Category: Actions Have Consequences

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The Arizona Supreme Court Ruling Just Upended Everything. Here's What Happens Now.

From The Palmer Report:

One of the more perverse aspects of politics is that the odds of the good guys winning go up whenever the bad guys do something evil that harms people. If you're the good guys, you certainly don't root for the bad guys to do harmful things. But when it does happen, you do have to take advantage of it. We've seen perhaps no better example of this than the saga of abortion rights this week.

It started when Donald Trump (or whoever is making his campaign decisions while he sits home in an increasingly confused haze) tried to pivot a bit toward the middle on abortion. Presidential candidates are supposed to pivot toward the middle on something heading into the general election, in the hope of picking up votes in the middle while retaining their own base.

As Trump found out the hard way, abortion is not an issue you can pivot on. All he did was alienate far right evangelical voters (who may indeed stay home on election day if they think he's unwilling to keep going to bat for the "pro life" side), while failing to pick up any votes in the middle. If you think abortion is an important part of women's basic rights, you're not going to suddenly vote for a Republican just because he's become a little softer on the issue.

Then yesterday, we found out why Trump and his campaign were suddenly trying so hard to pivot on abortion. The Republican-controlled Arizona Supreme Court ruled that because a law from 1864 banning abortion was still on the books and was never technically repealed after Roe v. Wade, abortion is now outlawed in Arizona.

Wow. Just wow. Could this be any more on the nose? Republicans are literally announcing that we're returning to nineteenth century law when it comes to women's rights. This Arizona anti-abortion law was passed in a decade when there were still slaves. That's how mind bogglingly screwed up this is. Whatever the definition of insanity is, this qualifies.

This obviously creates an instant women's health crisis in Arizona. We've already seen the stories out of Texas. We know what's coming. When these kinds of rights are obliterated, women will die in the process. Other women will be forced to flee Arizona, as if it's some third world hellhole, in order to get medical care in neighboring places like California. What a sick joke.

You have to figure that Trump's people were tipped off, or had a strong sense, that thi Arizona Supreme Court ruling was about to happen. It's why the Trump campaign panicked and tried to distance itself from this debacle before it happened. But if anything, Trump's people only made it worse for him. They had Trump announce that it should be left to the states, and then a state immediately announced that women's rights will now be defined by nineteenth century law. This depraved ruling proves precisely why these things can't be left up to the states. This is why we have a federal government, and right now everyone is seeing it.

What's even more surreal is that the people of Arizona just finished electing a Democratic Governor, Democratic Attorney General, and Democratic Senator a year and a half ago, all of whom are staunchly pro-choice. It couldn't be any more clear that the will of the people of Arizona is being trampled by a handful of religious psychos on a state Supreme Court.

This is going to drive Arizona voters to the polls in overwhelming, record setting fashion in November. President Biden will likely carry the state again. Democratic candidate Ruben Gallego will likely win the Senate race. The most competitive House races in Arizona, such as AZ-01 and AZ-06, will now likely flip to the Democrats.

People in other states will also look at the Arizona debacle and decide to turn out and vote Democrat as well. This is likely to boost Democratic turnout in every swing state, where voters now have to worry that a handful of deranged extremists will take away their most basic rights.

This Arizona development is so on the nose, it may also boost Democratic turnout in blue states. While abortion rights voters turned out in droves in swing states in 2022, that same surge didn't happen in safely blue states like California and New York, where abortion rights aren't in any real danger. That lack of turnout in blue states is why the Democrats weren't quite able to win the House majority in 2022. But it could be a different story in 2024.

And yet there's no escaping the nasty reality that this Arizona ruling is a tragedy. Innocent Americans are going to be harmed by it. We're talking about women's rights literally being governed by backwards laws that were written in the same decade as the Civil War. This is the kind of heartbreaking catastrophe that's only supposed to happen in other countries, or so we tell ourselves.

That said, this Arizona catastrophe has indeed happened. These extremist scumbags have made their choice. And now our only choice is to take advantage of their villainy, putting in the kind of work required to win in November. Republicans are trying to hand us a victory, but elections don't win themselves. We have to turn off the TV and get out there and phone bank, volunteer, and raise awareness for the most competitive races and states.

The good news is we can get started in Arizona right now. The 2024 Senate race in Arizona is between strong Democratic candidate Ruben Gallego and scandalous Republican candidate Kari Lake. Gallego is the slight favorite, but don't just assume we're going to win this. Statewide elections in Arizona are always close these days, and that may continue to be the case even with this abortion ruling. So now – right now, today – is the time to get behind Gallego. Donate or sign up for more information on his official website.

The two House seats that are in play in Arizona are AZ-01 and AZ-06. They're both currently occupied by Republicans. Even before this abortion ruling, they both had about a 50-50 chance of flipping. Now we need to take advantage of this. The primary voting in Arizona isn't until August, so we don't have official Democratic candidates yet. But now is a good time to follow Democratic candidates like Andrei Cherny (AZ-01) and Kirsten Engel (AZ-06).

