And It’s Off to the Midterms
When We Vote, We Win. It’s That Simple
Labor Day has come and gone, and now it’s officially election season. In a little more than a month California will mail ballots to voters, and a month after that we’ll have some ideas about the state of the nation going forward.
Nationally speaking, there are two issues that should dominate electoral considerations: Abortion and Donald Trump.
The Wall Street Journal poll released on September 1 shows abortion is the single issue most likely to drive respondents to vote this fall, above inflation. Republican candidates now have a stone around their necks, particularly when it comes to white suburban women, who favor Democratic candidates in general by twelve percentage points.
Despite guidance from party elders about GOP candidates softening their image, the party’s misogyny continues to manifest itself. Some right leaning candidates are dragging their wives onto commercials, the hope being to make their earlier comments look less rabid.
This week South Carolina’s GOP decided to excise exceptions for rape and incest from their legislation calling for a total ban on abortions. Louisiana’s strict ban meant a woman had to chose between carrying a fetus without a skull and part of its head to term or travel out of state to receive an abortion.
Voters in Kansas made national headlines when they rejected a proposed amendment to the state Constitution adding language stating that it does not grant the right to abortion.
Congressional Republicans, once they got through cheering the overturning of Roe v Wade, are hard at work crafting a federal ban on the procedure, presumably to have in place should they win enough seats come November.
And here in California, Proposition One, an amendment to the state constitution explicitly guaranteeing the right to abortion and contraception is expected to drive voter turnout in November.
It should also be a litmus test applied to every candidate running for office in the state, right alongside “Do you accept the results of the 2020 election as valid?”
This question brings us right to the topic of the former President, who as David Frum points out at The Atlantic, took the bait offered up by President Biden in his Philadelphia anti-Maga speech, and made himself the central issue of the midterm elections.
Republican congressional leaders desperately but hopelessly tried to avert the risk that this next election would become yet another national referendum on Trump’s leadership. Despite Trump’s lying and boasting, politicians who can count to 50 and 218—the respective numbers needed for a majority in the Senate and House—have to reckon with the real-world costs of Trump’s defeats. But Biden understood their man’s psychology too well.
Biden came to Philadelphia to deliver a wound to Trump’s boundless yet fragile ego. Trump obliged with a monstrously self-involved meltdown 48 hours later. And now his party has nowhere to hide. Trump has overwritten his name on every Republican line of every ballot in 2022.
Biden dangled the bait. Trump took it—and put his whole party on the hook with him. Republican leaders are left with little choice but to pretend to like it.
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Now it’s time for San Diego/California voters to start doing their homework on the candidates and measures they’ll see on the ballot come October.
I’m working on various analyses, have already published a half dozen, and expect to post at least a dozen more. At some point close to when mail out ballots go out, I’ll release a one-stop list of these postings.
Here’s what’s already available:
California State Officials
California’s DC Delegation
State Senate Races
State Assembly Races
SD County Supervisors
County Sheriff, Assessor, and Treasurer Races
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Email me at: WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com
Lead image: Taken at Trump rally in Pennsylvania. Thee folks are planning on voting. Are you?