Polls: Americans on the Dobbs decision and related topics

It continues to surprise me the lack of understanding of how the government works within the US. If you flipped the question around to say, “Do you believe the Supreme Court should create laws?” I would say the outcome is markedly different. Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg felt that Roe v. Wade was a very weak approach by the court and while she agreed that Abortion should be a right, she didn’t feel that the original ruling was strong enough to support that. The fact is, is that we have a few issues with this country right now:

• The Legislative branch is substantially not performing their duties. They rely on court rulings and executive orders way too much to get things done.
• The Legislative branch has dug into hardened stances on most issues and are unwilling to give any ground on most topics, making the split congress very difficult to get measures passed
• The general public thinks we live in a democracy
• The general public has a limited understanding on the role of the Supreme Court and the overall legislative process, instead expecting people just to do what polls say

I have very little positive things to say about Trump, but the one thing I will say, is that both he and Mitch McConnell put together a process to load up empty court positions with solidly conservative judges. In most presidency quite a large number of openings stay open during the entire term of the administration. I believe, that Trump filled more judges than any other president in history. This will have a substantial long term impact to the country for conservatives.

Lastly, the legislative branch had 50 years to codify abortion rights. They were too lazy to do anything about it, and this is what they are stuck with. Regardless of how I feel about abortion, I feel that the Supreme Court took the right step, and while the left doesn’t want the Court to make laws, they have totally missed the fact that the Supreme Court, actually did what they wanted them to do, which is to not overstep and return the legislative process back to the people. The left just didn’t like this one particular decision, and they are ultimately probably do lazy and uncoordinated to get this codified in federal regulations.

Is the Constitutional virtue of “Statehoodness”, as I like to call it. Not only do nationwide polls not matter, as you said dgsweda, what does matter is what the people in each individual state think. So, rather than being a bad thing, it is good that abortion, for example, is legal in one state, and illegal in another. The people of each state have decided for themselves. This is how the Constitution was designed. It is a virtue, not a vice.

The same thing happens during presidential elections. Each state determines their electors. National polls don’t matter. It doesn’t matter that “the big states” really like one candidate. If all the small states like another candidate, they can add up to defeat the big one… This is by design. It is not a failure as some modern pundits suggest.

[Mark_Smith]

Is the Constitutional virtue of “Statehoodness”, as I like to call it.

I totally agree. I call it State Rights. Again, this goes back to people not understanding the history of this country and what a Republic means in contrast to a Democracy. People don’t realize the tension between the state and the federal government at the founding of this country. I personally think that the founders were geniuses at what they created to establish the right balance. You see this cry, whenever the left talks about the electoral vote vs the popular vote. They miss that the purpose of what we have is to hold people together, not just the majority, which incidentally plays into the left, but they just miss that point. Individual rights are paramount to the structure of the US. I think polls just create more confusion, because everyone looks at “a majority of the country believes….”. Which isn’t an accurate look at the country. If that was the case, than California and New York run the entire country, which I don’t think anyone really wants.