It's time to stop the anti-abortion extremism rising up across America

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Abortion -- or rather a woman's choice to make that difficult decision -- is the law of the land. The Supreme Court said so a long time ago. But, inch by inch, the anti-abortion extremists who control the Republican Party and so much of the political narrative are rolling back that hard-won freedom, enacting unreasonable restrictions in state after state.

Well, enough is enough:

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) [yesterday introduced] the Women's Health Protection Act of 2013, joined by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Reps. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), Judy Chu (D-Calif.) and Lois Frankel (D-Fla.). The bill would prohibit states from passing so-called Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws, which impose strict and cost-prohibitive building standards on abortion clinics, require women seeking abortions to have ultrasounds, and create other barriers to abortion access.

The Supreme Court decided in Roe v. Wade that states cannot block women's access to abortion before the fetus is viable outside the womb, which is estimated to occur between 22 and 24 weeks of pregnancy. But state legislators have found a number of ways to make it difficult logistically, financially and emotionally for women to have abortions before that point.

"In states like Texas and Wisconsin, legislatures are passing bills with the false pretext of protecting health when their only objective is to obstruct and curtail access to safe and legal abortions and reproductive services. These laws are largely unconstitutional, and some measure of certainty and clarity is required to preempt these regulations and laws so women are not deterred in their very personal decisions based on their own values on how they want to use their constitutional rights," Blumenthal said. "The Women’s Health Protection Act will provide a clear and certain response to these regulations and laws that impose unnecessary tests, procedures and restrictions — including requirements for physical layout in clinics — on reproductive services."

There are certainly reasonable restrictions that pro-choicers can accept. No one is saying, for example, that there should be unfettered access to abortion in the third trimester. But what's going on here is that Republicans are trying to get around abortion's legality by making it next to impossible for a woman to get one, blocking access in a way that interferes with women's health more broadly and also that disproportionately targets women who can't afford to travel to states where abortion is more readily available. (We talk about the Republican war on women, but this is also an example of Republican class warfare.)

The time to fight back is now.

Loan Harry Reid your testicles

By Frank Moraes 

(Ed. note: Frank's second open letter to Sen. Boxer is here. -- MJWS)

At The Washington Post, two writers I admire, Greg Sargent and Jonathan Bernstein, are excited about the prospect of filibuster reform. First, Sargent broke the news that Harry Reid plans to go for the "nuclear option" in July if the Republicans filibuster three upcoming nominees: "Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Thomas Perez as secretary of labor; and Gina McCarthy to head the Environmental Protection Agency." And then Bernstein argued that Reid was playing this just right by giving the Republicans a warning and an opportunity to reform themselves.

The problem, of course, is: really?! Are we really supposed to believe that (1) Republicans will respond to what they should rightly assume is an empty threat? And is it at all credible that (2) Reid will in fact do anything this time other than shake hands with Mitch McConnell? However, it is possible that I'm being unfair to the Majority Leader. According to Bernstein, Reid is constrained because (he doesn't put it this way) he is the leader of a bunch of wimps who wouldn't go to the bathroom without asking permission from the Republicans. And there is likely something to that. But if it is the case that Reid doesn't have the support of his caucus, then why is he saying anything at all?

Another problem is that we really don't know what Reid means by his test case of three nominations. The truth is that the Republicans filibuster every nominee. I know that some nominees do get through, but that is only because some Republicans vote for cloture. Let's be really clear here: Senate Republicans require 60 votes for every nominee. Requiring 60 senators before a vote can be cast is a filibuster. If they get the 60 senators, it was an unsuccessful filibuster; but it was still a filibuster.

So the question is, will Harry Reid launch the "nuclear option" if Republicans unsuccessfully filibuster these three nominees? Because they will filibuster them. And even worse, what if only one or two of the nominees are successfully filibustered? We don't know. But I have a hunch: Reid will declare victory and slink away. I would love to be proven wrong.

