Abortion Rights, Democrats Win Big

Abortion rights were the big winner in the November off-year elections held Nov 7. In Ohio, a right to abortion was enshrined as a constitutional right in the state constitution, by a healthy 56.6 – 43.4% margin, and in Virginia, where Gov. Glenn Youngkin promised to impose a 15-week ban if Republicans gained control of the legislature, Democrats unambiguously won, surprising many by flipping the House of Delegates, while maintaining control of the State Senate — which Youngkin needed to flip. Democrats will have at least a two-seat margin in both chambers. And in deep-red Kentucky — where abortion also figured in the election — Governor Andy Beshear won a second term, winning by five points — more than ten times his margin of victory four years ago.

“This win marks a new beginning for Ohio, where individuals now have the right to make their own reproductive decisions without government interference,” said Erica Wilson-Domer and Lauren Blauvelt, leaders of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, in a statement. “Despite the significant challenges we faced from our opposition’s disinformation campaign and attempts to suppress votes, Ohioans made it clear once and for all that abortion rights are a constitutional right. Our state remains a beacon of hope to so many across the nation and once again proves that voters will show up to defend their right to abortion.”

The Democrats’ strong showing continued a trend seen in special elections, undercutting the media narrative that they’re in trouble heading into 2024, due to Biden’s lagging approval in polls. Biden registered just 39% approval on election day, according to Reuters, but that’s the same low approval level he had a year ago, when Democrats gained one seat in the Senate, and the expected “red wave” in the House was so small that Republicans have been unable to govern. “Don’t compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative,” is Biden’s favorite phrase on the subject, and on Tuesday, voters did just that.

Elvis Presley’s second cousin, Brandon Presley, lost the Mississippi governor’s race to incumbent Tate Reeves by five and a half points — still a strong showing for a Democrat in a deep red, deep South state, just not strong enough. But Presley’s loss was practically the only loss of consequence for Democrats and progressives.

“This is one of the best nights for Democrats in an off-year election that we’ve seen in a very, very long time,” the Nation’s national correspondent John Nichols said on Democracy Now! “It’s not just the top-end results, for governor of Kentucky, for the Virginia Legislature and things like that, but it’s when you burrow down into the results, and you go to mayoral races, city council races, school board races, county executive races across the country. It was just a remarkably strong night for Democrats.”

In Pennsylvania, Democrat Dan McCaffery won an open seat on the state’s Supreme Court by six points, beating out an anti-abortion candidate, while Democrat Cherelle Parker will become the first Black woman and the first woman mayor of Philadelphia.

In New York, exonerated “Central Park Five” member Yusef Salaam won his Harlem race for City Council. Salaam was one of five Black and Latino teenagers wrongfully convicted of the 1989 beating and rape of a white woman. At the time, Donald Trump called for their execution. Salaam spent seven years in jail before being exonerated when the real perpetrator confessed.

In St. Louis Park, Minnesota, suburban Minneapolis, Nadia Mohamed was elected as the first Muslim mayor,

“When you start to look at places like Allegheny County in Pennsylvania, where Sara Innamorato was elected as county executive to one of the largest counties in the United States, as a progressive, you just start seeing result after result after result,” Nichols added. “The evidence from Tuesday night is that candidates who took some chances, who pushed the limits, who actually went further than expected, did very, very well…. When you go into these results, you see this as a much more progressive country than I think a lot of the pundits would tell you.”

Issues matter, Nichols stressed. “Given the choice, a clear choice on abortion rights, a clear choice on progressive issues versus going to the right, a clear choice on labor rights, a clear choice on a whole host of other issues — given that choice across country, in election after election after election, people voted for abortion rights. They voted for labor rights. They voted for progressive values and for Democrats, who often don’t get this right,” he said. “This is a very, very powerful reminder that there’s a route forward. But it isn’t a route of concession. It’s a route of activism and engagement with communities that are rising up and saying they want a different direction, more progressive direction, for this country.”

Republicans know they’re weak on abortion, so they tried two different strategies to try to cope, and portray Democrats as the extremists — not them. In Ohio, they did this with a massive disinformation campaign, which even involved writing a ballot description that wildly misrepresented the measure itself.

“This is the Ohio voters seeing a secretary of state literally rewrite the language of the amendment, for basically the ‘no’ side. They literally replaced the word ‘fetus’ with ‘unborn child.’ They changed the whole meaning,” former Ohio Democratic Party Chair David Pepper said on All In With Chris Hayes. “This has been a year-long effort to basically subvert majority rule using government itself.”

Most dramatically, Republicans called a special election in August to try to raise the threshold for the abortion amendment to pass from 50% to 60%. The measure failed by double digits. “Not only does this preserve reproductive rights in Ohio, it was always something that polled a majority,” Pepper noted. “This vote tonight will not only confirm that, it will also be the Ohio voters seeing through a year-long effort to basically weaponize government, when it was trying to change the rules in August, rewrite the ballot language, come up with kinds of other disinformation,” said Pepper, who’s written two books about state-level threats to democracy and how citizens can fight back. “My hope is — and my hope is we’re seeing this in Ohio — voters are saying ‘not only do we support a woman’s right to choose, but no more of that stuff. We’re tired of having our own government attack democracy, we see through it.’”

In Virginia, Youngkin led Republicans in another strategy to try to paint Democrats as the abortion extremists, eschewing the word ‘ban,’ and promoting a ‘compromise’ of a ‘15-week limit.’ But a ban is a ban, and everyone knows anti-choice activists won’t stop with 15 weeks. What’s more, it’s a ‘compromise’ based on pure fiction. There’s no medical/biological foundation for the figure — or for any of the more extreme measures anti-choice activists have pushed.

Youngkin tried to use his abortion ‘compromise’ as a selling point to launch a potential presidential bid, for large GOP donors desperate to avoid another Trump run. But virtually none of the Republicans actually running ran ads about abortion at all. Only the Democrats did. Clearly, Youngkin’s effort to portray Democrats as abortion extremists went down in flames as well.

The Nation’s reproductive rights correspondent, Amy Littlefield, addressed the GOP’s failed, flailing strategies on Democracy Now! “We’ve talked about this on the show before, how in the wake of the Dobbs decision, the anti-abortion movement tried to rebrand itself. Bans were not going to be bans anymore; they were going to be limits and compromises. And 15 weeks was supposed to be this, you know, compromise, as if voters were going to forget it was a 15-week ban in Mississippi that got us to the Dobbs decision in the first place and that Mississippi is now living under a total abortion ban and has been for about a year and a half,” Littlefield said.

“They haven’t forgotten about Dobbs. We saw this strategy of the 15-week compromise fall on its face in Virginia because voters saw right through that. They understood that an abortion ban is a ban,” she concluded. “This was a crucial part of their Republican strategy to rebrand themselves after the Dobbs decision. I think they’re going to want to abort that strategy. I don’t see that happening in the next 15 weeks, so, unfortunately, I think they’re going to have to carry it to term, or at least until the next election in 2024.”