Yesterday, Senate Republicans voted down the State’s ERA. And today we have the weak tea rationale that they want you to buy. What they don’t want you to understand is that Equal Rights is Equal Rights, period. You have them or you do not. There is no in between. Except to the Delaware GOP (except Ernie Lopez) who will tell you with a straight face that they support the intent of this bill, but they need to provide pre-emptive restrictions on those rights right out of the gate. Which means they are not for Equal Rights, no matter how much they want to dance around this.
Sen. Anthony Delcollo, R-Elsmere, repeatedly said he supported the intent of the bill, stating that “we as a society should roundly reject bigotry and discrimination.”
He then proposed a trio of amendments that he argued would help the courts understand the legislative intent of the ERA.
Immediately after those votes, Senate Minority Leader Gary Simpson, R-Milford, accused Democrats of feeding into the concerns raised by constituents. Sen. Colin Bonini, R-Dover, said the majority party’s resistance to the “reasonable” amendments felt political.
Greg Lavelle’s intellectually bankrupt argument:
I am fully supportive of changing our state constitution to protect equally the rights of women and men. And I came today prepared to vote in support of this legislation, once some concrete steps were taken to clarify what the bill does.
Vote them out, y’all. I’m pledging a match for every donation to Laura Sturgeon’s campaign to unseat Greg Lavelle and his tired foolishness. Make a donation and tell me how much you sent (email is OK). I am matching up to my donation limit, so let’s get it done.
Amazing image used by permission of Kay Bee Ell on FB.
Not much, but I gave Laura 20 this morning.
Everything helps! Seriously and thank you!
Do donate to Laura, and while you’re at it, throw a few bucks to Krista Griffith, too, and let’s get Debbie Hudson out.
“Bamboozlement”…. Do I get a commission?
HEY THAT’S MY WORD! I even have a tag for it…..
Just donated $50.
Thanks so much!
I witnessed this nonsense live. And donated today. Can you tell me who is running against Bonini, Simpson and Richardson?
As far as I can tell, they do not have opponents yet.
Simpson is retiring. Rep. Dave Wilson is running for his seat.
Thank you.
and Bob Wheatley is the D running against Richardson
I donated $25 to Laura this evening 🙂
Thank you!
What are their names?
The names of those who voted NO?
Bonini, Collins, Delcollo, Dukes, Hocker, Lavelle, Lawson, Pettyjohn, Postles, Richardson, Simpson, Yearick, Wilson
Senator Henry voted No to preserve the ability to bring it back to the floor.
These Senators were absent: Hudson, Cloutier
Thank you. They will be hearing from me for sure!
Bennett is not a Senator
Rep. Kowalko
Yes, you are right. Sorry for the mistake. Serves me right for cutting and pasting DD’s Vote No and Absentee list without looking at it.
Hudson is also not a senator
“Equal Rights is Equal Rights, period”
This might be the single stupidest thing you’ve ever typed.
Try passing a law that says exactly that and see what the courts do with it.
“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged on account of the sex of the person.”
That’s the law. And the courts will use it to help curtail unequal treatment.
You win a MAGA hat.
You culture warriors still don’t get it: They care more about this stuff than we do. DelCollo gained far more by opposing this than any Democrat would have gained by passing it.
My belief, based on the evidence of history, is that this would do no practical good for anyone on the ground, so bringing this up was a loser for Dover Democrats, who have since Carney’s election shown themselves as perhaps the most inept majority party in any statehouse in America.
Yeah, the old white guy telling everyone who is not white and not old that they shouldn’t worry about whether or not the law protects them.
Collect your MAGA hat and take two steps closer to the nearest GRIFTUS rally.
Personal attacks aside – I’m not sure it is a net loser for Dems, but this rings true: “DelCollo gained far more by opposing this than any Democrat would have gained by passing it.”
Republicans win because they energize their base. I think we all get that by now. So does this energize the Dem base? Dems simply aren’t good at employing that strategy because the Dem leadership typically muddies the water enough that nothing feels very urgent to the base.
I feel qualified to make that judgement as member of the Dem base.
This is just BULLSHIT. You have no idea how energized any part of the Dem base is from this. WHY? Because you are not engaged with it. Unless you want us to know that since this might be meaningless to Dem men that it is, QED, not urgent.
So here I am, pledging to match up to $600.00 to fundraise for a replacement for Lavelle and the Dem base is not energized. Right.
Excuse me while I DO NOT WAIT for you to see me as part of the Dem base.
In your outrage, you missed my point which is related to my larger point from an earlier DB thread about the Democrats not getting as much milage out of “wedge issues” as they should because the leadership puts out a lot of mixed messages.
To me that is self-evident, but if you are saying that you think Democrats do get a lot mileage out of wedge issues, and don’t leave a lot of the base under-motivated most elections, we’ll have to agree to disagree.
Equal rights for women as a wedge issue. Democrats don’t get alot of mileage out of wedge issues.
What kind of “mileage” are you expecting Democrats to get if this ERA was to pass?
If the Democratic base does not care about equal rights for women, there are other parties they can belong to.
This isn’t about advantage. It is about justice.
