Making Policy By Choke Point is Cheating
And we should all at least pretend to be against cheating
Let’s talk about shenanigans. Shenanigans are a hot topic right now because the Texas abortion law dials the shenanigans up to 11. Even people who oppose abortion should be troubled by a law that skirts judicial review by turning everyone in Texas into a vigilante. Outsourcing enforcement to the public is insane. I think insider trading should be illegal, but I wouldn’t enforce it by giving everyone in the state a bag of meth and a switchblade and saying: “Keep an eye peeled.”
If you oppose shenanigans, you need to oppose them even when your side does them. That’s not always easy; remember the 2013 Wendy Davis filibuster to stop a different Texas anti-abortion bill? That was the one where she was wearing pink sneakers -- the pink sneakers were the detail that caused liberal brains to go into total meltdown.
That was a rough moment to be a pro-choice, anti-filibuster liberal. Most Democrats were losing not only their shit, but also their children’s shit and their children’s children’s shit over what a kickass quasi-deity Wendy Davis was (oh: The bill passed). At dinner with friends one night -- in Brooklyn, so go ahead and let your brain conjure up the ugliest possible stereotypes of Brooklyn progressives and you’ve pretty much nailed it -- I had to be the Founder and President of the Fuck Your Fun Society and meekly say “yeah I just don’t support filibustering.” My friends reacted as if I had expressed deep regret that I never got to eat the dog from Frasier.