A female Republican congressional candidate claimed on the campaign trail in Virginia last month that rape victims are less likely to become pregnant because “it’s not something that’s happening organically.”
Yesli Vega made the eyebrow-raising comments while being asked for her thoughts on what then promised to be a Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending the federal right to abortion.
An audio recording of the remarks, which took place at an event in Stafford County, was published by Axios on Monday. Vega—who is Democrat Abigail Spanberger’s rival for Congress in the Virginia’s liberal-leaning 7th District—said she was drawing on her experience as a Prince William County supervisor and a sheriff’s deputy after affirming her belief for state-level restrictions on abortion.
“The left will say, ‘Well what about in cases of rape or incest?’” Vega can be heard telling an unidentified interlocutor in the clip. “I’m a law-enforcement officer. I became a police officer in 2011. I’ve worked one case where as a result of a rape, the young woman became pregnant.”
Vega was also asked at the event if she had heard that it’s “harder for a woman to get pregnant if she’s been raped.”
“Well, maybe because there’s so much going on in the body,” Vega answered. “I don’t know. I haven’t, you know, seen any studies. But if I’m processing what you’re saying, it wouldn’t surprise me. Because it’s not something that’s happening organically. You’re forcing it. The individual, the male, is doing it as quickly—it’s not like, you know—and so I can see why there is truth to that. It’s unfortunate.”
Since Missouri’s Todd Akin made those stupid comments about “legitimate rape” (that women who are raped can’t get pregnant because the body rejects the sperm — or something) back in 2010 and lost his race the Republicans have gone even more batshit crazy. I really have to wonder if this lunacy will be considered a deal breaker this time. It seems as though the loonier they are the more Republicans like them these days.
Democrats’ reflexive answer to the Supremes overturning Roe is more of the same. Go vote in November. With all the passion of a Business 101 lecture, Democratic leaders say, “Elect us to Congress and we’ll fight for you.” That ain’t cutting it (Washington Post):
To an increasingly vocal group of frustrated Democrats, activists and even members of Congress, such responses by party leaders have been strikingly inadequate to meet a moment of crisis. They criticize the notion that it is on voters to turn out in November when they say Democrats are unwilling to push boundaries and upend the system in defense of hard-won civil liberties.
“We have Democrats that are doing the opposite, you know? They just aren’t fighting,” Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) said. “When people see that, what’s going to make them show up to vote? We can’t just tell people, ‘Well, just vote — vote your problems away.’ Because they’re looking at us and saying, ‘Well, we already voted for you.’”
Progressive lawmakers including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) demand action. Build abortion clinics on federal land. Provide funds to women seeking out-of-state abortions. LImit court jurisdiction or expand it.
– Restrain judicial review – Expand the court – Clinics on federal lands – Expand education and access to Plan C – Repeal Hyde – Hold floor votes codifying Griswold, Obergefell, Lawrence, Loving, etc – Vote on Escobar’s bill protecting clinics
“People need help immediately,” Warren said in an interview.
“We are dealing with one side that is undermining the very essence of what it means to be a country that roots itself in this philosophy of equal protection under the law. You cannot battle that if folks on the other side are always moderating, modulating and compromising. It’s not the age we’re in,” said the Rev. William Barber, a North Carolina preacher who is co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign.
“You fight a crisis until the crisis is over,” Barber added. “You can’t overreach when you’re at the bottom, and these folks have taken us to the bottom.”
Americans pull for underdogs. They pay good money to see unlikely heroes struggle against overwhelming odds. Frodo takes the Ring to Mordor. How many Rocky movies did Stallone make? People want to be inspired, not reassured. Yet leading Democrats’ first instinct is always to put the Recent Unpleasantness behind them. Like the Munich Agreement, that never works out well.
Kurt Bardella, a former Republican who now consults for Democrats, said party leaders cannot be afraid of bold actions because of potential legal challenges.
“Democrats start with the question of, ‘Are we allowed to do this or not?’ And I think Democratic voters will forgive you if you try and later on it turns out a court strikes it down,” Bardella said. “But at least you tried in the meantime to keep things in place and head toward the next election. What they won’t forgive is if you keep asking them to keep you in power but you don’t do anything with it, or at least try to do something with it.”
Democrats’ voters won’t turn out in November for wimps.
