For Democrats who are worried about the 2024 election, and plenty of us are, the results on Tuesday had to be encouraging. For decades, Democrats have argued that we were just one vote (on the Supreme Court) away from losing Roe v. Wade. Republicans, for their part, presented themselves as “pro-life” without having to detail exactly what that meant. Even though polls showed that the country supported Roe v. Wade and generally opposed strict abortion bans, the issue did not move elections, try though Democrats did.
Then, with three Trump appointees creating a new majority, the court overruled Roe v. Wade and everything changed. Abortion is an issue that is working for Democrats even in states that lean Republican. And it is working with double-digit margins, as Tuesday’s election in Ohio demonstrated. That state, which twice supported Donald Trump for president, enacted a constitutional amendment enshrining abortion rights. Abortion rights helped propel Democrats to control both chambers of the legislature in Virginia. It helped cement a second term for the popular governor of Kentucky, hardly a Democratic stronghold.
Indeed, the one thing that both Republicans and Democrats agreed on Tuesday was that the issue is working powerfully for Democrats. “Abortion is the No. 1 issue in the 2024 campaign,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat who provided financial support in both Ohio and Virginia, told The New York Times. “If you’re not talking about protecting women’s reproductive rights as a Democrat, you’re not doing it right.”
For his part, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy summed up the view of many Republicans when he told CNN, “Our pro-life movement, and I am part of it, needs to be better about the way we discuss this issue. There are deep reflections in the Republican Party and in the pro-life movement about how to improve from here.”
