Kansas had a measure on its ballot yesterday that essentially allowed the legislature to overrule a state court decision from a few years back that had protected abortion. There wasn't much else on the ballot to interest Democrats, but it didn't matter: they turned out in droves to defeat the initiative by a whopping 59-41%. Turnout was about 900,000 voters compared to 500,000 in the previous midterm election.
And this is despite the fact that Kansas remains a pretty conservative state. According to 538.com, they're the 14th most conservative state in the country, right below Mississippi and Louisiana.
It's still early days and I don't know if I'd draw any strong conclusions from this. That said, it's got to be good news for us pro-choicers that this initiative (a) got Democrats out to the polls, (b) lost in a landslide, (c) in a pretty red state. That doesn't mean we can win in Alabama or West Virginia, but it suggests that in most places abortion is an issue that Democrats can campaign and win on.
Clearly, there are women voting in Kansas.
One hopes they'll still be angry in November.
Yeah... angry at Sharice Davids, for rigging the 2018 primary against Brent Welder (who would have won*), & Laura Kelly**, for being a Hillary Clinton-like GQP colonist to the Democrat Party, parachuting in after years of being a Goldwater Girl, like it was nothing at all.
*If there is a Red Wave & that Indigenous Lesbian MMA fighting lawyer loses on the back of the false idol of Neoliberal #idpol, I will finally be able to unironically say "WELDER@ WOULD HAVE WON".
**Irony is the real analog to Laura Kelly's well into adulthood conversion to the Democrat Party is much more comfortably in line with the Fauxgressive favorite Elizabeth Warren than it is with Shrillary Climpton.
@Who voted yes on the abortion amendment.
Can you translate that into sane, plz.
Finnegan's Wake is more comprehensible
i doubt it
I've given up even trying to read the Mongoose.
I thought the data show women are generally more likely to be pro-life than men? Maybe that’s only true when it’s hypothetical - when the right might actually get taken away, they change their minds?
Small turnout effect?
Notice, though, that Kansas Republicans were careful to put this on the ballot in AUGUST. I don't follow politics there at all, and it may be there aren't any competitive general election races. But it sounds like KS GOP wasn't taking any chances. Also, I strongly suspect many Republicans there will be perfectly happy to have this radioactive issue off the table for a while, so, they both get a politically useful result and they successful channel the Democratic surge into an (August) election that won't threaten their ability to win various offices in November.
Thankfully Kansas isn't Pennsylvania, .
They wanted to put it in a primary because independents can't vote in primaries, and registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats roughly 2:1. They weren't allowed to make this election a primary so they called it a "special election" allowing independents to vote in it.
By all indications, had they left it for the general election in November, the vote would have been even more lopsided in favor of abortion rights. They didn't gain any real advantage putting it in August instead.
If GQP no voters continue to elect GQP candidates who will just agitate to get the results that would gave cone from a yes vote, they are as dumb as the Missouri voters who approved Medicaid expansion & Florida voters who went for felon reenfranchisement.
Do voters from the State of Kansas want to be known as dumb as the descendants of Quantrill in Missouri?
(The answer to that question is also why I think Herschel ultimately loses in Georgia. Georgians like to think of themselves as a cut or three above their podunk neighbors South Carolina, Alabama, etc., & will not want to see the Empire State of the South be no better than those Tommy Tuberville aficionados in the Heart of Dixie.)
It will only be off of the table if Democrats submit to Republican power to set the agenda. The is clearly a powerful issue and it must be exploited to the hilt. The Democrats must make it clear that if they are able to keep the congress, they will absolutely do whatever is necessary to protect not just abortions but also reproductive rights and birth control generally.
I think once the economic issues die down it could really take the spotlight
That’s not a prescriptive statement, just descriptive. Social issues really only take the fore for the average voter when there’s nothing else to talk about
What it tells me is that Democrats don't keep both chambers and increase their count in the Senate by at least a couple seats, every single election consultant (starting with Mark Penn) needs to be stuffed in a locker and left there until 2025.
I do apologize for not being able to take a win and breathe, but this is where a lifetime of rooting for the sane-but-incompetent team has left me.
Which candidate is Mark Penn actively working for? His career as an activist & campaign pro seems deader than Bob Shrum. (At least Bobby still gets the occasional call to be on an MSDSA panel & the like.)
