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Back in 2022 almost everyone expected the midterms to go Republican. They didn’t.
The Supremes won it for Democrats, because women were furious about the over-turning of Roe v.s. Wade.
Harris is a terrible candidate, but the Supremes seem likely to win it for her, too.
Men tend to vote Republican, women tend to vote Democratic. Women are far more likely to vote than men, and if they remains true on election day, Trump is toast.
What Republicans don’t get is that abortion is a health issue as well as a choice issue. There is a constant drumbeat of stories of women dying because doctors and hospitals were unwilling or scared to do an abortion when medically necessary. I recently saw a story of a late term 18 year old. She went to a hospital with Sepsis, they sent her home. She went to another one, they dragged their feet and insisted on two scans, and by the time they were willing to do what was needed, she was dead.
And the problems, electorally, is that while there is a hard minority of men who really care about abortion, more women care, and are pro-choice and pro-women’s lives. After all, but for the Grace of God, there they go, or their friends or children.
Added to the numbers above we have the Selzer poll which found Iowa, of all places, going Harris by 3 points. Selzer has historically been very reliable, but it’s the shock of it being Oiwa.
If the gender gap or the Iowa poll are accurate (Selzer), Harris isn’t just going to win, she’s going to blow Trump out of the water.
The problems I see with a Harris victory in this manner are:
- The democrats won’t do anything major about abortion, because they’ll figure if they keep it as a problem it’ll continue to win them elections;
- Harris winning will be seen as a sign that Biden’s policies are good, and should continue.
All this said, I suck at electoral prediction, so we’ll see. But this does seem to be the scenario.
different clue
When I first read the title, I thought this post was how the Supreme Court was going to pull a Bush v. Gore in favor of Harris. My instant reaction was – wait . . . what!?
Then I realized what you meant.
Beau of the Fifth Column made a video several months ago about how the Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade would cause a massive womanshift against Republicans at the polls in places the RepubliParty thought were safe places. I am too tired at work to try finding it just now on my break.
But here is a Belle of the Fifth Column video ( Beau is off doing something else for a while) making a prediction about how Trump will declare victory hours early tomorrow in order to lay the basis and predicate for claiming fraud if he loses. It is an interesting little video about ballot-counting mechanics and how a bad actor can exploit the various lag times involved.
It is titled: ” Let’s talk about Trump’s likely move tomorrow . . . ” Here is the link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj_dgsWl7vk
I continue to harbor the suspicion that we won’t have an agreed-upon winner for days or weeks to come. The non-agreement may be fake, but it will be there.
Joan
I feel like every woman knows someone who has had a scary pregnancy situation wherein a medically necessary abortion had been put on the table even if it wasn’t ultimately needed.
I know someone whose baby was found to be unviable, that he would die a half hour after birth. She opted to go ahead and carry him to term, but that itself was a risk. Things like this can turn on a dime and go wrong very quickly. She was thankfully able to try again and now has a child, but that is a statistical minority in cases like this.
I know two women who had emergency surgery after giving birth that required removal of everything and thus were not able to have more than their one child. It’s just a scary business all around and no procedure should be delayed if its needed.
NR
Ian, the Selzer poll was of Iowa, not Ohio. She’s one of the most accurate pollsters in the country but she mostly just polls her home state.
DanFmto
Some poll watching twitter accounts I read seem to think the pollsters were engaging in groupthink and had likely voter screens that were too right wing. That’s the real x factor in polling, not what the general public’s opinions are but which of them will actually vote.
I can’t imagine Harris will be a particularly effective or popular president, given how much she’s done to squander her campaign’s jump-start momentum and her 2020 run, so yeah, doing nothing of note about Roe is the safe bet.
albrt
I believe the Selzer poll was Iowa, not Ohio.
Ian Welsh
Argh.
Fixed. Thanks for the timely corrections.
Anon
Hooray women! Three cheers for neoliberalism! In other news, the Democrats get to own Ukraine.