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California dreamin'

Guest post by J.S. Norquay

J.S. Norquay, which may or may not be his or her real name, is a former midwesterner, documentary filmmaker, and academic who now toils deep inside a large public sector institution in eastern Canada.

California has the third highest unemployment rate in the United States at 12% (Nevada and Michigan are higher). So why did the Republicans' red wave not make it to the Golden State? Barbara Boxer and Jerry Brown won big while the Democrats lost just a single House incumbent. The answer should be considered encouraging for Democrats – it was the Latino vote and those of other minorities. As Nate Silver pointed out, the pollsters underestimated the Latino vote in places like California, Nevada, and Colorado. This explains why Harry Reid was behind in the published polls but won comfortably.

One can account for Reid's and Colorado Senator Michael Bennett's victories in part by the fact that they faced Tea Party fruit cakes like Sharon Angle and Ken Buck. But demographic trends suggest California could be the future of America, a place where minorities will play an increasingly important political role, particularly Latinos.

The exit polls from California report that the electorate on Tuesday was 62% white and 38% minority (22 points of which were Latino) compared to a 78-22 ratio nationally. Like elsewhere, California whites voted Republican -- for Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman. (The poll is not broken down by age and race, but it seems likely that a majority of whites aged 18 to 29 voted for both Boxer and Brown).

And the Republican strategic approach to the election didn't matter. As the L.A. Times noted:

California Republicans had multiple reasons for head-shaking on Wednesday. For decades, the state party has squabbled over whether success would come more easily to candidates running as conservatives or those who presented a more moderate face to the state's sizeable bloc of independent, centrist voters. This year they tried both. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina ran a firmly conservative race and Whitman took a more moderate road.

The problem for Latinos, simply put, is Republican attitudes on immigration as reflected in Fiorina's support for Arizona's new anti-immigrant law (Whitman was opposed). Three quarters of California Latinos have an unfavourable view of Republicans. And their share of California's population continues to grow.

California endorsed the state's efforts to curb climate change by rejecting a proposition aimed at rolling them back. In California, Obama's favorability ratings remain strong. Ideologically, the Democrats should be listening to Californians, not trying to make nice with Republicans east of the Sierra Nevadas.

Back here in the east, all the leaves are gone and the sky is gray.

Good news in California polling

By Michael J.W. Stickings

A new L.A. Times/USC poll finds:

-- Democrat Barbara Boxer leading Republican Carly Fiorina 51-43; and

-- Democrat Jerry Brown leading Republican Meg Whitman 49-44.

What's going on? California is a left-leaning state, obviously, but:

Republicans Whitman and Fiorina have yet to convince crucial groups of voters that their businesswoman backgrounds will translate into government success...

Both Republicans were hamstrung by voters' negative impressions of them -- particularly Whitman, who has poured a national record $119 million of her own money into an advertising-heavy campaign yet has seen her unpopularity rise, the survey showed.

But it's far from over:

Still, in this year of political tumult, the Democrats were facing stiff challenges too. As they do nationally, Republicans in California held a fierce edge in enthusiasm among likely voters. The poll defined likely voters based both on past voting history and enthusiasm about voting this year -- a measure that projects an election turnout that is more heavily Republican than is typical in California. If the Democratic turnout ends up being even more sharply depressed, that would put the party's candidates at risk.

It's the word that defines 2010: enthusiasm. Republicans have it, not least because of the whole Tea Party "movement," Democrats not so much, not least because of how Obama and Congressional Democrats have conducted themselves, which is, for the most part, less than admirably.

As I have argued before, however, I expect the enthusiasm gap to narrow now that the election campaign has begun in earnest. Republicans will still do well, as history tells us that the party in power loses seats in the first midterms, and they will likely make significant gains at both the federal and state levels, but there's no reason two strong Democratic candidates -- Boxer, the incumbent, and Brown, an ex-governor and currently the attorney general -- shouldn't prevail. Whitman in particular is a formidable opponent, but these are winnable races.

And these are very encouraging poll numbers.