He still seems inexplicably influential. Regularly writing op-ed pieces and interviewed a lot. Penn is fading (slowly) but he is emblematic of the incompetent and ossified consultant class which has horribly weakened the party and placed their own well-being above winning elections and promoting the Democratic agenda.
On that we can agree.
Slowly America is realizing that the Republican party is riven with a bunch of zealots who are willing to overturn every right, congressional restraint on business, and democracy itself to live in the 1904 America of their dreams.
There arem more independents than Democratics in Kansas and, normally, they don't have anything to vote for in primaries because the primaries are closed. Giving independents something to vote for must have been the biggest reason for the increased turnout. Lessons must be learnt.
What yesterday's results showed is that for Republicans, there's just no going back to any kind of "normal" because the party's voting base (or those who vote in primaries anyways) has become so batshit insane that Trump becomes irrelevant. They don't need him anymore to tell them what to think, they've already worked it out in their own minds. And if it means they lose in the general election, so be it. (They'll simply say they've been cheated.) As I learned long ago about the "conservative movement", it has no use for the ethic of responsibility. The only thing it cares about is "that the flame of pure intention is unquenched." Well fine then, burn yourselves out. See anyone cares.
The only way this kind of politics is going to be cracked is if Republicans in their supposedly safe districts start losing to Dems and the only way that happens is if a number of Republicans who won't lose their minds start voting Democratic. It's the only way because last night showed any other kind of Republican other than MAGA gets beat in the primary. In time such persons may very well become Democrats themselves because this is a very broad-based party with very few litmus tests (and those who failed them ala Manchin and Cuellar still get elected). I hear it's been said that at least 25 percent of Republican women have had abortions. If that 25 percent moves into the Dem column, things will change.
Agreed
"There wasn't much on the ballot to interest Democrats..."
Tell me you're a cisgender heterosexual man without telling me you're a cisgender heterosexual man. Control over their own bodies is a pretty big effin' deal to women, as it is for black people, LGBT people, and others who weren't automatically assumed to have bodily autonomy when the nation was founded.
I think he meant primary elections.
"There wasn't much else on the ballot to interest Democrats,
"...much ELSE"
Let's finish that sentence, shall we?
"but it didn't matter: they turned out in droves to defeat the initiative by a whopping 59-41%."
Tell me you don't know how to read without telling me you don't know how to read.
“…tell me you're a cisgender heterosexual man without telling me you're a cisgender heterosexual man…”
Yuck dude.
Reproductive rights defended in Kansas. Here's why that's bad news for Joe Biden.
Social conservatives wanted Roe v Wade overturned so badly - but, hmm, sometimes you must be careful what you wish for. I live in Texas, and I wonder how a referendum on abortion might go here. I can imagine a result similar to Kansas.
This makes you wonder if the US should start using direct democracy a lot more. Rarely is the voice of democracy as clear as in Kansas in this vote.
When the chickens come home to roost and you end up killing two birds with one stone. That kind of sums up the last 6 years.
I hate to point this out, but a substantial number of those votes were from Republicans. They voted for Donald Trump and they put Republicans in charge of the state. And they'll do it again in November.
Thank you, Mr. Drum.
I was not complacent, but suspected my faith in Kansas women was not misplaced. While my birthplace is a quirky university town* where its origins are respected but recognized as unrelated to today's Republican Party, the remainder of the state seems determined to ignore party history & simply vote the brand more out of habit (I hope) than the malice found in other red states. Our people have less in common with the states that became red after 1964-1965 than is mentioned, & the history of this issue includes the murders of two doctors. Lynn Weller & George Tiller - one by a rival, the other by a fanatical forced-birther. Folks probably are not prepared to accept a repeat of those years.
As a reminder, women's suffrage was first seriously considered in Kansas in 1859, when they were allowed to vote only in school district elections, but they gained the vote in 1912 - 8 years prior to the effective date of the 19th Amendment. And abortions were permitted - if approved by three physicians- before Roe.
Other states may not duplicate this turnout & results, but they make me feel more hopeful than the opposing poll results that indicate either energized younger women, or ones who report no plans to vote.
Ad Astra per Aspera
* fondly referred to as "an island of blue in a sea of red"
Do people still remember that Dr. Tiller was shot dead while serving as an usher in his church? That is just one of many incidents that prevents my using the conservatives' preferred term of "pro-life." Even "conservative" is too mild a term for their radically illiberal policies.