“People don’t want to hear, ‘Vote for Democrats,’” says Nelini Stamp, director of strategy and partnerships for the Working Families Party. “They want to hear what folks are going to do. We want Biden to use the full power of his administration, even if he might get the court’s pushback. We want to see people fighting for us.”
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Much speculation flowed yesterday about who the mystery guest is at today’s emergency Jan. 6 committee hearing at 1 p.m. ET. No more hearings were expected until July before Monday’s announcement. The committee itself said only it would “present recently obtained evidence and receive witness testimony.”
If the current reporting is right, and Cassidy Hutchinson is the mystery witness, then whatever threats she's been getting must be serious because, otherwise, rushing her seems odd. She's already given a taped testimony; she was the one that talked about MOCs who wanted pardons.
Reporting backed up the rumors it would be former Mark Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson (CNN):
Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and a witness to many critical events and conversations, is expected to testify publicly on Tuesday before the select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Her planned appearance was first reported by Punchbowl News.
Hutchinson has already been interviewed by the committee behind closed doors and video clips from her deposition have been featured by the panel during earlier hearings. But her live testimony would mark a significant moment in the committee’s series of hearings as Hutchinson has long been considered one of its most consequential witnesses due to her proximity to former President Donald Trump’s then-White House chief of staff.
Prior taped testimony by Hutchinson implicated a set of Trump-adjacent advisers and members of Congress who asked for pardons after the Jan. 6 insurrection. Having her testify in person could prove even more explosive.
The urgency driving today’s snap hearing is unclear. Concerns about the witness’ name being leaked and for the witness’ security are likely, reports CNN:
The security concerns have also led to new precautions being taken inside the hearing room. Another source told CNN that some of the people who had regular front row seats for hearings were told they likely will not get them on Tuesday for security reasons.
Here is the letter. Addressed to my wife, sent to my home, threatening the life of my family. The Darkness is spreading courtesy of cowardly leaders fearful of truth. Is the what you want @GOP? Pastors?
— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@AdamKinzinger) June 19, 2022
Possible violence against must be a concern. Calls for violence against committee members and witnesses are under investigation. Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois received a letter addressed to his wife that included a threat to execute him, his wife and their infant child. Other threats are proliferating on the same online forums that helped stoke the Jan. 6 insurrection. GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming is another likely target.
“Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” Cheney said during the hearings’ opening session.
“We’re in a highly volatile and complex threat period,” John Cohen, the former Department of Homeland Security Counterterrorism Coordinator, told CNN:
An analysis by the group Advance Democracy, a not-for-profit that conducts public interest investigations, shared with CNN found posts on Truth Social calling for the execution of January 6 committee members and others. The researchers searched for specific terms on the platforms like “execute.”
One post on Truth Social includes a picture of a noose and reads, “The J6 committee are guilty of treason. Perpetuation of a insurrection hang them all.”
On another post referencing Cheney, a user posted a GIF of a guillotine with the message, “#MGGA #MakeGuillotinesGreatAgain.”
As the investigative cordon closes around Trump, his communications with cultish followers could spark more violence.
Remember that Cassidy Hutchinson a short time ago fired her attorney that was a Trump loyalist and hired her own. Today doesn’t happen if she still had the mob’s lawyer.
Mob boss as a description of Donald Trump was not a euphemism, was it? An attack on the seat of government by a Trump mob is the very subject of the committee’s investigation.
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Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us. If in a position to Play to win in 2022 (see post first), contact tpostsully at gmail dot com
This piece by JV Last at the Bulwark is sadly on target:
This is a thought you often hear:
Joe Biden is unpopular because he was elected to bring normalcy back to politics, and instead there is inflation and $5 gas. And in addition to a couple of big-ticket bipartisan bills he passed, Democrats also failed to pass a couple of large-scale, party-line bills that were unpopular.
This is a thought you never hear:
Ron DeSantis is unpopular because he spends all of his time passing culture-war legislation that has nothing to do with people’s real lives and he does this without any bipartisan support.
This is a thought you often hear:
Democrats are in trouble because whatever Joe Biden’s legislative achievements may be, he gives too much rhetorical ground to the left wing of his party.
This is a thought you never hear:
Republicans are in trouble because they attempted a coup on the American government and support for this coup is now an item of dogma for most GOP candidates, at every level of government, nationwide.
