May 2022

On April 25, the BW and I had the strangest experience that I have ever had on a golf course (and I have had some strange ones including elks, snakes and greens made of sand that required raking after putting in Tasmania).

For people on the extremes of this issue, the diehard pro-lifers and pro-choicers, the answer is no. You are either with them or you are the enemy.

However, the fact is there may well be a middle ground and some states may actually find it if, as is presumed, the Supreme Court upholds the Mississippi 15-week ban on abortion and perhaps overturns Roe v. Wade. If this does in fact occur, the rules on abortion will revert to being made by the individual states. Some states have already passed trigger laws that will go into effect the minute Roe is undone that ban abortions as early as six weeks after conception. Texas is one of these states. As you can imagine, these are mostly in Red America. But again, is there a potential middle ground and what could a middle ground look like?

There’s an important essay in The New York Times Sunday Review on May 1 about the candidacy of J. D. Vance for the open Senate seat in Ohio. Mr. Vance is the best-selling author of Hillbilly Elegy, an autobiographical description of his rise from poverty in Middleton, Ohio to Yale Law School and now he’s parlaying his fame into a run for the U.S. Senate. Mr. Vance successfully competed for the greatest prize on the Republican side of the aisle, Donald Trump’s endorsement. If Vance should win the primary and the general, it will crystalize what has profoundly changed in the United States over the past five or six years and further ensconce Mr. Trump as a once and future king as well as a king maker.