Washington Merry-Go-Round

IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 14, 2023
WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND
Today’s Events in Historical Perspective
America’s Longest-Running Column Founded 1932
The electorate-moving issues for 2024
By Douglas Cohn and Eleanor Clift         
 
          WASHINGTON — 2024 and the election are around the corner, and, as usual, the candidates – if not the party – who recognize and capture the middle ground will win. But recognizing comes first.
          Climate change has never been a top tier issue until now. With historic flooding in Vermont, 120-degree temperatures in Arizona, and ocean waters off Miami warmed to 97 degrees, the seriousness of climate change is now obvious to a majority of Americans.
          At the same time, some of the top presidential contenders are stuck in climate denial. You know who they are.
          Former Vice President Al Gore’s groundbreaking 1992 book, “Earth in the Balance Ecology and the Human Spirit” revealed the peril of greenhouse gases in warming the planet. He called it “an inconvenient truth.” Today, it is simply a truth.
          The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act makes major investments in slowing climate change and mitigating its effects, but it only made it through the Senate with a tie-breaking vote from the vice president. How did your senator vote?
          Then there’s guns. The Supreme Court has agreed to take up a case later this year about a Texas drug dealer named Zackey Rahimi who challenged a court order prohibiting him from owning guns because he had assaulted a former girlfriend. The conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said the lower court judge had overreached and that prohibiting Rahimi from having a firearm was unconstitutional.
          Today, there is a 6 to 3 conservative super-majority on the Supreme Court, and their ruling in this case could extend gun rights in this country even further. Florida recently passed a law that allows people to carry concealed weapons without a permit.
          We have more guns in this country than people, and it is not uncommon for people to open fire indiscriminately because they have a score to settle, or they just felt like it.
          A majority of Americans, 58 percent, support stricter gun laws according to a recent Pew survey. A super-majority, 88 percent, favor keeping guns away from people who are mentally ill. And two thirds of those polled said military-style assault weapons and other weapons of war should be banned.
          The mismatch between what Americans want and what their elected politicians are delivering is stunning. Where do your senators and representatives stand?
          On a woman’s right to choose, the battle is ongoing with about half the states imposing full bans or severely restricting access to abortion. Efforts are underway to include ballot measures in Ohio and Arizona, where abortion rights supporters hope to emulate similar measures in Kansas and Kentucky, red states where voters turned out in high numbers to keep the procedure legal and protected.
          That should be a message for politicians who are haggling over whether there should be a federal ban on abortion and, if so, after how many weeks.
          In 2024 the power of the abortion issue will be on the ballot one way or another. No longer will proponents of women’s rights be able to say a right they have had for 50 years (Roe v. Wade) is established law, a precedent which the Supreme Court would never overturn. But the current Court did do that, and the full pushback reverberations have yet to be felt. Politicians will ignore this at their peril.
          The economy, of course, is also always an issue, but perhaps less so in 2024. Job creation is high, inflation is all but gone, interest rate hikes have run their course, and fears of a recession seem overblown. So, we have relegated the economy to a second-tier issue.
          Climate change, gun control, and women’s rights, these will be the electorate-moving issues of 2024. These will be the issues that awaken the public, oust the recalcitrants, and alter the nation’s political trajectory.
 
 
 
          Eleanor Clift’s latest book Selecting a President, and Douglas Cohn’s latest books The President’s First Year: The Only School for Presidents Is the Presidency and World War 4: Nine Scenarios (endorsed by seven flag officers).
          Twitter:  @douglas_cohn
          © 2023 U.S. News Syndicate, Inc.
          Distributed by U.S. News Syndicate, Inc.
END WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND