When Obama ran in 2008, someone at my job said to me, "Oh you're the one with three Obama stickers on your car" in an accusatory tone. At the time, my mom who lived in northern Minnesota was worried that I'd have trouble if I stopped for gas on my way to her house because of that. But that did not deter me. Obama was the only politician in my lifetime who knew that it's hard "to pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you don't have any boots." That line, one that I had muttered to myself before he said it, captured my vote. Everything else was a bonus.
This week, my feeds have been filled with pre-opening interviews, clips, Michelle’s skirt…. My jaw unclenched. I smiled (and teared up). I felt relief.
You don’t have to “be like Obama” (although, do I sure wish more people were). But if you can give me that feeling when I hear you speak? What could you offer? Maybe….hope?
After watching these videos, I am still surprised at how quickly, almost on cue, Obama brings tears of joy to me. Particularly, of course, when he spoke of Mandela Barnes. It is not quite the same, but I do feel tingles of "damn, they are good," when I hear Ossoff, Pete, Talarico, Newsom, etc. speak.
So shockingly, after all that we have been through, I haven't lost hope in our country. Let's all learn from and practice Obama's masterful communication skills, and do the work to swing the pendulum back to a place of hope, inspiration, empathy, and action.
As an aside, where are more of the inspiring and powerful lady communicators? I am exhausted and disappointed not to see and feel it from the gals.
Four women who come to mind are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Gretchen Whitmer, Mallory McMorrow and Sarah McBride. They don’t necessarily use the soaring rhetoric that Obama could achieve; they are more conversational, more personal, and less declamatory. That can make them seem less “oratorical”, I guess, even though they are equally effective.
Perhaps more like Bill Clinton, who could explain welfare reform, globalization, budget policy, or health care while sounding like the smartest guy in the room and your next-door neighbor simultaneously.
Like Clinton, these women create the impression that they are thinking with the audience rather than speaking down to them.
Yes and yes. Thanks Dan. Good words of wisdom for all of us then and now. Here in rural NC, those not voting for Dems are still our neighbors that we rely on and work with daily. All your points are rural strategies . Anything else is laziness in this fight plan.
Oh boy, Dan, that hit hard. In a good way. Watching Mandela Barnes watching Obama speak about him in that clip tells it all. Thank you for this important reminder that we can move forward to a better country by following Obama's lead!
I saw you at the opening of the Obama Presidential Center—on TV! Like seeing a long-term friend. Thank you for being there. Thank you for always speaking up for equality.
Both of the Obama’s are genuinely inspiring and yes, current Dems could learn a lot from how they speak to the masses.
That they continue to try to inspire and lift others up after all of the loud, constant, overt racism directed at them should be a roadmap for others to speak the truth regardless of the backlash.
Also, his election broke a LOT of Republican brains and fast-tracked them down the hateful, cruel, white Christo-fascist path that they’re trying to force all of us down.
Oh, I miss those days. We saw then-candidate Obama speak in Albany, Oregon, and my husband was selected to stand behind him during his speech. We were all in awe. I remember exactly where I was when he won, and we took students to the inauguration, which was THE BIGGEST TURNOUT EVER! And cold as hell. But worth it. He's my Kennedy. We still have the newspapers from when he was elected, too.
Thanks for this Dan, a reminder of a great politician and a voice of hope. Your timing on this, with the opening of the Obama Presidential Center, is perfect.
The opening and celebration of Obama’s Presidential center was perfect timing. The speakers, the musicians, the brilliance and decency of Barack and Michelle were just what so many of us needed right now.
What an outstanding piece. I have and always will have love and affection for Barack Obama, much of which is captured in this article. My years as a volunteer for his campaigns and for OFA brought into my life new friends, sometimes half my age, who are now friends for life. I owe him all that. Sometimes people point out views or actions they don't like or agree with, and I will admit there are those rare occasions when I may disagree with him, but that in no way changes my strong feelings for him, far and away the best president of my lifetime. He is a candle in the dark, a lighthouse in the storm. I recently had the privilege of attending a pre-opening of his Presidential Center in Chicago as part of an Obama alumni. That is a visit everyone should do, and what came back to me was all the years he was president and what he meant to the country and to me. We spent the entire day in the museum and only could get to part it, so much of it was so moving. Multiple visits are necessary. May we all listen to his brilliance as we try to re-develop our country from what is on the verge of being forever tainted. Thank you Dan!
