Supreme Court and Voter Turnout

Pundits left, right and center have been telling us that that the up-coming mid-term elections are a leaning very heavily towards the GOP. Too many Democrats are distancing themselves from a Presidency reeling from scandals at the Veterans Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, deer-in-the-headlights response to the ISIS incursion and the rather harsh inability of the President and Congress to get anything done. If it weren’t for the internecine battles within the Republican Party – Tea Party vs. establishment Republicans – political statisticians were projecting a distinct possibility of GOP control of both houses of Congress.

Not only do fewer people tend to vote in these mid-terms – the turnout is generally 40% of eligible voters – but “Midterm elections are sometimes regarded as a referendum on the sitting president's and/or incumbent party's performance. The party of the incumbent president tends to lose ground during midterm elections: over the past 21 midterm elections, the President's party has lost an average 30 seats in the House, and an average 4 seats in the Senate; moreover, in only two of those has the President's party gained seats in both houses.” Wikipedia, looking at our election patterns since 1910. And as indicated, the President isn’t doing too well in the eyes of too many.

Koch brothers are writing checks, Republicans are gloating at their expected triumphs at the Democrat’s seeming inability to counter their onslaught of campaign money and capitalizing on the “scandal fodder” plaguing the Obama administration. Despite a flood of “get out the vote” and “step up the grassroots campaign money” emails and other excessive solicitations, the Democratic response needle barely moved. The best the Democrats could do is point out the rather extreme views of some of the GOP’s most socially conservative members, anti-immigration reform, anti-equal pay for women reform, and even that the traditionalists are ready to spend money on military exploits in the Middle East but almost nothing at home and generally the entire GOP is still trying to reverse as many Obama social reforms as possible, from environmental regulations to Obamacare. Still, the Democrats seem bent on voting abstinence.

Enter the United States Supreme Court sending the right wing message with a bull horn. In two cases, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores and Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Burwell, five uber-conservative justices – all men, deciding a case that may well come back to haunt the government in oh-so-many-ways – made it really clear how far the court would be willing to go to back wealthy business owners over their often-poorly-paid female employees over the issue of “religious freedom.” Not the religious freedom of the employees, rather the right of the wealthy to pick and choose what benefits they can deny their workers because they – the owners – object to mandated healthcare benefits based on First Amendment religious reasons. What other bona fide beliefs can result in additional denials of benefits?

“The Supreme Court ruled [June 30^th] that requiring family-owned corporations to pay for insurance coverage for contraception under the Affordable Care Act violated a federal law protecting religious freedom. It was, a dissent [Ruth Bader Ginsburg] said, ‘a decision of startling breadth.’… The 5-to-4 ruling, which applied to two companies owned by Christian families, opened the door to many challenges from corporations over laws that they claim violate their religious liberty” New York Times, June 30^th.

Ginsburg asked about implications for other “employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah’s Witnesses); antidepressants (Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus); and vaccinations[?] . . . Not much help there for the lower courts bound by today’s decision…” Do I hear a call to action?

While the court seemed taken with the private ownership of small family business, it would seem a tad difficult to cast the Hobby Lobby Stores or even Conestoga Wood Specialties as small family businesses. “As of August 2012, the [Hobby Lobby] chain has 561 stores nationwide. Hobby Lobby headquarters are now located in a 3,400,000-square-foot (320,000 m²) manufacturing, distribution, and office complex.” Wikipedia. “Conestoga Wood Specialties is a manufacturer of wood doors and components for kitchen, bath and furniture, based in East Earl, Pennsylvania. They have five factories, located in Washington, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, employing about 1,200 people.” Wikipedia.

So it would seem unlikely that all those thousands of employees, whose benefits are being reduced, uniformly share the religious beliefs of the owners. But employees’ rights and religious preferences weren’t even relevant. Only the beliefs of the owners. These “for profits” didn’t fall within the exemption permitted by the Obama administration for bona fide religious institutions. But the One Percenters triumphed… again.

Could this decision be the unifier that gets Democrats to the mid-term polls? “[E]ven as conservatives celebrated coming out on the winning side of a divisive social issue, their court victory may have also handed Democrats an issue that will turn out liberal voters in the fall.

“Democrats have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the last several years to cast Republicans as callous and extreme on women’s health issues. And party strategists believe their ability to hold on to the Senate this year depends in large part on persuading women that a Republican Senate and White House would only produce more outcomes like Monday’s ruling, which they contend is harmful and hostile to women’s rights.

“Within hours of the decision, Mr. Obama and his allies criticized it as the latest attempt by conservative men to control private matters that are best left to women and their doctors… Democrats have already started to draw sharp contrasts with their Republican rivals in several races that will determine which party controls the Senate: Colorado, North Carolina, Michigan, Alaska and Iowa.” NY Times. Under-paid women now have to reach into their pockets to pay for benefits everyone else has simply because their rich owners’ religious sensibilities are offended.

That “if you want a callous and uncaring cadre of men deciding women’s issues in conformity with outdated social traditionalism from another era” mantra is growing louder. Lower pay for equal work and paying for medical benefits that would otherwise be covered but for the wishes of the rich owners are pocketbook issues as much as social mandates. Will this be enough to reverse the traditional ‘no-show’ tide that impact mid-terms? Will Democrats come back to the polls to counter the “big gerrymander” that has diluted their votes to 5/8^th of the rural GOP voter power? Time will tell.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and we are watching a contracting rural minority with enough power to reshape America in their image for decades to come.