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The GOP will see how bad abortion is for them in 2024 - Worldtimetodays

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Three state elections on Tuesday offer something invaluable a year before the 2024 election: the first real glimpse of how toxic the issue of abortion remains for the Republican Party. In Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia — all of which are holding closely contested elections for statewide offices, legislatures and ballot initiatives — the results will have significant implications not only for abortion access but also for how Republicans handle this critical issue before 2024. What happens in these states — two red and one purple — could lead Republicans to one of two conclusions. One is that abortion rights continue to be a major liability for the GOP, just as they were in the 2022 midterm elections, which collapsed months after the Supreme Court’s decision was overturned Roe v. Wade. The other conclusion — and perhaps the current underlying assumption in GOP campaigns moving away from anti-abortion rights messages — is that the Supreme Court decision has faded so far from voters’ minds that they can carry on as usual. Or maybe there is a third party. “I wish it would go away,” a member of the Republican National Committee told The Daily Beast, requesting anonymity to speak candidly about the “toxic problem” facing the party. But abortion won’t go away – partly because the Republicans won’t allow it. In Virginia, where all 140 seats in the legislature are at stake, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin is trying to sell a bill Restricting abortion after 15 weeks– his camp insists it is a “limit” and not a “ban” – as a priority for a Republican-controlled government. Democratic candidates and groups have made the ban a centerpiece of their messaging, calling Republican candidates in suburban districts pro-abortion extremists. It all has echoes of 2022 Republicans faced a broad bipartisan backlash over that Dobbs v. Jackson Decision. Abortion rights advocates have been on a winning streak since then, but local Democrats are still hearing some of the same things they did before Republicans were first blindsided by abortion. “It feels a little like Groundhog Day,” Tara Gibson, founder of Roe The Vote, an abortion rights PAC in Virginia, told The Daily Beast. Gibson described a discrepancy between the experts’ sphere and what door knockers actually heard on the ground. “It kind of drives me a little crazy. It’s abortion,” Gibson said. “That’s what voters care about and that’s what will drive this election.” The clearest case study will be Ohio, the only state to vote directly on abortion in a referendum this fall. There was an ominous preview for the Republicans the August version of issue 1 that failed, which ultimately became an abortion rights advocate. (Voters rejected a referendum that would have increased the required level of support for future voting referendums from 50 percent to 60 percent.) Ohio’s new version of Issue 1 gives voters the opportunity to enshrine abortion, contraception and miscarriage health care rights in the state constitution. Republicans managed to replace the term “fetus” with “unborn child.” Summary of language voters will see at the ballot box. Critics on the pro-abortion rights side in Ohio have also pointed out that there is no reference to this in the wording Fertility treatment, miscarriage treatment or contraception. And in Kentucky, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear ran for re-election as a defender of abortion rights against Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who called his opponent an “abortion candidate” at their Oct. 16 debate. Tuesday’s elections provide the final and best data set that both parties will have on abortion in the contest leading up to the 2024 election, which will determine control of the White House, both chambers of Congress and state capitals across the country . Democrats will push hard on the issue, and Republicans have yet to put together a convincing performance in a state where it hasn’t been a key issue since 2010 Dobbs Decision. “You know it’s a terrible problem for us,” the RNC member said of Democrats in 2024. The states in play on Tuesday don’t offer a perfect glimpse of political reality everywhere, but they’re as close to an ideal as Republicans can get. If Democrats can win or do very well in the very conservative states of Ohio and Kentucky, as well as swinging Virginia, those running in battleground states will be emboldened. And if Republicans can score a big victory in any of the three states, it will provide the most concrete evidence the party has gathered since 2022 about which messaging approach is best suited to dealing with the fallout from a long-awaited event Republicans’ political victory has proven largely unpopular with the public. Some are already cringing at a night of results in an otherwise favorable slate of states, particularly Virginia under the much-touted Youngkin. Of all three states, the RNC member said the way Republicans have tried to massage the language around abortion restrictions in Virginia – “restriction” instead of “ban,” “threshold” instead of “limit” – sends the wrong signal to voters. “If they want to lose elections, they will continue to do so,” the Republican said. Gibson, of the Roe The Vote PAC, said Virginia Republicans are “trying to make it sound like something other than…” [a ban]because our messages work.” Youngkin had already assembled a group of all-Republican lawmakers on the day of Dobbs Decision dropped in June 2022 to reach a “bipartisan consensus to protect the lives of unborn children, especially when they begin to feel pain in the womb,” but since then public opinion has not moved in his direction. Compared to 2019, female voters in Virginia are far more likely to say abortion is an important issue to them, increasing from 47 percent to 70 percent Washington Post Opinion poll who asked the same question four years ago. Democrats currently hold the Senate by three seats, while Republicans have a 52-48 seat advantage in the House. In the battleground districts where Democrats like Gibson are concentrating their resources, polls from the left-leaning think tank Data For Progress show voters Trust Democrats with a 7 point lead on abortionwith even more support for Planned Parenthood. Virginia Senate Democratic Caucus Chairwoman Mamie Locke could become the first Black woman to serve as majority leader in the state Senate. She said a coalition of younger and older women stood out to her the most as she worked swing districts for the candidates she hopes will take the lead in January. “Roe v. Wade was decided my freshman year, so it is a right I have known my entire adult life,” Locke told The Daily Beast in an email. “But for younger people, it’s been the law of the land their entire lives so far, and I think for them it’s even harder, and we’re seeing it at the doors,” she continued. “They are motivated to come out and vote. So we see the older women who know what it was like to fight for reproductive freedom, and we see the younger generations who had something taken away from them.” In Kentucky, Beshear harshly criticized Cameron on the radio over abortion. The state had a trigger law in place that completely banned abortions thereafter roe was held despite voters in 2022 sending a strong signal by rejecting a ballot initiative that would have expressly excluded abortion rights from the state constitution. After one $11 million ad buy In late summer, thanks to the Democratic Governors Association, Beshear went on the offensive, linking personal stories to his opponent’s political positions. Some of the ads were devastating, including a pointed spot of a woman revealing that she was raped by her stepfather. Kentucky does not provide exceptions for rape or incest in its trigger law. “Telling a 12-year-old girl that she has to have the baby of her stepfather who raped her is unthinkable,” said Kentuck resident Hadley Duvall Beshear commercial. “I’m speaking out because women and girls need to have options. Daniel Cameron wouldn’t give us any.” Cameron responded to the ad by calling it “disgusting” but also said that his “heart is with Duvall” and that he would sign it if lawmakers presented him with a bill with exemptions. For Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist from Virginia, the entire messaging discussion about abortion is distracting Republicans from the underlying problem they face in three key states on Tuesday – and likening the challenge to the Ford Motor Company attempt , selling their ill-fated Pinto in the US in the 1970s. “In two Trump states and one state with unlimited GOP money,” Ferguson said, “they may have to realize that if they can’t sell their pro-abortion position, they’re trying to sell a Pinto.” The problem with selling the Pinto was not the slogan, but that the car spontaneously caught fire.”

Three state elections on Tuesday offer something invaluable a year before the 2024 election: the first real glimpse of how toxic the issue of abortion remains for the Republican Party. In Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia — all of which are holding closely contested elections for statewide offices, legislatures and ballot initiatives — the results will have significant implications not only for abortion access but also for how Republicans handle this critical issue before 2024. What happens in these states — two red and one purple — could lead Republicans to one of two conclusions. One is that...

The GOP will see how bad abortion is for them in 2024 - Worldtimetodays

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