Thank you for reminding us how amazing former Pres. Obama was and is and what America was and still is if we can prevail against the white supremacy hatred that always abided in the recesses. I am reading The Secret War Against Hatred by Steven Ross. Hope to better understand the enemy within so we can win this war we’re in now.
I can’t dispute that Obama was a great orator or communicator. I think it’s almost impossible to argue against it. As someone whose heart swelled after he was elected in 2008, I have since come to realize that his rhetoric was amazing, his policies not so much. In fact, his greatness as a speaker hid his neoliberal values that have lead us down the wrong road as a country. He said the things I wanted to hear, but then did the things I didn’t support. Little to no consequences for 2000’s banking scandal, refusal to take up abortion as a legal right, unconditional support of Israel, deporting immigrants at record levels. Immigrants who often were not given due process, according to the ACLU. No meaningful steps to slow climate change or hold fossil fuel companies accountable.
I know in advance this will be a long reply. Apologies.
There are legitimate criticisms of Obama but as often happens, you compare Obama not to previous presidents, but to the most progressive policy agenda you might have preferred. This is a fairly common pattern in retrospective assessments of Obama from the left; for some reason the rhetoric shifts from “he did less than the ideal” to the false and overstated “he did nothing”.
On the banking scandal, I agree that his Justice Department pursued only one criminal indictment of a top executive, but:
* Major banks paid tens of billions of dollars in settlements and fines.
* New regulations were enacted through the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
* The administration created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
* Some lower-level executives and firms faced civil or criminal actions.
Would the ideal have been to criminally charge more executives from the banks and rating agencies? Of course. But what got done was hardly “nothing”.
As for codifying Roe, the SCOTUS decision that overturned Roe would as easily overturned the law codifying it, a fact some progressives seem to miss.
Obama supported abortion rights throughout his political career. The problem was not that he opposed legal abortion; it was that Congress lacked the votes to codify it.
* The Dems briefly had a 60-vote Senate majority, but many Democratic senators were considerably more conservative than today’s Democrats and openly stated their opposition to Roe.
* There is considerable debate among historians about whether a codification bill could actually have passed.
* There is considerable debate among legal experts that codification as then conceived would merely have suffered the same fate as the Roe decision.
The claim you make regarding the unconditional support of Israel is
your most historically misleading claim.
Obama had a tense relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu for much of his presidency.
* He publicly opposed Israeli settlement expansion.
* His administration negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action over Netanyahu’s objections.
* In late 2016, the U.S. abstained rather than veto a U.N. resolution criticizing settlements.
It’s true Obama continued the security arrangements presidents had supported for 60 years. It’s also true that the Israel of 2008 was different from the Israel of 2026. But it’s also true that the Israel of 2008 existed in a far more precarious environment vis a vis its more hostile opponents.
As to immigration, it is true that Obama was far more active in deportations than his predecessors. But he concentrated his deportations toward those with a criminal history and recent arrivals who entered at illegal crossing points and failed to apply for asylum. So, within the law. He held families in detention, but preserved the family unit rather than deliberately separating family members. Confronted with thousands of unaccompanied minors who crossed illegally, his administration had a program of attempting to reunite them with family, or finding sponsors. It was imperfect, but the problem was not of his administration’s making.
That said, you ignore the context.
* Obama created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, protecting hundreds of thousands of Dreamers.
* He sought broader immigration reform, which passed the Senate but died in the House.
* Many immigration advocates simultaneously praised DACA while condemning deportation policies.
Organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union challenged detention and removal practices during Obama’s presidency.
But this statement is vague.
A more accurate version would be:
Civil-liberties organizations argued that some Obama-era immigration enforcement practices provided inadequate procedural protections and improperly expedited removals.
That’s a legitimate criticism. Whether one agrees with it is another question.
You said “No meaningful steps to slow climate change” You are simply wrong.
Whether Obama’s actions were sufficient is a fair debate. Whether they were meaningful is not.
His administration:
* Negotiated the Paris Agreement.
* Issued the Clean Power Plan.
* Increased vehicle fuel-efficiency standards
* Invested heavily in solar, wind, and battery development
* Invested heavily in renewable energy through the 2009 stimulus. More investment at that time than all other previous administrations combined.
