The president has a very significant impact on many people’s lives via judicial nominees. The biggest this year is expected to be the effects of the 3 Republican Supreme Court judges installed by Trump on many women’s access to abortions, but many other judges in the system are appointed by presidents as well that make decisions that affect many people’s lives.
I think your example just highlights my point. Currently abortion rights are enshrined at the federal level. The SCOTUS is not going to ban abortions. They are going to throw it right back down to the state level. If you lose access to abortions, it is because your local politicians decided to ban them. This is exactly why you don't put your faith in the federal government and pay more attention to local government.
Love 'em or hate 'em, the Republican Party appears to understand this very well. They made state and local government a priority because they know that is where politics begins. Their success at the national level is disproportionate to the size of their voting bloc because they know how to play the game.
Anyone who opposes their ideals needs to remember that, and get involved locally.
Your claim was the President has the lowest impact on one’s life. As I showed, it is a reality that the President’s actions have a significant impact on people’s lives, probably bigger than a mayor or state senator or state representative probably has in the recent past.
Whether the President should or should not is irrelevant. The salient fact is that if the presidential election results for 2016 were different, then abortion access for millions or tens of millions of women would not be on the chopping block.
> Their success at the national level is disproportionate to the size of their voting bloc because they know how to play the game.
This is a trivial fact when the game is designed such that certain voting blocs in certain arbitrarily drawn boundaries have more voting power than other same size or bigger voting blocs in other arbitrarily drawn boundaries. Unless you live in a place that can be flipped to your candidate or party, there is not much to do locally.
>As I showed, it is a reality that the President’s actions have a significant impact on people’s lives, probably bigger than a mayor or state senator or state representative probably has in the recent past.
The president nominating a justice that decided to allow the Texas abortion law to remain in effect while it is being challenged has a bigger impact than the state senator who drafted the law?
Of course, the President has more power overall, but your ability to have any impact in that election is infinitesimal if you're in a swing state and non-existent otherwise. The fact Congressional districts are gerrymandered is all the more reason to vote for state legislatures. Even in local districts that are dominated by a single party, the real election occurs during the primaries. Chances are, if you get to know the candidates, there's going to be one you prefer.
People seem to forget that the purpose of democracy is to give a chance to make sure your own interests are heard, not to give you an opportunity to impose your will on the rest of the country. Our government isn't designed for the latter. You'd need a more authoritarian structure to do that. Trying to do so in a democracy just results in politicians who are more interested in virtue signaling absolutist positions than drafting policy that genuinely benefits their constituents.
I was referring to the expected outcome of the Supreme Court essentially overturning Roe v Wade later this year.
The rest of your comment is agreeable, but does not address the jist of mine which is that the President can and does have an effect on people’s every day lives in a noticeable way, hence people paying attention to them in the news.
> People seem to forget that the purpose of democracy is to give a chance to make sure your own interests are heard, not to give you an opportunity to impose your will on the rest of the country
As an aside, this is what the pro abortion choice position is. The people who want an abortion can get one, and the people who do not, do not get one. The abortion anti choice bloc wants to impose their will the rest of the country/state/city/whatever.
To further clarify the sibling's point, the reason for this is that the Progressive wing of the Democrats couldn't convince people to approve abortion access through democratic means as soon as they would have liked, so they decided to get a rather dubious Supreme Court interpretation of the Constitution that declared it to be a Constitutional Right. Now they are totally dependent on keeping agreeable Supreme Court justices in order to preserve that interpretation.
It didn't have to be this way. They could have left it to the states or local jurisdictions, and moved to a state with policies they agreed with. They could have (tried to) pass a Constitutional Amendment making it a clear and obvious Constitutional Right instead of a weird interpretation. Instead, they did this.
Living in a Democracy requires us to consider the opinions of our fellow citizens and try our best to accommodate them, rather than steamrolling them.
Consider the position of a Pro-Life activist. They will think that all abortion is murder, that the ruling is a grotesque twisting of the Constitution, and fight every inch of the way on every nominee. Does this sound like the way we were meant to resolve contentious issues? You may disagree with them, but they are also our fellow citizens, and will not be happy about steamrolling their positions.
Consider also the position of a Gun Rights activist. They will be outraged at how the courts have ignored attacks on an actual enumerated Constitutional Right, and fight every nominee on those terms, not particularly caring whether they are also likely to be anti-Abortion.
Maybe it's best if we resist using the Supreme Court to decide everything and try to pass clear Amendments for what's really important and broadly agreed upon. Though this goes back to how dysfunctional and useless Congress has become in their prescribed role.
> Living in a Democracy requires us to consider the opinions of our fellow citizens and try our best to accommodate them, rather than steamrolling them.
The majority of americans believe in abortion by a non trivial margin. The reason it's not guaranteed is precisely because the united states is not a democracy, but a democratic republic, giving significantly more political power to some voters based on where they live.
> The majority of americans believe in abortion by a non trivial margin.
That great, then you should have no trouble passing an actual Constitutional Amendment recognizing that right in a way that can't be interpreted away. I'll just sit here and wait while you go and do that.
> The reason it's not guaranteed is precisely because the united states is not a democracy, but a democratic republic, giving significantly more political power to some voters based on where they live.
You omit an awful lot of history in order to sound snarky. In reality, we started with a loose confederation of independent states. Some skillful negotiators tried to convince them all to unite into one nation. Naturally, the more rural states with smaller populations were concerned that their opinions and needs would be steamrolled by the more populous states, so to bring them all aboard, those negotiators biased a few things towards them a little bit. Everyone, including those more urban states, signed onto it, and everyone lived happily ever after*.
Now, making those states' concerns appear rather prescient, quite a lot of modern urban progressives seem to want to renege on that promise, primarily because they think they can get away with it, and they hate those people anyways.
> That great, then you should have no trouble passing an actual Constitutional Amendment recognizing that right in a way that can't be interpreted away. I'll just sit here and wait while you go and do that.
Would be easy in a democracy
Ergo the solution is rural voters count for much more than urban voters.
> Naturally, the more rural states with smaller populations were concerned that their opinions and needs would be steamrolled by the more populous states
What happened to respecting the wishes of fellow citizens? Why are these specific citizens more important because they live in a different plot of land?
> Now, making those states' concerns appear rather prescient, quite a lot of modern urban progressives seem to want to renege on that promise, primarily because they think they can get away with it, and they hate those people anyways.
Maybe its because the concept of losing a national election with millions more votes than the other side is bullshit? There are many divides in beliefs between people in the country. Geographical ones seem like the least interesting.
Who were almost certainly appointed long before any of those issues were of a concern to anyone. Exactly what are you attempting to prove by that statement?
You blamed it on the progressive wing of the democrats. It was the state of Texas that appealed to the Supreme Court. Not sure who you think the “progressive wing of the democrats” exactly were.