NR
Ian, there are still a couple of places you say “Ohio” toward the end.
Anyway, the thing I found most interesting about the Selzer poll wasn’t the fact that it showed Harris winning Iowa. Iowa is only 6 electoral votes and it isn’t likely to be make-or-break (though there are some scenarios where it could be, of course). What I found most interesting was the fact that it showed Harris winning women over 65 by better than a 2 to 1 margin. If that’s accurate and it holds true nationwide, Trump is cooked. Women over 65 are the highest-propensity voters in the country and that would represent an absolute collapse of Trump’s support among them.
And while that is a pretty incredible result, I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility. Women in that age group remember what it was like before Roe v. Wade (that decision was in 1973), and they remember when they didn’t have other things that younger women today take for granted. Women couldn’t get credit cards without a male co-signer until 1974, to take just one example.
As corny as “We’re not going back” may sound to some of us, women over 65 are one group it might really resonate with. We’ll see soon enough.
Jen
https://www.propublica.org/article/josseli-barnica-death-miscarriage-texas-abortion-ban
https://www.propublica.org/article/nevaeh-crain-death-texas-abortion-ban-emtala
Thanks Ian, for mentioning this in your post. Texas’s laws governing this issue are the most extreme in the whole country.
bruce wilder
Someone I despise is going to win the Presidency tomorrow. I am psychic!
Oakchair
In the 2020 Democratic primary Biden’s campaign promise was that he wouldn’t make any systemic or significant changes, and would bring us back to the pre-Trump era.
Harris –after telling us how Trump is a fascist– when asked what she would do differently from the Biden admisntration replied “nothing”.
The issue here is that Trump isn’t some aberration. He’s a product of society and the economic political structure. Going back to 2015 won’t get rid of Trumpism because 2015 America made Trump, and will create another over and over. Systemic changes need to be initiated or we’ll get a continuous stream of new Trumps. How many times of rolling those dice before the current Trump is rehabilitated as a moral decent guy like George W. Bush has been?
Liberals think they can have their cake and eat it too. Do they want the status quo, or and end to Trumpism? Because we cannot have both.
The optimist take is they are just ignorant cowards. The pessimistic take is they are controlled opposition and the future is a boot stamping on a human face –forever.
different clue
Here’s a thought which occurred to me recently.
I have been reading and hearing that Netanyahu has been obstructing Gaza ceasefire talks and a ceasefire result in part to humiliate the Harris ticket and in part to get enough Arab and Muslim American voters in the crucial state of Michigan to vote Third Party or vote for Trump himself so as to win the state for Trump.
Netanyahu apparently believes that a Trump Administration would support the Netanyahu/Smotrich/ben Gvir agenda faster, harder and farther than Harris would.
Whether the anti-Harris protest/punishment voters should think about possibly delivering Michigan to Netanyahu’s preferred President is something I cannot possibly advise on.
Happy voting.
mago
As much as abortion is a hot button issue, it’s also a distracting side show that both parties use to further their own agendas.
Pious conservatives from the elite side of things have no problem with their darling Trish getting her womb scraped if necessary.
The libs turn it into a wedge issue. Hypocrisy is rife, per usual.
Not trying to downplay women’s concerns. I’m saying it’s a political football that both teams pass back forth.
Nobody scores and no one is winning. Least of all the people.
Kamala, hahaha. Good luck babe. Riding abortion on the back of genocide.
While I don’t despise, I have to agree with bruce wilder.
We’re all losers whoever wins.
davidly
Go big or stay home (Get it?). If abortion turns the tables, then Texas and maybe even Florida will be flipped. I’m calling it. It’s a big if, as is, imho, whether or not votes are even counted as cast, what with both parties, ostensibly, motivated to hack & fudge; it’s just the GOP who are masters at preemptively accusing others of doing what they’re themselves doing. But, yeah, what everybody else said, especially Oakchair.