As to holding fossil fuel companies accountable, as you are no doubt aware, today’s progressives advocate more aggressive measures than the sdvocates of 2008. Obama did not pursue the aggressive litigation strategies against fossil fuel companies that some climate activists advocate today.
However:
* His administration imposed significant environmental regulations.
* It restricted some drilling activities.
* It strengthened emissions rules.
* It rejected more drilling applications than it permitted.
* After the Deepwater Horizon disaster it ensured cleanup and environmental mitigation, it passed relief for workers and local businesses that suffered harm, sanctioned BP, and beefed up regulation and enforcement of undersea drilling.
There are legitimate criticisms of Obama’s administration. But the closest you came to a fair criticism was on the 2008 real estate and banking crisis. But even there you ignored important context. Your other criticisms fall between misleading and false.
As to the charge that his rhetoric didn’t match his record, rhetoric is meant to be aspirational. To set out challenges and attempt to rally support. Any administration’s record has to be understood in the context of political opposition, time, the possible pace of change, and competing interests.
Thank you. My only disagreement is that a law codifying Roe would not have been struck down as easily as Roe, because Congress has the power to make law and Roe was considered as pushing the limit of Supreme Court powers even by many who were happy with it. Of course the matter is moot because, as you noted, they didn’t have the votes.
I think the problem progressives have with Obama is that while he shared their values to a great degree, he was all about not letting ideals get in the way of doing what was possible. His speeches often contained affirmations of their values which they interpreted as “he’s one of us” which was not quite true. I remember an incident where he actually posted on Daily Kos once and was taken aback by the craziness and vitriol of many responses. He decided that interacting with the online left was not a good use of his time.
I voted for the first time for RFK in a primary in 1968. I always considered myself a Liberal on most issues, but with age have moderated in some areas.
But I have never been interested in taking past presidents to task, realizing that leaders live in a world constrained by political forces, the then-current economy, the amount of change a huge population can absorb, and all the other practical considerations a president deals with.
But since about 2016, it seems that many progressives spend a lot of time measuring past presidents against today’s political expectations. It is very puzzling.
BTW, I did hear some discussion during Obama’s term, about challenging any choice/abortion legislation on the basis that there was no constitutional basis for such a law. I am not a lawyer, and so I have no basis for an opinion on whether that would work, but that was the argument I heard.
The constitutional basis for federal laws is found in Article 1 of the Constitution (which is pretty brief) as interpreted by successive Supreme Courts (not at all brief). There has been some back and forth, particularly about the expansiveness of the Commerce Clause (which authorized Congress to regulate “commerce…among the several states” and was the justification for the Civil Rights laws of the 1960s). The fact that medical care in the US is largely regulated and financed by the federal government (though medical professions are regulated by the states) would seem to indicate that it is within Congressional authority.
As I said, I’m not a lawyer. But here is what I found on a Georgetown University SCOTUS Blog.
A federal statute codifying the protections of Roe would have been much harder for the Supreme Court to eliminate than Roe itself, but it would not have been immune from challenge and the Roberts court might indeed have overturned it.
The key distinction is that Roe was a constitutional ruling, while a codification bill would have been an act of Congress.
When Dobbs overturned Roe, the Court essentially said:
The Constitution does not itself contain a right to abortion.
That does not automatically mean Congress lacks authority to legislate on abortion.
If Congress had passed a law saying, for example, that states could not ban abortion before viability (roughly Roe’s framework), the next question would have been:
Under what constitutional power did Congress enact this law?
Supporters would likely have relied on powers such as:
* The Commerce Clause.
* The Fourteenth Amendment’s enforcement power.
* Various theories about interstate medical services and pharmaceuticals.
Opponents would have argued Congress lacked authority because abortion regulation is traditionally a state matter, playing to the Roberts court’s version of Originalism.
A future Supreme Court could strike down such a law if it concluded Congress exceeded its constitutional powers.
Maybe I should have mentioned that I do, in fact, have a law degree so you didn’t need to explain it to me, but it’s good that you were able to find a quality source online that laid it all out.
I send my 16-yo daughter current and past interviews with Pres Obama, often with the caption "this is why America and the world love this brother so much". She has completely become an Obama fan. Loves the guy. Yes, his communication style still resonates strongly. :-)
When Obama ran in 2008, someone at my job said to me, "Oh you're the one with three Obama stickers on your car" in an accusatory tone. At the time, my mom who lived in northern Minnesota was worried that I'd have trouble if I stopped for gas on my way to her house because of that. But that did not deter me. Obama was the only politician in my lifetime who knew that it's hard "to pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you don't have any boots." That line, one that I had muttered to myself before he said it, captured my vote. Everything else was a bonus.