Keep in mind that with a horrific ruling like this, all we can do is try to turn it into wins for our side, so we can get the right people in there who can work to undo the damage. If we don't take advantage of this politically, and if we don't use it to win the election, then things will only get even worse. So let's go win. This ruling is a startling reminder that elections aren't won by staring at our TV in fear. They're won by rolling up our sleeves and smartly putting in the work. Let's go win this and get revenge on these sick bastards while protecting women's rights at the same time.

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A Glimmer of Hope…

…that despite Putin's nuclear posturing, the planet is not going to end up a radioactive cinder. At least not now.

From two separate posts at The Palmer Report:

Back when Donald Trump was still occupying the office of President of the United States, and his corrupt connections to Vladimir Putin kept emerging, there was at least some theoretical danger that Trump's downfall could take Putin down with him. But even though Trump was ousted in disgrace and is now in the process of losing everything, Putin managed to survive his own failed Trump experiment.

Even with Putin's puppet Trump now fully neutered, most of us were still expecting a weakened Putin to remain in control of Russia indefinitely. After all, it's usually others who have paid the price for Putin's failures. But that's because Putin's gambles over the years have been calculated to make sure that even if they failed, the consequences wouldn't be catastrophic for him. This is a guy with nine evil lives who's used them up very carefully.

That's what makes it so remarkable that we're now looking at the realistic possibility of Putin being ousted from power and perhaps even made to disappear in the process. That's because Putin has, for whatever still-unknown reasons, decided to bet everything on a Ukraine invasion that was far from a sure thing.

This is the kind of unwise bet that a stable villain only tends to take if he's reached a point of desperation where he fears he's about to be ousted anyway, or if he's learned he's dying and wants to go out with a bang, or if he's lost his mind to the point that he can't even rely on his own evil pragmatism any longer.

It's a tricky game to try to figure out what's going on in Putin's mind at this point, which in addition to having always been evil, now seems to be incoherently evil. But of all the people who are surprised by what's transpired over the past week, Putin himself surely has to be the most surprised of all.

Putin's allies such as Hungary and Kazakhstan are now refusing to help him. China, which initially appeared interested in siding with Putin and using his antics as cover for its own antics, now seems to be betting on his failure. And the European Union, some of which relies fairly heavily on Russian energy exports, has carried out the history-making move of removing multiple Russian banks from the SWIFT banking system. Not only that, support for Ukraine has suddenly become a rallying cry around the world, in a way that never did materialize back when Putin was having Trump try to sabotage Ukraine's government from within.

Putin couldn't have possibly seen all of this coming, right? Perhaps he was expecting a certain round of trade sanctions, budgeted for it, and thought that would be that. But how could Putin not have seen this kind of pushback coming? Comparisons to Hitler in general are essentially always over the top. But when you launch an unprovoked military invasion into a sovereign European country, it's difficult to think of any comparisons but Hitler. Putin has done perhaps the one thing that could have evoked this quick of and fierce of a worldwide response.

There are far too many variables at play to try to predict precisely how this will all unfold from here. But we do know that Russia's economy is now headed for full scale collapse. How long will that take? Tough to say, given that nothing like this has been tried on this scale before. But we do know that the Russian oligarchs will have a very difficult time swallowing what's about to happen to them. They love their money and their international glamor life, and now they've begun losing both.

There has always been one hypothetical that could lead to Putin's downfall and outright ouster, and that's the scenario where the Russian oligarchs collectively decide he needs to go. It's just that most of us never expected that hypothetical to happen, because Putin never seemed dumb enough to get himself that severely on the oligarchs' bad side.

Yet here we are, suddenly facing the very real possibility of the end of Vladimir Putin. Will it happen? When will it happen? Again, there are still too many variables to answer those questions. But the specter of Putin's downfall is no longer just a hypothetical. It's a very real scenario playing out right in front of us.

It's been clear all along that if there is any way to get Putin to back down in Ukraine, it'll be because the Russian oligarchs pressure him to do it. That's why the world has spent the past several days placing so much financial pressure on those oligarchs, cutting off their bank accounts and even seizing their yachts and mansions around the world.

Now two Russian oligarchs, including notorious bad guy Oleg Deripaska, are publicly calling for "peace" between Russia and Ukraine. It's important to understand that when these kinds of things are said publicly among allies, it's always done subtly. But make no mistake: these two oligarchs are telling Putting that he must make this Ukraine debacle go away to the satisfaction of the world, so that their bank accounts can get turned back on. Putin certainly understands that this is what these two oligarchs are saying. The only question is whether there are enough marbles left in his head to care bout surviving this.

There will be a lot of pundit debate about whether this means the oligarchs are "good" or "bad" or whether someone like Deripaska can be "trusted." But none of those naive concepts are relevant in the political world. It doesn't matter if the oligarchs are good or bad people. They've been in bed with Putin for decades, so draw your own conclusions about their morality.

The oligarchs don't care about right or wrong. But they do care about money and power, and they can be trusted to do whatever they think will be most beneficial for their money and power. Putin has given them a ton of both over the years, but now his antics are threatening both. The oligarchs have to weigh that equation in their heads, and figure out whether Putin is still worth it. And Putin has to weigh whether he thinks the oligarchs will take him out if he doesn't clean up his Ukraine mess. Those are the concepts that'll decide how this plays out from here.