This is a thought you often hear:
Democrats overreached when they failed to pass two bills—BBB and H.R. 1—sufficiently moderate to attract 16 Republican senators. Voters are going to punish them for this overreach.
This is a thought you never hear:
Republicans overreached when they passed laws awarding bounties for citizens who spied on women seeking abortions and for passing many laws banning abortion that have barely 40 percent approval. Voters are going to punish them for this overreach.
This is a thought you often hear:
Democrats must not use Procedure X (eliminating the filibuster, adding states, expanding the Supreme Court) because (1) voters would punish them for such unwise maneuvering and (2) you should never play hardball politics because some day the other side will be in charge and they will do the same to you.
This is a thought you never hear:
After Republicans refused to vote on a Supreme Court vacancy while Barack Obama was president and then rushed to fill a Supreme Court vacancy shortly before Donald Trump was defeated, (1) voters were deeply upset by this procedural irregularity and (2) Democrats retaliated once they took control of the White House and Congress.
It is almost as though there are different rules for the two political parties.
The reason for these divergent rule sets is that voters still apply the standards of the before times to the Democratic party. And the Democrats themselves still act as though they are living in the before times.
Meanwhile, the Republican party is evolving into a post-liberal institution in which various insane people and white nationalists and aspiring authoritarians ride herd over the old chamber of commerce set. Voters have watched this transformation and mostly not been repelled by it. Instead, the general public has decided that this is the new normal for Republicans and that judging the party by the old standards is impossible.
Just as a for-instance, consider the Pennsylvania governor’s race.
Josh Shapiro is a normal, by-the-numbers, Democratic candidate running in a state that’s pretty close to par. Maybe you like his politics. Maybe you don’t. But he clearly lives between the 40-yard lines of American politics.
The Republican candidate, Doug Mastriano, is an insane person. A seditionist. A Christian nationalist. A conspiracy nut.
I don’t know what the Democratic version of Mastriano would be. But let’s pretend that, instead of Shapiro, Democrats had nominated that guy. Our pretend insane Democrat won’t stop talking about how the Diebold voting machines stole the 2004 election for George W. Bush and why 9/11 was an inside job. He’s a tankie who constantly spouts Russian propaganda. He’s a militant atheist. Maybe he’s a member of the New Black Panthers. Again: We’re pretending that Democrats nominated their mirror-image of Mastriano.
Do you think Pennsylvania voters would be poised to give this hypothetical insane Democrat 48 percent of the vote?
Because I do not.
I think that in a 50-50 state like Pennsylvania, Republicans can run a crazy person, count on a floor vote-share of 45 percent, and have a fair chance to win. But if Democrats ran a similarly crazy person, his floor would be closer to 35 percent and he’d get blown out.
Because today voters hold the parties to different standards.
2. Power Rules
It is very nice that Joe Biden and Democrats have tried to make real differences in the lives of ordinary Americans. They went to a great deal of trouble to make COVID vaccines widely available. They spent political capital trying to persuade, then bribe, and then cajole the people most likely to vote against them into taking these vaccines so that they would not die. That was kind and largehearted.
Similarly, Biden and Democrats gave up a great deal of ground in order to pass an infrastructure bill with many Republican votes. This new law will, among other things, spend a piles of money to help Americans living in rural areas. Here is an impressive fact sheet with some of the many, many pieces of federal spending being dedicated to improve the lives of rural Americans.
To pick just one example, the Biden administration is spending $45 billion to bring high-speed internet to rural communities across this great land of ours.
Donald Trump carried rural voters 66-33 in 2020. I’m sure that redistributing tax dollars from the more economically productive parts of America to help these very fine people get to Gateway Pundit and Parler and Steve Bannon’s podcast faster will be appreciated and will bear good fruit for the body politic.
The Republican party has taken the position that it will actively use the power of the state to punish its opponents.
I am not suggesting that Democrats should adopt this tactic. But for the love of God, maybe they could stop spending political capital in an effort to help their opponents?
For instance, the Biden administration is going after Juul and tobacco products. The new FDA measures will better the health of many Americans and also prove to be deeply unpopular among many of those same Americans.
