Alex Wagner was among the many decrying the Supreme Court’s decision to effectively strike down affirmative action on Thursday, but she also wasn’t completely surprised. According to the MSNBC host, this issue feels like “a hangover of the civil rights era” after conservatives didn’t get their way back then.
Wagner dedicated most of her show on Thursday night to the affirmative action vote, giving viewers a thorough history lesson demonstrating that affirmative action has been a target for decades now. Eventually, she brought on Dahlia Lithwick, a senior editor at Slate, and asked if looking at it as a form of petty payback would be accurate.
“Am I wrong to say that this feels like a hangover of the civil rights era? They couldn’t win on civil rights, affirmative action became the hobbyhorse in the late ’70s and ’80s, and now they issue a death knell,” Wagner said.
“In the same way that the women’s liberation movement of the ’70s, they couldn’t stop, they make abortion their hobbyhorse to curtail a woman’s right to bodily autonomy, and they have this pyrrhic victory with Dobbs,” she continued.
Elsewhere in the episode, Wagner worried that this vote only bolsters a growing movement “to dismantle the progress we’ve made as a society, specifically as it pertains to inclusivity.
You can watch the discussions from “Alex Wagner Tonight” in the video above.
