Don Surber
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Friday, May 06, 2022
Ending Roe helps Republicans
 Democrats cheer and Republicans fear voter reaction to the junking of Roe v. Wade and returning abortion to the states to decide. The New York Times gleefully reported, "Democrats Aim to Use Abortion Rights to Jolt State Legislative Races."
The story said, "If the draft opinion that was leaked is not substantially changed and Roe is in fact overturned, about half of U.S. states are likely to ban or sharply limit abortion, according to a New York Times analysis. But in what otherwise looks to be a difficult year for Democrats, party strategists see the looming rollback of reproductive rights as an opportunity to galvanize key voting blocs, limit Republican gains and perhaps even pick up seats in certain states."
The narrative is that by losing, Democrats really won.
Moral victory.
Cleveland's baseball team in the '70s and '80s regularly had 100 moral victories a year. They were the champions of the Moral Victory World Series.
Losing makes you a loser and no one wants to be with a loser.
NYT said, "State legislative races are not glamorous, high-dollar affairs. But the Democrat [state] Legislative Campaign Committee had its biggest fund-raising day of the year after the publication of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s draft opinion, and raised more than $650,000 over 48 hours."
Let's see, there are more than 7,000 state legislative races in the country so that works out to a little more than $90 a candidate.
But the group's leader told NYT, "We don’t know exactly what the political environment will be, but abortion has the potential to be a game-changing issue."
This is one of many stories from the perspective of the losers but few stories focus on the winners. Imagine if ESPN ignored the Yankees who have the best record in baseball in favor of nothing but stories about the Reds who have the worst record in baseball.
No one in the press respects abortion opponents. No one in the press asks if this will help Republicans because they finally delivered on a campaign promise. No one in the press wonders if voters will reward Republicans for ridding us of Roe.
The real story is abortion opponents played the long game and won. They prayed and organized and prayed and voted and prayed some more. The 5 (maybe 6) justices who could overturn Roe did not fall out of the sky. They were appointed by pro-life Republican presidents and with the exception of Clarence Thomas, they were confirmed by pro-life Republican Senates. This conservative majority took five decades to build.
The same polls that show most Americans back abortions up to some point also show that most Americans favor restrictions. Ultrasounds have proven that a baby is the womb is a human being, and not a clump of cells. How is saving babies a loser at the polls?
The only comparable issue is passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Goldwater bet his presidential hopes on a white backlash. Instead, Johnson got 61% of the popular vote -- the largest percentage in the last two centuries. You have to go back to James Monroe in 1820 to find a bigger winner. White people rewarded Johnson for solving a problem that plagued the nation for a century.
Abortion will not be the dominant issue this autumn. There is a bigger failure that dooms Democrats. Voters will make them pay for inflation and a crumbling economy. Based on the Producer Price Index hitting 11.2% in March, Democrats can expect double-digit inflation by September because the PPI is a great predictor of inflation six months out.
Inflation hits everyone. Abortion doesn't because abortion is on the wane. It has been for decades. The sexual revolution begun by the introduction of The Pill 62 years ago ended long, long, long ago.
USA Today reported, "Abortion rates in the United States have been falling steadily for decades, long before restrictive statutes began to make the procedure difficult to obtain in some areas. Experts say access to better birth control is one of the main reasons.
"Abortions in the U.S. peaked in 1981, at a rate of 29.3 per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since then, the number has fallen by three-fifths. In 2019, the last year for which numbers are available, the rate was 11.4."
In 40 years, Americans have cut their abortion rate by 61%. The political importance of supporting abortion has likewise declined. Pundits are gradually catching on.
Former Carly Fiorina campaign manager Sarah Isgur, 39, wrote in Politico, "Last year, I predicted that Republicans could experience a political backlash over abortion. Instead, Republicans saw near universal gains across the country. Why was I wrong? Because after 50 years of abortion politics sorting voters, maybe there is nobody left to lash back."
Isgur cited last year's two gubernatorial races.