It is nice that the Biden administration wants these people to live longer so that they can vote for Republicans more times. And if Biden could help them for free, that would be great. But this is another case of Democrats trying to help their opponents even when it imposes a political cost on themselves.
Maybe the Democrats can learn something about power from Republicans.
Here is another thing Democrats can learn from Republicans: Ideology and philosophy are subservient to power.
If Alito, Thomas, and their colleagues want to go back to a world where the Supreme Court guarantees only those rights specified in the Constitution—or even if they just want to roll back the doctrine of substantive due process, as Thomas proposes—that’s a defensible, intellectually consistent position. They’re free to argue that any right not named in the Constitution is fair game for legislation. What’s not defensible is pretending that this rollback applies only to abortion—and basing that pretense on a distinction invented by Roe itself.
This is charmingly naïve because it supposes that the legal reasoning behind this or that decision needs to be defensible.
It does not.
The only thing any legal doctrine needs is five votes on the Supreme Court.
In a way, last week was a perfect distillation of the state of American politics.
On Thursday the House January 6th Committee excavated Donald Trump’s attempts to use the Department of Justice to carry out his coup. We learned about Jeffrey Clark’s eagerness to lie on Trump’s behalf and the rush of Republican politicians seeking preemptive pardons for their role in the attempted coup.
What’s important to note is that these actors initially sought to carry out their coup not through force, but through perversion of the law. They were seeking to subvert democracy by using existing laws and loopholes. They were saying, in effect, We have the power to do this; so we will do this.
And on Friday the Supreme Court overturned a decision made half a century ago—a flawed decision, but one that had already been upheld once—on a 5-4 vote. Implicit in that act was the same message: We have the power to do this; so we will do this.
They do not care about being consistent and they sure as hell don’t care about hypocrisy, Shamelessness is their superpower.
Rudy Giuliani had a very tough weekend, and he’s mad Fox News isn’t doing more to let the world know about it.
Giuliani claimed on Sunday that he was “assaulted” while in Staten Island supporting his son Andrew Giuliani’s New York gubernatorial campaign. That “assault,” video later revealed, amounted to a clapping the former mayor heartily on the back while verbally criticizing him, but the man was arrested anyway and charged with second-degree assault, a felony.
It’s even too ridiculous for Fox, although I’ll be surprised if Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham don’t have him on to whine in the evening.
Remember, this is a man who says that grabbing women by the pussy isn’t an assault.
Democrats need to defy expectations and try to win in November. Who knows? If Donald Trump could become president anything can happen. But if they can keep the margins tight, it could make a difference for 2024. The reason is that Kevin McCarthy is in for a world of hurt when the MAGA caucus, led by Marjorie Taylor Green, flexes its muscles and turns the House into a circus sideshow:
Far-right candidates are surging in House races across the map: Republican leaders increasingly fear that a red wave will wash in a raft of conspiracy theorists and extremists.
Why it matters: The establishment grows ever weaker. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy — on the doorstep of the speaker’s office — can expect to be saddled with new members who have zero loyalty or predictability.
What’s happening: Many of the GOP candidates expected to cause leadership headaches are backed by former President Trump, whose grip on McCarthy is as strong as ever.
They play well with Trump’s MAGA base and are running in incredibly conservative districts.
Several, like Loren Culp and Joe Kent in Washington, have made no secret of their disdain for McCarthy and GOP leadership overall.
What we’re hearing: In cycles past, leadership has attempted to get involved in some races to stiff-arm candidates they find problematic.
But this time, House GOP leadership is highly sensitive to the political downsides of interfering: Republicans need these candidates to take back the majority and make McCarthy speaker.
McCarthy has been careful not to alienate them, hoping his hands-off approach will help earn their trust and foster goodwill down the line.
Yes, but: Once in office, it will be hard for McCarthy to control his far-right freshmen — just as he’s faced difficulty wrangling Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), who see themselves as “untouchable.”
What to watch: The number of seats Republicans ultimately win in November will be crucial to this dynamic.
That margin, in conjunction with the number of these controversial candidates who win in the general election, will determine how much influence they have over the Republican conference.
Republicans already have a nightmarish job whipping votes for certain legislation because of the House Freedom Caucus — which is experiencing its own identity crisis over the increasing radicalization of its members.
These new candidates could complicate that dynamic further.