Mark Level
Glad for the corrections. And yes, the coverage I have seen in recent days said the same thing. Harris will win on one issue on which the Dems did nothing (as usual), the ReThug “We Own Those Bitch’s Wombs” movement won a Pyrrhic victory.
I saw a Keaton Weiss (of Due Dissidence) stand-up routine at an anti-war breakfast on the East Coast recently. He had a rather strong joke about how the Dems are now the party of killing babies– in Gaza and in the US. (And like me, he is not against Roe v. Wade, just connecting the dots.) His point could be expanded– Israel bombed every IVF center for Palestinians in order that the genocide be thorough, just as they are murdering children & women in the streets. (The men are mainly confined in torture camps, & many are anally raped.)
Of course the R’s were never remotely “pro-life”, once the baby’s born (esp. if it’s not white), they couldn’t give a shit about it, except to try to manipulate it into right wing ideology via private schools, & authoritarian parenting.
All of the recent presidents (except Obama with his “magic Negro” vibe, & glowing profiles by the PMC Media class) have been thoroughly despised by the time they leave office, I’d predict Kamala will top them. The cluelessness, the corruption, the contempt for the public will be off the chart. The genocide may be successfully carried out, the controlled Arab dictatorships (KSA, Turkiye, Jordan, Gulf States, Qatar, etc.) seem to be fine with it, though their citizens aren’t. The UN hasn’t done shit to protect the caged Palestinians, & now the terrorism has expanded to the West Bank– stealing land, burning down Palestinian homes, cars, killing them when they try to put out the fires.
Really the U.S. became and maintained itself as the Fourth Reich when the Third fell. It nurtured the Zionist State as a 5th Reich statelet, & the project to exterminate the Natives may likely succeed, while the whole world watches, the “leaders” do nothing to stop it.
If Kamala & Krew don’t drive the world to nuclear extinction (still possible if they can’t let go of their desire to break Russia up into pieces), this will be one of the darkest & ugliest periods ever seen in human history.
The monsters are in control. The “good people” can do nothing, in the US, UK etc. except be censored, ignored, & told to shut up. On a personal note, I am leaving the local Unitarian Church I’ve been involved in because their last Sunday service was about “The Power of Voting!” Basically (I did not attend, but get the gist) saying, hey, the Dems are so great because they respect LGBTQ+ folks & fight for [not really] Choice & abortion rights, so let’s ignore the genocide!! A bunch of bourgeois, empty headed performative clowns who wouldn’t lift a finger to help someone they don’t know. For anyone who has seen the movie “They Live!” that’s the world they want– “Obey. Consume. Conform. Work. Don’t Question.”
The Dems are now the party of the Cheneys & NeoCons, endless wars, ripping off the public & letting the infrastructure fall apart, etc. Of course the R’s are a bunch of crazy gun-loving, misogynist, fetus fanatic fools. There is no “Left” in the US, except for some young students who will be crushed under the Kamala Reich. Zionism is going to be the official state ideology under Harris (& her rapist, Zionist handler hubby) every bit as much as it would have been under Trump.
As Oakchair notes, the US future is the few stomping on the faces of the many forever– or at least the foreseeable future. But at least the Rest of the World is walking away from U$A!! For those of us with resources to get out of this shithole country, the clock is ticking, the time is late, time to get out.
Mark Level
Oh, & this take from Mondoweiss perfectly forecasts where things are headed under the Kamala Klavern–
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/11/the-case-for-abandoning-the-burning-house/
someofparts
NR – I am one of those women who remember conditions before Roe and you are right about how my cohort feels about this, and also right about what we remember all too clearly. I hope the young ones coming after us, who don’t have these precautionary memories, will be alert enough to protect these hard-earned gains after we are gone. Not that my fellow geriatrics have done as much as we should have, but I still hope some kind of torch gets passed, bedraggled though it be.