Nice. And great to have warm fuzzies too, Dan. Any chance video links could be YouTube, not Twitter? As I’m not on X, audio won’t play.
I am not on X but got the audio to play. If you touch the screen, there’s a symbol of a crossed-out speaker. Touch that symbol to toggle the audio on.
This week, my feeds have been filled with pre-opening interviews, clips, Michelle’s skirt…. My jaw unclenched. I smiled (and teared up). I felt relief.
You don’t have to “be like Obama” (although, do I sure wish more people were). But if you can give me that feeling when I hear you speak? What could you offer? Maybe….hope?
After watching these videos, I am still surprised at how quickly, almost on cue, Obama brings tears of joy to me. Particularly, of course, when he spoke of Mandela Barnes. It is not quite the same, but I do feel tingles of "damn, they are good," when I hear Ossoff, Pete, Talarico, Newsom, etc. speak.
So shockingly, after all that we have been through, I haven't lost hope in our country. Let's all learn from and practice Obama's masterful communication skills, and do the work to swing the pendulum back to a place of hope, inspiration, empathy, and action.
As an aside, where are more of the inspiring and powerful lady communicators? I am exhausted and disappointed not to see and feel it from the gals.
Four women who come to mind are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Gretchen Whitmer, Mallory McMorrow and Sarah McBride. They don’t necessarily use the soaring rhetoric that Obama could achieve; they are more conversational, more personal, and less declamatory. That can make them seem less “oratorical”, I guess, even though they are equally effective.
Perhaps more like Bill Clinton, who could explain welfare reform, globalization, budget policy, or health care while sounding like the smartest guy in the room and your next-door neighbor simultaneously.
Like Clinton, these women create the impression that they are thinking with the audience rather than speaking down to them.
Yes and yes. Thanks Dan. Good words of wisdom for all of us then and now. Here in rural NC, those not voting for Dems are still our neighbors that we rely on and work with daily. All your points are rural strategies . Anything else is laziness in this fight plan.
Oh boy, Dan, that hit hard. In a good way. Watching Mandela Barnes watching Obama speak about him in that clip tells it all. Thank you for this important reminder that we can move forward to a better country by following Obama's lead!
I saw you at the opening of the Obama Presidential Center—on TV! Like seeing a long-term friend. Thank you for being there. Thank you for always speaking up for equality.
Both of the Obama’s are genuinely inspiring and yes, current Dems could learn a lot from how they speak to the masses.
That they continue to try to inspire and lift others up after all of the loud, constant, overt racism directed at them should be a roadmap for others to speak the truth regardless of the backlash.
Also, his election broke a LOT of Republican brains and fast-tracked them down the hateful, cruel, white Christo-fascist path that they’re trying to force all of us down.
Oh, I miss those days. We saw then-candidate Obama speak in Albany, Oregon, and my husband was selected to stand behind him during his speech. We were all in awe. I remember exactly where I was when he won, and we took students to the inauguration, which was THE BIGGEST TURNOUT EVER! And cold as hell. But worth it. He's my Kennedy. We still have the newspapers from when he was elected, too.
Thank you Dan. Feels so good to get a little Obama Hope.
Thanks for this Dan, a reminder of a great politician and a voice of hope. Your timing on this, with the opening of the Obama Presidential Center, is perfect.
The opening and celebration of Obama’s Presidential center was perfect timing. The speakers, the musicians, the brilliance and decency of Barack and Michelle were just what so many of us needed right now.
What an outstanding piece. I have and always will have love and affection for Barack Obama, much of which is captured in this article. My years as a volunteer for his campaigns and for OFA brought into my life new friends, sometimes half my age, who are now friends for life. I owe him all that. Sometimes people point out views or actions they don't like or agree with, and I will admit there are those rare occasions when I may disagree with him, but that in no way changes my strong feelings for him, far and away the best president of my lifetime. He is a candle in the dark, a lighthouse in the storm. I recently had the privilege of attending a pre-opening of his Presidential Center in Chicago as part of an Obama alumni. That is a visit everyone should do, and what came back to me was all the years he was president and what he meant to the country and to me. We spent the entire day in the museum and only could get to part it, so much of it was so moving. Multiple visits are necessary. May we all listen to his brilliance as we try to re-develop our country from what is on the verge of being forever tainted. Thank you Dan!
