The vote against abortion in the US and the long tail of politics

The double offensive by the US Supreme Court this week, which allowed first the free transport of weapons and then, this sensational sentence against abortion, opens up an underlying political mystery about the consequences that can be expected from the turmoil that has been triggered. in the country .

To what extent this conservative turn against individual freedoms can undermine republican conservatism ahead of the crucial November elections. Or, conversely, if arms the government of Joe Biden differentiate himself in a more radical way, which allows him to pass that test.

The question can be answered with another, which asks why this is happening now. In principle, it is the result of a dynamic that has deepened in the country since the great crisis of 2008.

That cataclysm spawned an electorate angry at the system that brought Donald Trump’s populism to power and which supports the legend of US success. ultra-conservative, of undisputed power and a medieval morality with strong doses of racism and xenophobia.

The tycoon, who co-opted the old Republican Party, is back in the campaign confident that his people will wrest a slight majority from the Democrats in both houses in the legislative elections, a key step before the try to return to the White House in 2024.

Biden is a weak president, a condition that even the magistrates know. The president’s decline in popularity is unprecedented for his time in power.

But above all, considering that his government, aside from a series of its own or inevitable failures, from the fall from Afghanistan to the initial failure to contain the pandemic, may have been performing well until recently. He showed an economy that rebounded up to after illness the notable decline in unemployment.

But war and inflation came, an imbalance that came before but worsened with the economic impact of the invasion of Ukraine. That conflict had a positive side for the Democratic leader because it helped solidify his global leadership, which he had sought since he declared in the campaign that the United States would return to the head of the world table.

But the bad part of the Russian challenge was much worse in the short term. It has devastated the global north economy, with a shocking rise in the cost of living index and, more recently, with a rise in rates that predicts an imminent recession with not far off effects of unemployment.

In the United States, the decline in the president’s popularity is directly proportional to, among other internal effects, the sharp rise in fuel prices.

The damage is such that the president has reduced taxes on fuel, and has even mistreated oil companies, accusing them of these increases, which are similar to those experienced across the planet.

The Supreme Court acts in the United States and in this context, the body has nine magistrates, with a majority of six conservatives, three of them nominated by Trump, who in naming them ignored the importance of balance.

He now raises these controversial judgments as his merit, speaking of God’s will to his constituents. He is not mistaken in the strategy.

The decisions of the Court They are political prey. Biden understood this by immediately blaming the court’s decision, denouncing that the judges have sent America back centuries. He publicly accused his predecessor of this setback and tried to highlight which side modernity must be defended and where the archaic and stale vision to be banished.

Something like that, igniting that crack, was achieved in the 2020 presidential election with a country split in two and a majority exhausted by the recklessness and neglect of the populist president. But today is not an easy path.

People were shocked this Friday by perhaps these developments, but the average American votes when he fills his car with fuel. What the Supreme does not relate to that feeling of frustration.

One fact is eloquent. Last April, Quinnipiac University in Connecticut ruled that the president’s approval degree it had dropped to only 33%.

That huge drop, however, came just as the ruler had made a huge liberal breakthrough in the Supreme Court with the appointment of Ketanji Brown, the first African-American female justice in court history.