"It's the autonomy, stupid"
The political slogan of the season
“Sometimes it’s still worth lurking on Xitter,” veteran journalist Helen Kennedy wrote last night on Bluesky. “This is tweet of the year caliber. Dems should sell tshirts.”
Not just the tweet of the year: the slogan of the season.
There was no voting yesterday in my part of the Bay Area, but there were important elections in other parts of the country, and especially in Ohio, where voters resoundingly approved Issue 1, which will add abortion protections to the state constitution. Results elsewhere in the U.S. make it pretty clear that—despite the Supreme Court’s disastrous Dobbs decision last year—a majority of Americans think reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy are worth preserving, and Democrats worth electing.
Lots of words are being churned out about the elections, but Sara Tabatabaie, who works with #VoteProChoice, put it most succinctly: “It’s the autonomy, stupid.”
For readers who aren’t familiar with U.S. political slogans, here’s why that line lands so accurately:
James Carville, a strategist with Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential campaign, coined “It’s the economy, stupid” to keep the candidate and his team on message. There were two other bullet points on Carville’s list—“Change vs. more of the same” (Clinton’s opponent was the incumbent George H.W. Bush) and “Don’t forget health care”—but “It’s the economy, stupid” is the one everyone remembered and repeated. Maybe it was because the main issue was the economy. Maybe it was because “stupid” was so unexpected and attention-getting.
From economy to autonomy: That’s one smooth, smart, and satisfying trick of repurposing.
It’s not exactly original, though. “It’s the autonomy, stupid” appeared as far back as 2012 in a paper about “political data mining in the information age.” It resurfaced in 2017 (higher education in Western Europe), 2019 (“tomorrow wars”), and 2020 (the post-Brexit EU-UK relationship).
But in the U.S. in 2023, the autonomy we’re advocating for—and voting for—is bodily autonomy. And “It’s the autonomy, stupid” has never been more relevant.
I’ll be back tomorrow with a longer, non-political, and slightly frivolous newsletter. Meanwhile, enjoy the autonomy, but don’t let down your guard.