Two of the most basic human aspirations are making one’s own decisions about whether or when to have a child, free from government interference, and keeping any child one does have out of harm’s way, secure against random violence.
Yet both aspirations have been fiercely resisted in the United States – the first by many evangelical Christians, the second by the gun lobby.
Republican lawmakers are in the pockets of both. Democratic lawmakers are on the side of reproductive freedom and gun control.
It has become the sharpest divide in contemporary American politics.
The American people are not evenly divided on these issues. A large majority wants to maintain access to abortions during the first trimester of pregnancy, which has been the rule since the supreme court decided Roe v Wade in 1973.
An even larger majority (including many Republican voters) support requiring universal background checks for would-be gun buyers, and most favor banning high-capacity magazines and the sale of assault weapons.
Do the opinions of the majority matter on these two issues, where politically potent minorities have demanded the opposite? At first glance, it seems not.
After the 2 May leak of a draft opinion in the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, written by Samuel Alito and evidently joined by four other Republican-appointed justices – which argues that no right to abortion can be found in the constitution and that, therefore, no such right exists – Senate Democrats tried to codify a national right to abortion.
But on 11 May, the Women’s Health Protection Act failed in the Senate, by a vote of 49 to 51. That was short not only of a simple majority but, more importantly, of the super-majority of 60 votes required to overcome the inevitable filibuster. (Only the West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin crossed party lines.)
Now, in the wake of last week’s massacre of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, Congress is about to vote on regulating guns. Almost no one believes there are 10 Republican senators who will support any form of gun control, even after last week’s horror.
While steadfastly refusing to maintain access to abortion services and refusing all recent attempts to control guns, Republican lawmakers at the federal and state levels also remain opposed to government funding for childcare, parental leave, sex education and contraception, and for reproductive, maternal, neo-natal and pediatric health services.
It takes a great deal to awaken the slumbering giant of American voters. Most do not belong to either major political party. Many are turned off by politics. In the typical midterm election, only about half of those who are eligible to vote do so.
Yet every so often the slumbering giant awakens – and with a swoop of its huge arm at the ballot box remedies the growing disconnect between what voters want and what politicians do (or fail to do).
In the 2014 midterms, only 20% of young people between the ages of 18 and 29 went to the polls.
But in the 2018 midterms, after two years of Donald Trump and congressional Republicans trampling on issues young people cared about – such as the environment, education and protection for undocumented immigrants who came to America as children – young voters were stirred to action: 36% of them voted. That was enough to switch control of the House to the Democrats.
Most pundits are convinced that the Democrats are doomed to lose the House and Senate in the upcoming midterms. They point to the fact that after 15 months in office, Biden is polling badly, at about 40%.
But the punditocracy is ignoring the disconnect between what most Americans want on abortion and guns and what Republican lawmakers are doing.
The two issues of abortion and guns may have a larger impact on Americans together than they have had separately because of the moral relationship between them – being free to decide whether and when to have children and keeping children safe from gun violence.
(The pundits also forget that at the same point in his presidency, Ronald Reagan was polling at about 40%. But as inflation declined, Reagan ran for re-election against Walter Mondale and won 49 states.)
If the slumbering giant does awaken, a mobilization such as America has rarely seen could propel Democrats to larger majorities in the House and Senate this November – giving them enough votes in the Senate to eliminate the filibuster and consigning Republicans to a near permanent minority.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