Thank you for reminding us how amazing former Pres. Obama was and is and what America was and still is if we can prevail against the white supremacy hatred that always abided in the recesses. I am reading The Secret War Against Hatred by Steven Ross. Hope to better understand the enemy within so we can win this war we’re in now.
I can’t dispute that Obama was a great orator or communicator. I think it’s almost impossible to argue against it. As someone whose heart swelled after he was elected in 2008, I have since come to realize that his rhetoric was amazing, his policies not so much. In fact, his greatness as a speaker hid his neoliberal values that have lead us down the wrong road as a country. He said the things I wanted to hear, but then did the things I didn’t support. Little to no consequences for 2000’s banking scandal, refusal to take up abortion as a legal right, unconditional support of Israel, deporting immigrants at record levels. Immigrants who often were not given due process, according to the ACLU. No meaningful steps to slow climate change or hold fossil fuel companies accountable.
I know in advance this will be a long reply. Apologies.
There are legitimate criticisms of Obama but as often happens, you compare Obama not to previous presidents, but to the most progressive policy agenda you might have preferred. This is a fairly common pattern in retrospective assessments of Obama from the left; for some reason the rhetoric shifts from “he did less than the ideal” to the false and overstated “he did nothing”.
On the banking scandal, I agree that his Justice Department pursued only one criminal indictment of a top executive, but:
* Major banks paid tens of billions of dollars in settlements and fines.
* New regulations were enacted through the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
* The administration created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
* Some lower-level executives and firms faced civil or criminal actions.
Would the ideal have been to criminally charge more executives from the banks and rating agencies? Of course. But what got done was hardly “nothing”.
As for codifying Roe, the SCOTUS decision that overturned Roe would as easily overturned the law codifying it, a fact some progressives seem to miss.
Obama supported abortion rights throughout his political career. The problem was not that he opposed legal abortion; it was that Congress lacked the votes to codify it.
* The Dems briefly had a 60-vote Senate majority, but many Democratic senators were considerably more conservative than today’s Democrats and openly stated their opposition to Roe.
* There is considerable debate among historians about whether a codification bill could actually have passed.
* There is considerable debate among legal experts that codification as then conceived would merely have suffered the same fate as the Roe decision.
The claim you make regarding the unconditional support of Israel is
your most historically misleading claim.
Obama had a tense relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu for much of his presidency.
* He publicly opposed Israeli settlement expansion.
* His administration negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action over Netanyahu’s objections.
* In late 2016, the U.S. abstained rather than veto a U.N. resolution criticizing settlements.
It’s true Obama continued the security arrangements presidents had supported for 60 years. It’s also true that the Israel of 2008 was different from the Israel of 2026. But it’s also true that the Israel of 2008 existed in a far more precarious environment vis a vis its more hostile opponents.
As to immigration, it is true that Obama was far more active in deportations than his predecessors. But he concentrated his deportations toward those with a criminal history and recent arrivals who entered at illegal crossing points and failed to apply for asylum. So, within the law. He held families in detention, but preserved the family unit rather than deliberately separating family members. Confronted with thousands of unaccompanied minors who crossed illegally, his administration had a program of attempting to reunite them with family, or finding sponsors. It was imperfect, but the problem was not of his administration’s making.
That said, you ignore the context.
* Obama created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, protecting hundreds of thousands of Dreamers.
* He sought broader immigration reform, which passed the Senate but died in the House.
* Many immigration advocates simultaneously praised DACA while condemning deportation policies.
Organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union challenged detention and removal practices during Obama’s presidency.
But this statement is vague.
A more accurate version would be:
Civil-liberties organizations argued that some Obama-era immigration enforcement practices provided inadequate procedural protections and improperly expedited removals.
That’s a legitimate criticism. Whether one agrees with it is another question.
You said “No meaningful steps to slow climate change” You are simply wrong.
Whether Obama’s actions were sufficient is a fair debate. Whether they were meaningful is not.
His administration:
* Negotiated the Paris Agreement.
* Issued the Clean Power Plan.
* Increased vehicle fuel-efficiency standards
* Invested heavily in solar, wind, and battery development
* Invested heavily in renewable energy through the 2009 stimulus. More investment at that time than all other previous administrations combined.
