Women and younger voters can prove pundits wrong in November
Will the women who mobilized in reaction to Trump’s election do it again this November? Could it be that a second wave of reserves that didn’t mobilize in 2017 will now in reaction to the Supreme Court’s overturning Roe v. Wade in June?
Michael Tomasky offers a sampling of anecdotes to suggest they might (New Republic):
Item: News5 Cleveland reported in late August that Ohio has seen some 90,000 new registrants since the Dobbs decision. That tracks with a New York Times finding that female voter registrations are up 6.4 percent in the state since Justice Samuel Alito’s draft decision in Dobbs leaked to Politico.
Item: KDKA Pittsburgh reported recently that the voter registration gender gap in Pennsylvania is 12 points, three times the normal gap. More than 60 percent of these registrants are under 25.
Item: Over the weekend, the Houston Chronicle reported that registration is “surging” in Texas among young voters. “It’s not that we’re not seeing a surge from women but that in Texas, we’re somewhat uniquely also seeing a surge from men, particularly younger, more progressive men, who are matching the surge from women,” said Tom Bonier, the CEO of TargetSmart, which works with Democratic candidates.
But contemplating the overwhelming vote to derail efforts to strip abortion from the constitution in Kansas in August, Tomasky wonders if the same independent and Republican women who would vote to protect their abortion rights would vote for Democrats. Of course, most new registrants were not part of the electorate in Kansas. The youngest were not able to vote in 2016 or even in 2020. Registration trends suggest not just motivation but perhaps mobilization.
To his colleagues’ dismay, Sen. Lindsey Graham made sure on Tuesday to remind women his is the party of forcing rape victims to bear their raspists’ children.
Democrats are making sure voters know Republicans were behind stripping women of their reproductive autonomy and which of their candidates supported both Dobbs and the raft of new state legislation banning abortion. Horror stories of women forced to flee their red states to terminate nonviable pregnancies or forced to risk death before treatment have forced some Republican candidates to strip pro-abortion references from their websites:
What does all this mean? Well, nobody wants to speak too confidently about the Democrats’ chances in November. We all know that the incumbent party tends to lose 25 or so seats in a first-term midterm election. And there’s still inflation to worry about, though in recent weeks it’s seemed to be receding, with gas prices well down from their midsummer highs. And there’s MAGA rage, which only seems to intensify as Donald Trump looks guiltier and guiltier.
But here’s what could happen: The voter rolls in swing states could swell by, oh, 5 percent, let’s say, and that increase would consist almost entirely of voters pissed off by Dobbs. In Ohio, 5 percent would equal about 388,000 new voters. In Pennsylvania, it would mean 436,000. In Florida, 714,000. Almost all of them pro-choice. And since they bothered to register—a lot of them for the first time, presumably—it seems likely that they’ll bother to vote.
And not for extremist lunatics.
“They want ‘Handmaid’s Tale’. They’re going for Gilead here!” said George Hahn in an angry video tweet on Tuesday. LGBTQ rights are next to go if the GOP wins this fall. Still, he “in my life” will vote Republican to protect their taxes rather than family members and friends. “Are you crazy? What is wrong with you?!”
Tomasky wants to believe sane America will come out to vote in numbers greater than the MAGA ragers and QAnon murderers.
Republicans used to call themselves the party of normal Americans. They still pretend to be so. But they are not. They are the party of extremist violence. They are the party of authoritarianism. They are the party of the Big Lie. And they are the party of forcing a 12-year-old girl who was raped to deliver that baby and the party of taking away a core right that women have had for a half-century. They will pay a price for this. The army of real normal Americans is coming for them.
Let’s hope.
My one-person effort to grow Democratic Party infrastructure in places thought too infertile for Democrats is fueled in part by women who got off their couches after November 2016 to engage in party politics for the first time in their lives. Novices stepping up to run county committees in rural red places: in Virginia, in Montana, in Indiana. I’ve distributed my modest “cookbook” (below) since 2016 and thought maybe it was time to pass it on. But after Dobbs, I expect another wave of women in under-resourced counties will need help for fighting back.
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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.