The two parties have settled on their major issues to energize voters ahead of the midterm elections in November. For Democrats, the issue will be all Roe all the time as the left will look to energize their radical base and move them to the polls.
Meanwhile, Republicans will downplay the controversy over Roe v. Wade and hammer the cost of living as inflation continues to occupy the nation’s attention.
Both parties have chosen the correct strategy. The midterm elections are all about turning out your own voters. Democrats will gin up hysteria about a “loss” of abortion rights in order to drive their supporters to the polls. It’s a high-risk strategy, but with the president’s approval ratings underwater, it makes the most sense.
While Democrats will seek to make abortion an issue, it will ultimately fail to break through, Tillis said. “It’s just like great Democrat strategists said many years ago: It’s about the economy, stupid, and that’s what people are going to be voting on.”
That stands in sharp contrast to what Democratic leaders are saying publicly, pointing to a potential Roe reversal as a midterm game changer. Party leaders are heralding the threat of not only state bans on abortion but a possible federal ban passed in Congress to motivate pro-abortion-rights voters to get to the polls and elect Democrats.
“Senate Republicans will no longer be able to hide from the horror they’ve unleashed upon women in America,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Monday. “After spending years packing our courts with right-wing judges … the time has come for Republicans — this new MAGA Republican Party — to answer for their actions.”
Schumer has a big problem; there are a helluva lot more voters who care that their purchasing power has been disappearing than care about who gets to kill their baby.
But the Democrats are hoping that the abortion issue plays in some close races where activists have goosed the turnout for a Democratic candidate. Their game plan appears to be to frighten women by telling them that Republicans are going to charge them with murder if they get an abortion after Roe is rolled back as expected.
Rolling back Roe won’t end abortion. But restrictions on abortion are very popular, despite Democrats’ hysteria.
Polling conducted over the past year shows that the majority support banning most abortions after 15 weeks of gestation, they oppose federal funding for abortion, and they don’t want abortion pills dispensed through the mail.
Such positions run counter to the Democratic Party line, which explains why pro-choice lawmakers don’t go there, said Floyd Ciruli, director of the University of Denver’s Crossley Center for Public Opinion Research.
“As soon as you start talking about restrictions, Democrats are playing defense, which is why they’re focused almost entirely on Roe and criminalization. They want to keep that the focus as much as possible,” said Mr. Ciruli. “That’s their best argument.”
Abortion is the hill to die on for some on the left. For them, the issue will be vital in the midterm election.
But most voters from both parties care a lot more about having a secure job and the ability to afford to live decently. In this sense, Democrats will be successful in driving their most committed voters to the polls while Republicans should be able to sweep up the rest.
It’s no mystery who wins in that contest.
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