It Was Dobbs Wot Won It
Reproductive rights decided this election
It started in Kansas. After the Supreme Court overturned the Constitutional right to abortion last June, the first time and place voters got a chance to push back was Kansas, in August.
In a state where just a quarter of registered voters are Democrats, 60% voted against a constitutional amendment that would have allowed lawmakers to end abortion protections—the same power over women’s bodies that was on the ballot yesterday.
If there was one message from this election, it was from women, telling politicians to stop trying to control their bodies with abortion bans and laws that put their reproductive health at risk.
Ballot measures in Kentucky, Michigan, California and Vermont were decided in favor of protecting abortion rights, and Senate seats were won by strong defenders of reproductive rights. Exit polls showed that abortion was just five points behind inflation as a priority for voters, with crime a distant third.
This meant that the midterm norm of the party in power losing 40 seats was upended by a “red wave” that turned into a trickle, putting Democrats on the brink of being declared the majority party in the Senate (On, Nevada!), and as of this writing, still capable—just barely—of achieving a slim majority in Congress.
But if Republicans do succeed in taking control of the House, it will be by the narrowest of margins, guaranteeing more gridlock, bickering and two years of living hell for Kevin McCarthy, or whoever Donald Trump picks to take his place.
And speaking of taking Donald Trump’s place…a closing thought about Ron DeSantis.
When DeSantis took the stage to proclaim victory in the race for Governor, he railed against “woke” culture, and the Democrats he accuses of embracing it.
“Florida is where woke goes to die,” he smirked.
Of course, by “woke” DeSantis means respecting people who are Black, women, LGBTQ (particularly transgender teens and the families and teachers who support them), young people, immigrants, religious groups other than Christians…the list is practically infinite. DeSantis hopes to win the White House by wrapping Donald Trump’s playbook of grievance, anger and entitlement in a less grotesque package.
We’ll see if he’s right, or if we can take the momentum from this election and build on it. It looks like GenZ voters made a difference in some of the most pivotal contests. According to John Della Volpe,
Before the election, 40% of GenZ voters told Harvard’s Institute of Politics they intended to vote, but that would still be behind what we saw in 2020. According to the Census, voter turnout that year was lowest among those ages 18-24, at 51.4%, and highest among those ages 65-74, at 76%. That’s a power dynamic that needs to change.
I hope that young people continue to see politics and elections as a way to express their own most deeply held values, and rally behind candidates who don’t want to trample on those beliefs and take away their rights. If they become the largest group of voters, they can finish the job we started in this election.
Yesterday, we went to the polls and rejected racism, white nationalism and toxic politics, but that was just one election. The ugliness and division of this campaign won’t recede—that wave is still building.