Six days to go, Democrats. Don’t screw it up. Keep abortion front and center
By Mark Horan
Here’s some friendly advice for Democrats six days before the election: Don’t be stupid. Don’t take a strong women’s vote for granted.
Women brought you to where you are now: either in the lead or a tie in each critical Senate race. And women are the most likely way for you to win.
In the four states polled late last week by the New York Times — Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, women favored Democrats by roughly 56–40; men supported Republicans by about 52–43.
An increased focus on economic issues is understandable; to ignore the growing concerns about inflation and recession would be tone deaf. But they also have to keep their eye on the ball — the Supreme Court’s audacity in overturning Roe v. Wade is the motivating force for most of their voters. Better to energize those supporters than try to win back a dwindling number of persuadable men.
In recent weeks, some have argued that the anger over the Dobbs decision has dissipated, but the Times confirmed what other state polls previously revealed — it’s still a hot topic in battleground states.
Roughly 50 percent of Times respondents in the four states said economic issues were top priorities. Still, about 44 percent picked “societal issues,” which the survey researchers defined as abortion, guns, and preserving democracy.
The Times polls also found that about 55 percent, including 60 percent of women, said abortion should be legal or mostly legal at all times, and only 22 percent said it should be illegal or mostly illegal.
Other surveys reveal voter intensity regarding the Supreme Court’s decision. Half the voters in a late-September Kaiser Family Foundation national poll, including nearly six in ten women under 50, said the Supreme Court decision made them more motivated to vote.
A Suffolk University poll of Nevada voters in early October found that 40 percent of all respondents and 51 percent of women rated abortion on a scale of 1–10 as a “10” or very important, and another 17 percent rated it between six and nine on the scale. And polls in swing states show that those naming abortion their number one issue overwhelmingly support the Democratic candidate in their district.
Here’s the deal: campaigns locked in dead heats with dwindling undecideds, i.e., all four of these races, means the elections will be decided by who turns out to vote. Given the intensity of the abortion issue among women and their underlying anger over the Supreme Court decision, Democrats can create a surge of women voters — if their message is compelling.
If we’ve learned nothing else from Donald J. Trump, it’s the power of grievance politics. And here we have our own “stop the steal” situation, with the added advantage the grievance women have in this election is rooted in reality, not fantasy.
Democrats should remind women — and there’s no polite way of putting this — that they got screwed. Six conservative judges — five men and one woman, three appointed by Donald Trump — seized their opportunity to use their new majority to strip them of a fundamental right.
Women have every right to be infuriated. And November 8 is the day to get even.
Thus far, the Democrats have addressed abortion primarily through negative ads — dark, grainy, ominous videos that point out the GOP candidate is against abortion, “even in the case of rape and incest, or when the mother’s life is in danger.”
As predictable and grating as these ads are, they do half the job — slamming the Republican Senate candidates, all four of whom have praised the Dobbs decision.
But do these commercials spur women to vote? Do they prompt them to contact friends, family, neighbors, and social media contacts and get them to the polls?
I doubt it. Instead, in these final days, Democrats should put women in front of the camera, asking other women to remember the shock, dismay, and anger they felt when the court made its decision. And to remind them that Mitch McConnel and others want to pass a national abortion ban.
Speaking directly to women in plain-spoken language that reminds them of their reactions to the Dobbs decision was already used to defeat the proposed amendment to the Kansas constitution, which would have resulted in a statewide abortion ban.
Before last summer, the prospect of beating a Kansas abortion on a statewide ballot question seemed like a long shot at best. But the “vote no” organizers ran a highly disciplined campaign, focusing on the referendum as “another government mandate” — a label sure to stir resentment, particularly in the wake of Covid restrictions. They also featured relatable figures — a grandmother, a doctor, a pastor, to name three — to urge people to vote no on this mandate.
Both sides thought the race was too close to call on election day. Instead, the amendment went down in a landslide, with record turnout (for a primary), especially in the Kansas City suburbs. The “vote no” campaign even did reasonably well in rural areas.
Going from a dead heat to an election-day blowout leads to only one conclusion: women (who had registered in huge numbers after the Dobbs decision) came out in even more substantial numbers to reject the ban. The Kansas vote shows the untapped potential of this issue if properly channeled.
Women are no strangers to this kind of rallying of forces. In recent years, they joined the post-Trump election women’s marches in cities across the country. They were a primary force in the 2018 midterm Democratic victories and Joe Biden’s win in 2020.
And they can do it again. If anger has dissipated in recent weeks, then Democrats and pro-choice advocates must stir it up over the next six days. Hell hath no fury like a voter scorned, one might say. Women need to be reminded of the scorn in which they were held by the Supreme Court last June. Speaking to that grievance — rather than just mentioning a candidate’s support for “reproductive health” — will energize voters to make a trip to the voting booth — or the mailbox. It’s the surest way for Democrats to win next Tuesday and, in so doing, save the Senate.