She wrote that in Virginia, "Democrat candidate Terry McAuliffe made abortion access a central focus of his campaign. Now a Republican is in the Virginia governor’s mansion for the first time since 2009. Governor Phil Murphy in New Jersey — a state that Joe Biden won by 16 points — sparred with his Republican opponent over Roe at debates and on the campaign trail. The race wasn’t able to be called on Election Night; Murphy eked out a win by barely 3 points."
Abortion also cannot help liberals gin up turnout because liberal turnout has maxxed out.
Isgur wrote, "The country saw some of the highest voter turnout in modern history in 2018 and 2020. Many believed — and not without good reason — that the high turnout was driven on both sides by Donald Trump. But in 2021, Virginia saw the highest percentage of voters in any gubernatorial election since 1997. Just last month, Texas held the first primary for 2022, breaking turnout records in the state. If voters are already highly engaged in the current political moment, then Dobbs [reversing Roe] could only help Democrats if they are able to find Americans who stayed home in 2018 — at the height of the Trump presidency — who are only now motivated to vote for a Senate candidate who campaigns, for example, on voting for a federal law to enshrine a right to abortion."
Byron York at the Washington Examiner also doubts abortion will save Democrats this fall.
York wrote, "Polling shows that abortion is not at the highest level of voter concerns, even after the unprecedented leak of a draft decision that would end Roe. Politico conducted a rush poll after the leak, and it did not find an electorate obsessed with abortion."
He cited a Politico poll taken the day after a law clerk leaked the Roe reversal to Politico. Only 8% said "women's issues, such as birth control, abortion, and equal pay" were their top concern.
41% said economic issues were their top concern. Among those 18-34, the group most likely to actually have an abortion, a whopping 47% said the economy was their top concern.
The nation has moved on from abortion, but boomer feminists have not.
Joan Walsh, 63, wrote in The Nation, "Yes, We Will Fight for Roe. But We Are Also Mourning. I’d like to say the folks at the Emily’s List gala were fired up and ready to fight—but that would be missing the undercurrent of trauma in the crowd."
Ah yes, Emily's List, the geezer pro-abortion PAC that gets a lot of press but does not do as well backing candidates as the Susan B. Anthony PAC for anti-abortion candidates. The leak of the Roe reversal came just as Emily's List was gonna party like it's 19-73.
Walsh wrote, "I’d like to be able to tell you that the mood in the room, and at the group’s conference the afternoon before, was fired up and determined to prevail. It was those things, but it was also, to be honest, a little bit despairing. Women have lived through so much trauma in the past six years. The pussy-grabber won the presidency against our first female nominee (though he lost the popular vote). Millions of women then marched in protest, from Washington, D.C,. to Ketchikan, Ark.; thousands ran for office, many of them won. Nancy Pelosi, the first female House Speaker, took the helm for another term. Women elected Joe Biden president, defeating Donald Trump; Harris, not only female but Black and of Asian descent, became his historic partner."
(An aside: Liberal women are so offended by Trump saying something more than 15 years ago in private that they have repeated it publicly over and over for 5 years now. Perhaps they are not really offended.)
She ended her column by quoting Kamala's self-righteous and pompous "How Dare They?" demand in her address at the Emily's List event.
Walsh wrote, "I’ve never seen Harris so angry. It didn’t feel performative. My bottom line from this front line of longtime feminist activists: Women are angry, we are grieving, and we are also tired, but tired is a luxury we know we don’t have."
Reversing Roe helps Republicans because they won. People like winners. With an 18-7 record, the Yankees average 35,385 fans a game.
For Democrat voters, it is another demoralizing loss. With a 3-22 record, the Reds average 19,487 fans a game.
But the press insists that losing on abortion somehow is a winner for Democrats.
Reid Wilson, national correspondent for The Hill, said, "When you already control the White House, what’s your motivation for showing up and voting in a midterm election?
"Suddenly the Democrats have that motivation and as we get to a more polarized environment where there are fewer and fewer people, you know, persuadable independents in the middle and the two parties focus more on a mobilization strategy than a persuasion strategy, well that can work for Democrats more this time than it might have in midterms past." |