Hoping I am never so privileged that I can’t imagine that justice is a good unto itself. This will motivate the part of the base that cares about this.
Okay. Here is my take. Since, for better or worse, politics is transactional, everything is always concurrently strategy and philosophy. We can’t wish that way.
So if my white man privilege is showing it is no doubt because I’m always astonished by the fact that Democrats don’t think in terms of strategy.
There’s governing and there’s politics. The ERA is good for both. On the other hand, raising taxes to fix a structural budget problem is good governing, but not so good politics. What I will notice is that the issues being considered as bad politics are the justice ones — the ones you don’t need. If you are canvassing for a candidate, being able to talk about the ERA is an opportunity to talk about how the person at the door will specifically benefit. It is an opportunity to talk about how we are trying to support our communities. That’s good politics and we need more of that.
That said – I hope you are right and this turns out to be both good philosophy and good strategy. It should be. It is cleary good philosophy, but how it is used will determine if it is good strategy.
I keep hearing that Dems need to act like Dems, that they must have a progressive agenda, that they must move left – so why are these same people having a problem with Dems fighting for ERA and other social issues?
Also – I just kicked in another $50.00 for Sturgeon.
Thank you.
Already maxed out…
I contributed another $100
This is productive. Great work.
“Yeah, the old white guy telling everyone who is not white and not old that they shouldn’t worry about whether or not the law protects them.”
By all means, explain how this law — which is not a law, it’s a Constitutional change — would protect you.
It won’t. It’s feel-good legislation. And it failed anyway. And it helped the GOP and hurt the Democrats in doing so.
Meanwhile, the pretend liberals who forward stuff like this do nothing to increase educational funding for kids in poverty. They’re too busy bamboozling well-meaning folks like you who lose their rationality every time a flag labeled “equality” is waved in front of them.
You’re fighting a cultural war you’ve already won, and in so doing ignoring the war against the 99%, which this Constitutional change would do precisely nothing to affect.
But keep going, girl. Slag people for their demographics, and then bitch like hell when that’s done to you. Hypocrite.
The hypocrite here can’t see that women are a pretty big portion of the 99%. And I’m not waiting for you to see me as part of 99% to push back and work on those issues that are still used to try to hold women back. The 1% don’t use those issues against you, of course, because you have a full-fledged seat at the table legally. They don’t use those issues against you, because nudge nudge, wink wink. They count on folks like you to try to demoralize and dissuade those who are pushing back on all of the ways they work at making sure we don’t have a full fledged seat at the table.
The cultural war is not won. Especially when we have a President and a Congress and an entire Administration that has decided that rolling back the clock to the 50’s is the best way to appeal to “their” voters. We have Nazis and the KKK in the streets and harrassing people of color. We still have people whose only purpose in life is to make sure that women cannot control their reproductive lives. Black and brown people are getting the police called on them just for existing. And these people are empowered now because they have allies in the government. These are the people who slag me for my demographics — and they are pretty open about that.
You are part of the more dishonest group trying to guilt trip me, bully me or otherwise bamboozle me into thinking that there is no point to advocating for a legally defined full fledged seat of my own at the table. There’s supposed to be some bigger goal (which can’t be true if you explicitly eliminate women from the 99%) that *you* have decided that all of the rest of us need to fight for. All you want is to not have to pay attention to any part of this crisis that anyone other than white men find themselves in. The haranguing over the culture war works at making everyone just pay attention to white men, because that is who the reference point should be anyway — right? It’s just passive-aggressive mens’ right BULLSHIT and you already knew you had no audience for any of that here.
So Get The Fuck Out Of Here with your culture war is won BULLSHIT.
Congratulations. That long screed managed to ignore entirely my point, which is that the whole purpose of this was to coddle those of you who need coddling.
How is the lack of an ERA in the state Constitution an example of men’s rights, a philosophy I don’t ascribe to anyway? How is the incorporation of this amendment going to get you “a seat at the table”?
How does the fact that I’m not opposed to this ERA fit into your rant? My point is it’s worthless, and that you’re a sap for thinking it’s not.
You want a seat at the table. I want to get rid of the table..
You, not I, are the tool of the 1%.
Oh, and you, not I, are the one who resorts to categorizing those who disagree with her by their demographic characteristics. You’d scream bloody murder if someone did it to you.
“Black and brown people are getting the police called on them just for existing. ”
I agree this is not just a problem, but perhaps the biggest one facing the country. I fail to see how Delaware adopting an ERA amendment to its Constitution would do a single thing to counter that.
And yet here you are telling me that we’ve already won the culture war.
🙄
White privilege is white privilege. You may not like being reminded that not only do you have it, but your entire political being depends upon it. In this culture war, I call it like I see it. And those who are telling women, black people, brown people, LGBTQ people to JUST SIT DOWN you’ve already won get to be reminded that all they are seeing is their own privilege and their own agenda. And are asking for all of the privilege to be coddled.
There are a great many ways that an ERA in the constitution will benefit women. Google can help you out here.
Amen sister.
= = =
Also, I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve found a need to use this it of excellence elsewhere where I’m being trolled: “Collect your MAGA hat and take two steps closer to the nearest GRIFTUS rally..” Brilliant!