What they’re saying: “If you look at our history with the Freedom Caucus, they don’t back down and don’t vote for things. So our margins will be really important,” a House GOP leadership aide told Axios.
“Biden’s going to be president no matter what. … There are going to be times when we need to pass government funding, NDAA and so on,” the aide added. “Kevin’s going to be in the position of having to cut deals with Biden and that’s not going to go well with some of these people.”
It’s going to be a mess — and a good reminder of what having these lunatics in charge is like.
Democracy and gun control too. So they’re going to talk about how terrible inflation is instead.
Honestly, I just don’t know what to say about this. The Democratic base is overwhelmingly upset over Roe vs Wade being overturned by a right wing extremist Court, kids being gunned down in school and the GOP coup. The Republicans are trying to deflect from all that by talking about inflation. So what are the Democrats going to do? Ignore abortion and democracy and talk non-stop about inflation instead. Gee, I wonder what will happen?
Too much pseudo-empirical strategist babble in their media and consultant diet, I think. https://t.co/zNV6HkntlG
The latest NPR Marist poll shows that a large majority, including 20% of Republicans, opposes the Supreme Court decision on Dobbs. And guess what?
This issue presents volatility into the 2022 midterms, because 78% of Democrats say the court’s decision makes them more likely to vote this fall, 24 points higher than Republicans.
A bare majority of 51% say they would definitely vote for a candidate who would support a federal law to restore the right to an abortion, while 36% would definitely vote against such a candidate.
That could be a shot in the arm for Democrats if they mobilize around this issue, though Republicans are still favored at this point to take back the House this fall because of high inflation and gas prices.
Democrats have regained the favor of voters to control Congress, with 48% saying they are more likely to vote for a Democratic candidate in the fall and 41% more likely to vote for a Republican. In April, Republicans led on that question in the poll 47% to 44%, which was within the margin of error.
But sure, let’s make sure we refocus in people’s unhappiness over gas prices so they can go back to blaming Democrats for all their problems. That should work out great.
I think we just have to hope that as they did in 2018, Democrats come out and vote regardless of the lame campaign the Democrats are running on “kitchen table issues.” The consultants all persuaded themselves that they won in that midterm because of their health care messaging when it was really because of deep antipathy for Trump and the Republicans.
I expected the right to celebrate their long-sought goal of forcing women to give birth against their will. After all, it has been their Holy Grail for the last 50 years. After decades of proselytizing that a zygote is more important than fully formed human beings, they have even recently succeeded in convincing Republican political leaders that it is decent and humane to force little girls who have been raped by their fathers to give birth to their own siblings. It is quite an accomplishment. So it stands to reason they’d pop the champagne, thrilled to have finally put women back in their place and looking forward to more hard-fought civil rights they can overturn.
Now such is often the case with the right-wing base. They tend to get angry when they win yet the other side doesn’t immediately apologize for ever having opposed them and proclaim themselves converts to the cause. (This is a very old dynamic in America.) But this time we’re seeing something a little different.
Yes, anti-choicers are angry at the protesters. One Republican candidate in Rhode Island, a police officer, even punched out his female opponent at a protest on Friday. But Republican officials mostly seem to be either rushing to avoid the subject or bending over backward to reassure everyone that their great victory isn’t going to change much of anything.
Politico tried to chase down some GOP candidates in swing districts and they punted, saying it is no longer a federal issue. Nevada senatorial candidate Adam Laxalt issued a perfectly incoherent “having it both ways” statement in which he celebrated the “sanctity of life” and at the same time reassured his own voters they won’t have to observe it:
“The people of Nevada have already voted to make abortion rights legal in our state and the Court’s decision on Roe doesn’t change settled law and it won’t distract voters from unaffordable prices, rising crime or the border crisis.“
Republicans have a problem on their hands with Roe overturned and they know it.
This attempt to divert attention from his anti-abortion zealotry in his pro-choice state is embarrassingly transparent. Yet none other than Sean Hannity spent his entire show on Friday explaining that the Supreme Court didn’t ban abortion after all:
[W]hile Democrats in the media mob predictably, are demagoguing and lying about this very ruling, we’ll give you the facts straight up, let you decide. Now, first, let us be very clear. This decision does not make abortion in America illegal. It does not. I know that. Implying that they’re saying it even, but it does not. Instead, individual voters, you will now decide abortion.