Oakchair
As much as abortion is a hot button issue, it’s also a distracting
—–
Chronic illness has increased from 7% to 50+%
Autism rates from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 30
Life expectancy has decreased since the late 90’s
Addiction, depression, anxiety are ever increasing
Homelessness and housing prices are skyrocketing
We’ve been in constant war for 25 years
And what is everyone raging about? The rights of a clumps of cells, proper pronoun use, and the number of Mexicans in the country.
This is what a poisoned, propagandized, mentally sick society in the thralls of social breakdown looks like.
Tallifer
I suspect that there are too many white women who want to be Southern belles served by grateful darkies and who like to see themselves as more Christian and virtuous than a “bunch of whores.” In my rural area, there are many women who actually dismiss the women who seek refuge in the local Sanctuary House (for battered women) as whores. Unbelievable, I know; but no more real than all the American union members who enthusiastically support the capitalist pillager Trump and his buddies.
Daniel Lynch
According to Gallup, until 2019 women were split 50/50 on abortion. Since then, women supporting abortion has steadily climbed and is now 63/33, while men remain divided about 50/50. Apparently a lot of women “woke up” after Trump (who for most of his life was a pro-choice Democrat) appointed anti-abortion judges.
So be it. I have always felt that outlawing abortion was a losing political issue. Outside of the bible belt, religious fundamentalists are a small minority, and even the fundamentalists have to vote on a mixed bag of issues and are not necessarily fixated on abortion. If a Democrat ran on increasing SS benefits and giving everyone free health care, that could pull a lot of Trump voters back into the Democratic party.
But that’s not who the Democrats are. Instead, both parties work for the rich, and both parties rely on divisive social issues to rally their voters while screwing them economically. In a close election like 2024, even a small minority of single issue voters can make a difference. And so here we are.
Nate Wilcox
I’m following the early vote numbers as closely as I can and I’m not seeing a blue wave anywhere.
Mark Level
I hope Nate Wilcox is correct. Sadly, my sources indicate the swap-out of Kamala for droolin’ great-grampa Biden worked. The Dem Maga voters (wealthy suburbanites, dumb Normies, I’ve Got Mine nepo-babies) are legion & just love that the Cheneys are on board, so is “Bloody Bill” Kagan & the rest of the NeoCon mass-murderers. These people don’t have children in the military fighting the Endless Wars like the poors do, so the status quo is fine for them.
Kamala has all the charisma of a soggy dishrag, but the “Oogabooga! Trump is a monster & we’ll have full on fascism” (vs. Kamala’s “Most Lethal Military” the world has ever seen) Lesser Evil seems to win with people. The Dems will be rewarded for their over year-long genocide, & they will double down on it. The US is truly fvcked– but let’s all us USians admit it is a society in decline that deserves further decimation & misery.
Mark Level
Correction– bloody Bill Kristol, not Kagan (Vicky Nudelman, “Nuland’s” bloodthirsty hubby.) The Zionists are so interchangeable & legion, it’s easy to confuse the names.
Soredemos
@Oakchair
The immigration issue is an economic one, and is legitimately a disaster. They’re also swarming support services, public and private, that are meant for homeless American citizens. Though there it’s less ‘Mexicans’ and much more ‘Venezualans’. And that’s not some ‘I overheard a racist guy in a bar muttering or saw an unsourced claim on Facebook’; it’s literally my job.
As for autism, I suspect that’s mostly a combination our for profit medical industrial complex overdiganosing, a general culture of narcissism that is leading many people to insist on absurdities like that they’re a special snowflake two spirit trapped in the wrong body, some weird mystical spirtual essentialism, and cultural changes that are driving people away from normal social interaction. Most of the time they’re not autistic. They’re just poorly socialized.
Failed Scholar
Well Ian, you were right about sucking about electoral predictions, LOL. Selzer just re-re-reconfirms to never, ever, ever trust polling.