As to holding fossil fuel companies accountable, as you are no doubt aware, today’s progressives advocate more aggressive measures than the sdvocates of 2008. Obama did not pursue the aggressive litigation strategies against fossil fuel companies that some climate activists advocate today.
However:
* His administration imposed significant environmental regulations.
* It restricted some drilling activities.
* It strengthened emissions rules.
* It rejected more drilling applications than it permitted.
* After the Deepwater Horizon disaster it ensured cleanup and environmental mitigation, it passed relief for workers and local businesses that suffered harm, sanctioned BP, and beefed up regulation and enforcement of undersea drilling.
There are legitimate criticisms of Obama’s administration. But the closest you came to a fair criticism was on the 2008 real estate and banking crisis. But even there you ignored important context. Your other criticisms fall between misleading and false.
As to the charge that his rhetoric didn’t match his record, rhetoric is meant to be aspirational. To set out challenges and attempt to rally support. Any administration’s record has to be understood in the context of political opposition, time, the possible pace of change, and competing interests.
Thank you. My only disagreement is that a law codifying Roe would not have been struck down as easily as Roe, because Congress has the power to make law and Roe was considered as pushing the limit of Supreme Court powers even by many who were happy with it. Of course the matter is moot because, as you noted, they didn’t have the votes.
I think the problem progressives have with Obama is that while he shared their values to a great degree, he was all about not letting ideals get in the way of doing what was possible. His speeches often contained affirmations of their values which they interpreted as “he’s one of us” which was not quite true. I remember an incident where he actually posted on Daily Kos once and was taken aback by the craziness and vitriol of many responses. He decided that interacting with the online left was not a good use of his time.
I voted for the first time for RFK in a primary in 1968. I always considered myself a Liberal on most issues, but with age have moderated in some areas.
But I have never been interested in taking past presidents to task, realizing that leaders live in a world constrained by political forces, the then-current economy, the amount of change a huge population can absorb, and all the other practical considerations a president deals with.
But since about 2016, it seems that many progressives spend a lot of time measuring past presidents against today’s political expectations. It is very puzzling.
BTW, I did hear some discussion during Obama’s term, about challenging any choice/abortion legislation on the basis that there was no constitutional basis for such a law. I am not a lawyer, and so I have no basis for an opinion on whether that would work, but that was the argument I heard.
The constitutional basis for federal laws is found in Article 1 of the Constitution (which is pretty brief) as interpreted by successive Supreme Courts (not at all brief). There has been some back and forth, particularly about the expansiveness of the Commerce Clause (which authorized Congress to regulate “commerce…among the several states” and was the justification for the Civil Rights laws of the 1960s). The fact that medical care in the US is largely regulated and financed by the federal government (though medical professions are regulated by the states) would seem to indicate that it is within Congressional authority.
As I said, I’m not a lawyer. But here is what I found on a Georgetown University SCOTUS Blog.
A federal statute codifying the protections of Roe would have been much harder for the Supreme Court to eliminate than Roe itself, but it would not have been immune from challenge and the Roberts court might indeed have overturned it.
The key distinction is that Roe was a constitutional ruling, while a codification bill would have been an act of Congress.
When Dobbs overturned Roe, the Court essentially said:
The Constitution does not itself contain a right to abortion.
That does not automatically mean Congress lacks authority to legislate on abortion.
If Congress had passed a law saying, for example, that states could not ban abortion before viability (roughly Roe’s framework), the next question would have been:
Under what constitutional power did Congress enact this law?
Supporters would likely have relied on powers such as:
* The Commerce Clause.
* The Fourteenth Amendment’s enforcement power.
* Various theories about interstate medical services and pharmaceuticals.
Opponents would have argued Congress lacked authority because abortion regulation is traditionally a state matter, playing to the Roberts court’s version of Originalism.
A future Supreme Court could strike down such a law if it concluded Congress exceeded its constitutional powers.
Maybe I should have mentioned that I do, in fact, have a law degree so you didn’t need to explain it to me, but it’s good that you were able to find a quality source online that laid it all out.
I send my 16-yo daughter current and past interviews with Pres Obama, often with the caption "this is why America and the world love this brother so much". She has completely become an Obama fan. Loves the guy. Yes, his communication style still resonates strongly. :-)