Yes, he couldn’t be more fatuous. After all, in the states where abortion is now illegal, individual women voters will no longer be able to decide on abortion. It’s nonsensical. But the mere fact that he’s not doing celebratory cartwheels tells you they are very concerned that this is going to cause a dangerous backlash. In fact, Donald Trump is reportedly very nervous about this and had to be talked into taking a victory lap. (That’s got to be a first.)
Trump’s top rival for the presidential nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is carefully testing the waters vaguely promising to “work to expand pro-life protections.” South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem believes that forcing girls who’ve been raped by a family member to give birth will make for stronger families (which says a lot about the “family values” she and her voters believe in) But she, like a number of other governors including DeSantis, also bathed themselves in unctuous sanctimony, assuring the nation they would ensure that all the women and girls who would be unable to get an abortion would be well taken care of with medical care and support for herself and her children.
One can’t help wondering why they didn’t provide all this help before? After all, many poor women have been having children for the entire time Roe was in effect, doing exactly what these people say they wanted them to do and Republicans didn’t lift a finger to help them. Did it not even occur to them over the past 50 years that if they helped poor women “choose life” it would show other women that they would be supported and their children would be cared for if they did the same? Apparently not.
Donald Trump is reportedly very nervous about this and had to be talked into taking a victory lap. (That’s got to be a first.)
Trump’s top rival for the presidential nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is carefully testing the waters vaguely promising to “work to expand pro-life protections.” South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem believes that forcing girls who’ve been raped by a family member to give birth will make for stronger families (which says a lot about the “family values” she and her voters believe in) But she, like a number of other governors including DeSantis, also bathed themselves in unctuous sanctimony, assuring the nation they would ensure that all the women and girls who would be unable to get an abortion would be well taken care of with medical care and support for herself and her children.
One can’t help wondering why they didn’t provide all this help before? After all, many poor women have been having children for the entire time Roe was in effect, doing exactly what these people say they wanted them to do and Republicans didn’t lift a finger to help them. Did it not even occur to them over the past 50 years that if they helped poor women “choose life” it would show other women that they would be supported and their children would be cared for if they did the same? Apparently not.
Instead, Republicans were stingy and mean throughout the entire last half-century, rejecting every program for maternal health and child welfare that anyone proposed. Even to this day in places like Noem’s South Dakota, where they refused the Medicaid expansion and even tried to stop the voters from putting the question on the ballot (which failed, luckily, are miserly and selfishly denying even the most basic support for women and children. The idea that these right-wing extremists will suddenly adopt a generous welfare program for women and children is laughable. Recall this memorable moment during the Obamacare debates:
Republicans had a full-blown meltdown over the fact that the Democrats wanted to require maternity coverage in the Affordable Care Act, which they all voted against anyway. Then they tried to make maternity care “optional” for insurance companies for years afterward. They pushed to end the Children’s Health Insurance program for decades, along with pretty much every other child welfare program. Just this year they refused to extend the expanded child tax credit that lifted tens of millions of kids out of poverty. (Just don’t touch those tax cuts for the rich though. Those are sacred.) As we speak they’re even blocking money for the school lunch program.
The idea that anyone would trust these people to ensure that women and their children are supported now that abortion is illegal in their states is mind-boggling.
But it does raise the question as to why they are even promising to do it even after they’ve spent years decrying “welfare queens” and “dependency” and cruelly degrading poor families as dysfunctional and claiming that “unwed” motherhood is an example of “defining deviancy down.” So why suddenly are they all for a socialist welfare state?
This is just something they are saying at the moment to try to wriggle out of the jam they suddenly find themselves in with the Supreme Court delivering a huge win to the base and leaving them holding the bag: massive public disapproval and polls showing it is going to be a voting issue in the fall. That may not matter to candidates and incumbents in bright red districts but it could make a difference in statewide races and swing districts.
Republicans have a problem on their hands with Roe overturned and they know it. All you have to do is watch them stumble and dissimulate on television trying to persuade people they aren’t going to keep making life miserable for millions of women and their families.
As I wrote when the opinion was first leaked, if Democrats don’t pin Republicans down on what further rights they intend to infringe and what specific plans they have in mind to mitigate the pain and suffering they are causing, it will be malpractice. The Republicans’ big win is an albatross around their necks.
