There’s nothing quite as humbling as begging for divine intervention.

I’ve heard directly and indirectly over the last couple days from various campaigns , strategists, pols that abortion rights is the issue Democrats need to close on, how they’re shifting this or shifting that. Is it too late? I’m not sure. Of course, it’s not like abortion hasn’t figured prominently in this election cycle. But it certainly hasn’t been placed at the center of the campaign as it could have been, and perhaps still could.

It is such a breath of fresh air, seeing Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson say from the bench what the 14th Amendment actually says. “It’s not a race-blind remedy,” she says, in something of an understatement. But we can actually go well beyond this since so much of modern jurisprudence, mostly but not only from the right, is based not only on ignoring the context and plain text of the 14th Amendment but pretending that the real Constitution — albeit with some additions and fresh paint jobs — is the one finalized in the first Congress as the first ten amendments. The Civil War amendments are not only not race-blind. They reflect a larger realization and aim: that the whole state thing just hadn’t worked out.