Here’s a wild and crazy concept, if I may be so bold to suggest it: Votes are more important than polls.
Yo, Democrats. Instead of obsessing and bed-wetting about national surveys conducted a year before a presidential election – when such snapshots are worthless, as I recently demonstrated – how about paying more attention to what happens when people actually vote in actual elections? Because the record shows that ever since the 2020 presidential tally, Dems have either run the table (special elections, referenda, U.S. Senate) or outperformed all expectations (narrowly losing the House when the punditocracy was forecasting a red tsunami).
Last night the blue crew scored big again – propelled to victory in four states by grassroots voter fury about the right-wing erasure of Roe v. Wade. Fury that hasn’t dissipated one iota. Let’s review the latest Republican wreckage, shall we?
In red Ohio, Republican lawmakers fought fiercely to protect their statewide ban on virtually all abortions, but last night, in a referendum, a whopping 57 percent of Ohioans voted to encode abortion rights in the state constitution. Ever since Roe was overturned, seven states – including red Kansas and red Montana – have held similar referenda, putting the abortion issue on the ballot. Abortion rights voters have won all seven. (Has-been Rick Santorum, the ex-Pennsylvania senator and anti-abortion zealot, mourned on TV last night: “Pure democracies are not the way to run a country.” That says it all.)
In red Kentucky, incumbent Democratic governor Andy Beshear campaigned heavily for abortion rights and accurately painted his Trump-endorsed opponent, Daniel Cameron, as an extremist who opposes abortions even for victims of rape and incest. Four years ago, Beshear won his first gubernatorial race by a single percentage point; last night, he won by five.
In Virginia, incumbent Republican governor Glenn Youngkin put all his chips on the table, gambling that his pitch to ban abortions after 15 weeks would attract enough independent swing voters to give him a red state legislature – both chambers. Nice try, buddy. Virginia Democrats highlighted the GOP’s hostility to abortion – and they won both chambers. Youngkin’s dream of enacting abortion restrictions is now officially dead. Youngkin was also banking on a red wave that would raise his national profile. That dream is dead, too. What a total humiliation.
And in Pennsylvania, two lower-court judges vied for an open seat on the state Supreme Court. Democrat Daniel McCaffery campaigned as an advocate for abortion rights, touted an endorsement from Planned Parenthood, and contended that his Republican opponent, Carolyn Carluccio, was a foe of “personal freedom.” He got that right. Carluccio’s campaign website originally featured her anti-abortion stance…until she scrubbed the site and removed that key info. Voters apparently noticed. Last night McCaffrey beat her by five points and solidified the high court’s Democratic majority.
So now the inevitable (and tiresome) question is whether or to what extent all these Democratic victories will help or hurt President Biden in 2024. How about this wild and crazy answer: We don’t know.
Let’s focus instead on what we do know: Voters (especially women, especially the under-30s) are more furious than ever about the MAGA-Republican crusade to control women’s bodies via government fiat, and they cast their ballots accordingly. A lot of issues will be in the mix next year – crime, the economy, the border, Trump’s potential status as a convicted felon – but fury over the erasure of Roe will continue to galvanize swing voters, the young, and suburban women. That’s a safe prediction, given last night’s results, the ’22 midterm results, and virtually every special election since Trump’s Supreme Court appointees did their dirty deed.
Republicans had prayed that the abortion issue would fade by now – or that maybe they could co-opt it with a 15-week cutoff sweet spot, as envisioned by Glenn Youngkin. No dice. Republicans sowed the wind, and now they’re reaping the whirlwind. Indeed, for Democrats, defending abortion rights is arguably the ideal way to stoke grassroots voters for ’24, to unite centrists and progressives in the common cause of “personal freedom,” and, ultimately, to buttress the only party that still believes in American democracy. Hey, the fight against home-grown fascism needs all the help it can get. The talies last night, in four states, provide fresh hope.