Matt Yglesias, Hullabaloo alum David Atkins, and others got into a Twitter debate about median voters on Sunday keying off Ron Brownstein’s The Atlantic column keying off Michael Podhorzer’s analysis that Red and Bue America misconstrues what we really are. Adam Davidson was on thst topic earlier.
The Twitter debate wound up being about median voters, whether they exist, and whether (Atkins) Democrats should “pander,” policy-wise, to persuadables who are “abortion rights supporters who want to eliminate climate regulation or lgbt people.” Besides, why “people vote for candidates and parties is far more emotional, vibes and media driven …” Maybe there should be as much attention spent on finding nonaligned voters who lean left and turning them out to vote.
Getting back to Podhorzer, he says in his newsletter, “We are more like a federated republic of two nations: Blue Nation and Red Nation. This is not a metaphor; it is a geographic and historical reality.”
Podhorzer isn’t predicting another civil war, exactly. But he’s warning that the pressure on the country’s fundamental cohesion is likely to continue ratcheting up in the 2020s. Like other analysts who study democracy, he views the Trump faction that now dominates the Republican Party—what he terms the “MAGA movement”—as the U.S. equivalent to the authoritarian parties in places such as Hungary and Venezuela. It is a multipronged, fundamentally antidemocratic movement that has built a solidifying base of institutional support through conservative media networks, evangelical churches, wealthy Republican donors, GOP elected officials, paramilitary white-nationalist groups, and a mass public following. And it is determined to impose its policy and social vision on the entire country—with or without majority support. “The structural attacks on our institutions that paved the way for Trump’s candidacy will continue to progress,” Podhorzer argues, “with or without him at the helm.”
All of this is fueling what I’ve called “the great divergence” now under way between red and blue states. This divergence itself creates enormous strain on the country’s cohesion, but more and more even that looks like only a way station. What’s becoming clearer over time is that the Trump-era GOP is hoping to use its electoral dominance of the red states, the small-state bias in the Electoral College and the Senate, and the GOP-appointed majority on the Supreme Court to impose its economic and social model on the entire nation—with or without majority public support. As measured on fronts including the January 6 insurrection, the procession of Republican 2020 election deniers running for offices that would provide them with control over the 2024 electoral machinery, and the systematic advance of a Republican agenda by the Supreme Court, the underlying political question of the 2020s remains whether majority rule—and democracy as we’ve known it—can survive this offensive.
Fine. Problem identified. What to do about it?
Nominally unaffiliated voters now make up pluralities in at least a dozen states and in recent national polling. How they lean D or R toggles from year to year. Getting a read on how they vote is for most campaigns, I imagine, rocket science. It’s not.
The best fishing holes
Local candidates regularly ask me how I think UNAffiliated voters will “break” (D or R) in November. I can’t say. But with their increasing importance in elections, it might be useful to get a clue. And while I can’t predict how UNA voters will break in the fall, I can estimate —with data — how they did break in the last election.
North Carolina has unusually open access to free, downloadable election data at the state level. Using that plentiful data, I am, with a couple of simplifying assumptions, generating estimates, by precinct, of what percent of UNAs voted for Joe Biden in 2020 (for specific targeted state races). Knowing that in this precinct, in this county, 80 percent of UNAs voted for Biden and in that one, in another county, only 15 percent did, is useful targeting information for deciding where to not waste a lot of volunteer effort. In precincts where UNAs voted, say, 40-60 percent for Biden, those are where to look to ID persuadable voters.
Biden won this NC county.
Think of this as knowing where to find the best fishing holes.
Overall in North Carolina, only 42 percent of UNAs voted for Biden. It varies a lot by county and precinct. Much below 100,000 in population (here anyway), the UNAs break red fast. Even then, many redder counties can contain precincts where UNAs are blue-voting or blue-leaning.
One county chair wrote back:
Prior to the 2020 election, my sense was that a significant # of U’s were with us, but I had no data to support that. After looking at the election results, I realized the U’s couldn’t have been with us, but again, I had no data to support my feeling. Now I do.
I had not sent good news.
Estimating this in other, less data-friendly states might be more trouble. But Democratic campaigns need every edge they can get.
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Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us. If in a position to Play to win in 2022 (see post first), contact tpostsully at gmail dot com
