are unconstitutional because a person's right to discriminate supersedes the right of the discriminated to secure good and services. And they'll hear dozens of other cases -- any of which could massively affect your life and your rights -- cases that even an avid Court watcher like myself hasn't even really processed yet amid the ceaseless stream of sewage currently flowing from the Supreme Court building.
Something at the Court must change, and soon. Vote Democrat to ensure that when that change comes, it's for the better.
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