Amendment 4, the abortion rights initiative in Florida, received 58% of the vote. In Florida! A state so red that Donald Trump is winning by 13 points. That's a remarkable showing.
But it takes 60% to win in Florida, so it's going down to defeat. That's depressing. Nonetheless, the pro-life forces should be on notice if they can only manage 42% of the vote for an abortion ban in the deep South. They are not holding a winning hand.
"Abortion rights in Florida win big, but lose anyway"
Thank you for a CORRECT headline. This should have been written about another 100+ topics that won big but couldn't get past the filibuster in the Senate.
They (the ant-abortion crowd) won. Why isn’t that a winning hand? If Trump loses the popular vote and wins the electoral vote that will also be the winning hand.
Passing policies that majorities hate requires increasing levels of repression to make stick. It’s why - usually - aspiring dictators don’t actually pass policies that majorities hate, at least not in the beginning. Eventually, if majorities hate your policies, majorities lack the will to enforce those policies, and everything goes to shit* / you get overgrown by a rival or the military or civil war breaks out.
*if tens of millions of people refuse to participate in the enforcement of your abortion ban, you find yourself in the position of firing/jailing lots of medical personnel, leaving your hospitals understaffed, which eventually affects the livelihoods of your fervent supporters.
Here’s a non abortion example: Putin may be winning, in the sense that he and his party have zero chance of being overthrown. But daily life in Russia is pretty crappy, even for the rich. If that’s “winning” well… you’re already lost. Trump and MAGA are on track to “win” in the same way.
Their economy is actually running hot right now. Maybe that fact- & Putin's use of prisoners & foreign troops to avoid conscription allows them to forget about the government oppression.
Apparently the abortion issue is a pair of deuces compared to racism which is three knaves in Florida.
Not sure how this is a moral win. An essentially total abortion ban remains in place, it had no effect on the communal voting patterns aka partisan voting, and it is unlikely to be changed for a long time.
Assuming as you say that Florida is now solid red, with only 41% of Republicans/leaning Republicans supporting abortion rights in a May 2024 Gallup poll, how do you overcome a 60% threshold? They backstopped any attempts to change the law.
Still a defeat, though, and it's not like the Republicans dominating that state legislature are going to care whether it shows how unpopular their beliefs are. It's a real bummer, since Florida was doing a lot to absorb some of the lost access to abortion in the South before that six week ban.
Maybe they can try again next year. The ban should become less popular over time as more women die.
This, with other experience, shows that for all practical purposes 60% is an impossibly high threshold to surmount, for or against, in almost any collective that's bigger than about 10 people.
Ohio Rs in fact tried to set this 60% threshold before that state's own abortion referendum and failed; DeSantis actually did it and thereby prevented a popular over-ride. This demonstrated conclusively that almost anything that would be popular-- what the majority of the people want to have happen-- can be blocked by requiring that 60% approval.
The big lesson our minoritarian tyrants will draw from this episode is that they can force almost anything they want on the rest of us by setting a 60% minimum for referenda and other public votes on what they do. Still all very democratic, of course.
So that will be the next wave of constitutional measures in R states, by hook or by crook. And in solid R-majority legislatures, they'll force through 60% thresholds for categories of legislative action like raising or instituting taxes.
The only thing they'll never change to a 60% threshold is their own election to office. Laboratories of autocracy, indeed.
Re; DeSantis actually did it
No, nothing to do with Desantis. Florida voter referendums have required a 60% vote to take effect for years.
Thanks for the correction. I actually wondered about that after I posted . . .
Related, has any referendum passed since that became the rule? Wasn't there one to restore the vote to convicted felons who've served their time? Did that actually get over 60%? That would be the exception that proved the rule, for what that's worth.
The pro-life forces are not synonymous with the Republican Party in 2024.
The Republican party of the next 4 years will be very different from that of GWB in 2000.
But sure, continue to live in the past. How are these fine political analyses since Brexit turning out?
Florida is not really the Deep South. Or at least most of it is not. There are huge numbers of Caribbean people here-- many of them citizens and voters-- and there are huge numbers of transplanted northerners-- I'm one of them.