A couple of months ago it was widely accepted conventional wisdom that the Democrats were toast in November. There was endless blather about historical precedent, presidential approval ratings, gas prices and backlash leading to a "Red Tsunami" that would bring the Republicans a huge new congressional majority. Everyone could just take the summer off and reconvene in the days before the election to witness the glorious GOP victory.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the drubbing.
Democratic voters were aroused from their torpor by various events that seem to have mobilized them in unexpected numbers. This analysis by Austin Sarat and Dennis Aftergut in Salon points out that voters are concerned with a number of issues that were not thought to be on the ballot, particularly the assault on democracy they saw illustrated by the January 6th Committee hearings and the bold attacks on voting systems they are observing all over the country. This was not supposed to be a voting issue according to the jaded beltway CW, certainly not as long as people had pecuniary interests at stake. (The assumption is always that the American people care about nothing but their own pocketbooks.)
Democratic voters have good reason to believe that maybe their chronically underwhelming party is actually capable of accomplishing something.
The mass shootings this summer have also had an effect. The country was particularly horrified by the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas which killed 19 fourth graders and two teachers in their classrooms. That event even spurred Congress to enact a minor bipartisan federal gun law, the first in many years, showing that there may be cracks in the pro-gun proliferation movement at long last.
In fact, the substantial list of somewhat miraculous legislative achievements coming out of this very narrow congressional majority has given Democratic voters good reason to believe that maybe their chronically underwhelming party is actually capable of accomplishing something, The big Inflation Reduction Act came as a huge surprise after months of dizzying negotiations. It delivering such a surprisingly good climate change package was the icing on the cake. This week's announcement on student loan forgiveness will likely make it even sweeter.
Nonetheless, the issues that are driving the turnout are mainly based upon concerns about the right's dangerous unwillingness to confront the existential problems we face and its relentless quest to turn back progress and roll back fundamental rights. As analyst Ron Brownstein points out, the latest NBC poll shows that Democrats have a very different view of what matters in this election than Republicans.
And I haven't yet mentioned the biggest issue that is stimulating Democrats to get out and vote: abortion.
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Salon's Sophia Tesfaye wrote about the latest evidence of its salience citing the bellwether special election in New York's 19th district this week in which Democrat Pat Ryan beat his Republican rival by putting abortion rights at the top of his agenda. In races around the country this summer, Democrats are outperforming expectations, and first-time women voters are registering in big numbers. Tesfaye notes:
In Michigan, a poll conducted this month discovered that abortion is now tied with inflation and rising prices as the most important issue to voters — and Democrat Gretchen Whitmer is leading in the gubernatorial race. Nationally, nearly two-thirds of Americans said the end of Roe represented a "major loss of rights" for women, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll conducted last month. A Pew poll released on Tuesday found that 56% of registered voters said the issue of abortion will be very important in their midterm vote, up from 43% in March. "Virtually all of the increase has come among Democrats," Pew wrote.
It turns out that Americans don't like their rights being taken away from them. Go figure.
Republicans are scrambling to deal with this. Apparently, they believed they could just ride the red tsunami without having to lift a finger. Even aside from the terrible candidates they have put on offer, mostly thanks to Donald Trump, it appears they have dropped the ball in numerous other ways. Florida Senator Rick Scott is in hot water for floating on a mega-yacht in the Mediterranean while headlines blare about his poor management frittering away tens of millions of dollars as the chairman of the Republican Senate Campaign Committee. The Republican National Committee (RNC), meanwhile, is having to send out distress signals to their big donors because Donald Trump is hoarding all the small donor cash and the party is left desperate for funds.
Even more revealing is the fact that Republicans have belatedly discovered that their medieval approach to reproductive rights isn't a big winner, even with many of their own voters. After years of portraying abortion as murder, pushing "fetal personhood" and lately deciding that it should be banned even in cases of rape, incest and the health of the mother, it turns out that these archaic ideas are the kiss of death in swing states.
Republicans allowed their fanatical anti-choice base to run wild for years under the assumption that they would never have to face voters with their outrageous claims because of Roe v. Wade.
For instance, Nevada's Republican candidate for Senate, Adam Laxalt, previously supported a ban on abortion after 13 weeks and, as state attorney general, supported restricting access to birth control. Now he doesn't want to talk about any of that saying that the right to abortion is "settled law" in Nevada. (Anyone who trusts those words coming out of the mouth of a self-described "pro-life" Republican after what the Supreme Court Justices just did is a fool.)
An even better example is Blake Masters, the GOP nominee for Senate in Arizona. On Thursday he scrubbed his campaign website of his far-right anti-abortion rhetoric, now claiming that he's the "common sense" candidate who supports abortion up to 15 weeks. This is a man who endorsed every fanatical anti-abortion idea the right-wing came up with, including granting "personhood" to a fertilized egg and promoting the grotesque notion that abortion is genocide:
No amount of backtracking can erase that sentiment. Democrats should just run that ad as is.
The Republicans have a problem, a big one. They thought they had an easy win on their hands and they could get right to business impeaching Joe Biden and shutting down the government for shits and giggles but it appears they have a real race on their hands instead. But their problem is actually more serious than just this midterm election. The abortion issue is going to haunt them for the foreseeable future, over and over again as one state after another grapples with the mess they made for themselves. They allowed their fanatical anti-choice base to run wild for years under the assumption that they would never have to face voters with their outrageous claims because of Roe v. Wade. Now they do and it's not going well for them. There's a bigger lesson in that if they would care to learn it.
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