Democrats Win Key Off-Year Elections
Abortion, an unrepresentative electorate, and candidate idiosyncracy ruled the off-off-year election.
NYT (“Abortion Rights Fuel Big Democratic Wins, and Hopes for 2024“):
Democrats won decisive victories in major races across the country on Tuesday evening, overcoming the downward pull of an unpopular president, lingering inflation and growing global unrest by relying on abortion, the issue that has emerged as their fail-safe since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.
In races in parts of the South and the Rust Belt, Democrats put abortion rights at the center of their campaigns, spending tens of millions of dollars on ads highlighting Republican support for abortion bans.
The Democratic governor of Kentucky, Andy Beshear, won a second term, after repeatedly criticizing his Republican opponent for initially backing a state abortion ban that contains no exceptions for rape or incest. In Virginia, Democrats won control of both chambers after an avalanche of advertising focused on abortion. In Pennsylvania, Democrats won a seat on the State Supreme Court, in a race that also saw a flurry of abortion-related ads.
And in Ohio, a ballot measure establishing a right to abortion in the State Constitution won by a double-digit margin, a striking demonstration of support for abortion rights in a conservative state that Donald J. Trump won twice by convincing margins.
The results amounted to a resounding victory for abortion rights, proving once again that the issue can energize a broad coalition of Democrats, independents and even some moderate Republicans. As the country heads into the 2024 presidential election, the Republican Party continues to search for an answer to a topic that has vexed them since the fall of Roe. Democrats, meanwhile, face a daunting question of their own, in a year when President Biden’s record, personal brand and perceptions of his fitness to serve another term will be inescapable.
Will abortion still pack enough of an electoral punch to overcome Mr. Biden’s political weaknesses?
Historically, re-elections have been referendums on the incumbent president and his leadership. Democrats are hoping to transform the 2024 contest into something different — an election that revolves not around the present occupant of the White House but around the previous one, Mr. Trump, and his party’s embrace of abortion bans that are out of step with a majority of voters.
Already, Democrats have launched plans to use referendums, like the one that passed in Ohio, as a way to energize their base in 2024. There are efforts underway to get such measures on the ballot in swing states including Arizona, Florida, Nevada and Pennsylvania. For his part, Mr. Biden’s campaign released an early ad highlighting Mr. Trump’s support for overturning Roe.
POLITICO (“Democrats romp, Youngkin flops: 4 takeaways from Tuesday’s election“):
Joe Biden has had a very bad few days. His party just had a banner year.
In Tuesday night’s off-year elections, the incumbent Democratic governor in Kentucky — a state President Joe Biden lost by 26 points — handily won reelection. Democrats not only rebuffed Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s bid for total control of the state legislature by keeping the state Senate — they flipped the state House, too. And the party held a state Supreme Court seat in the nation’s largest Electoral College battleground of Pennsylvania.
None of these wins guarantee success for the party in 2024. Biden is losing to former President Donald Trump in a host of recent polls, and Democrats are underdogs to hold their Senate majority.
But for now, the results on Tuesday — taken together with a string of special elections throughout the year that showed Democratic candidates outperforming Biden’s vote shares in districts across the country — serve as a powerful counterpoint to the party’s doom-and-gloom over the president’s poll numbers.
Democrats’ victories won’t make those polls go away, but they should prompt a rethinking of the current political moment, with a year to go until the next general election.
Democrats should obviously be buoyed by the outcomes here. They won for a second straight cycle.
Still, it’s hard to project these results onto 2024. Midterm elections are not at all predictive of the next presidential elections and these off-year elections, with no federal offices on the ballot, are especially quirky because they’re incredibly low-turnout affairs motivated by the idiosyncracies of local politics.
The re-election of Andy Beshear, a young, charismatic, popular governor in Kentucky, tells us next to nothing about the prospects of Joe Biden, a geriatric, dull, unpopular President. If the Democrats somehow decided to nominate him as their 2024 Presidential candidate, though, I think he’d beat Trump 54-46. Alas, that’s unlikely.
Since Dobbs, abortion seems to have switched from a cause that motivates Republican turnout to one that motivates Democratic turnout. But it’s not clear how that translates to Presidential and Congressional races. Even if Trump were re-elected and Republicans retake a majority in the Senate, they’re not going to have the filibuster-proof margin needed to pass an abortion ban. For that matter, Trump has shown no interest in signing something like that.
I’ve been reading for months about how Republicans under Youngkin were going to take over the Virginia senate, giving him total control over the state to pass an abortion ban which he kept insisting was not a ban because he said so. It is true that most of the articles said “if,” but they were almost entirely written to be read as “when.” And I never saw any pushback.
But not only did Republicans not retake the state senate, they also lost the other house, which they’d controlled for a couple of years. And at least one local schoolboard saw the book-banning nuts pushed out.
So goodbye President Youngkin, sorry to see you limp off into the sunset.
I’ve read some anecdotal reports that the Moms for Liberty crowd got trounced across the state in local elections in Pennsylvania last night. Can anyone confirm?
Neither are polls a year out with “doesn’t know” percentages anywhere from 9 to 5 points. But it’s not just the mid term, it’s special elections, and now this off-off year election. while the Gaza war and the economy could still throw a monkey wrench into the gears the idea that this election doesn’t give us some idea of where the country is headed generally seems less credible.
It think is does tell us that anti-abortion candidates start in a a bit of a hole from this point on. Also we seem to be seeing that “MAGA” candidates, including local races, also start in a bit of a shallow hole; and those “shallow holes” are compounding.
All and all I would rather have last nights outcomes heading into 2024 then not.
@Jen:
This at the daily beast.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/moms-for-liberty-candidates-taught-a-lesson-in-2023-elections
In yet another example of Republican projection (every accusation is a confession), Ohio GOPers lamented outside money presenting deceitful ads on Issue 1. Secretary of State Frank LaRose – who wants Sherrod Brown’s Senate seat – chipped in by hyper-charging the language of the ballot summary (e.g., changing “fetus” to “unborn child”), and then outside money flooded the airwaves with dishonest claims (abortion will be allowed “right up until birth,” eventually “government will be paying for abortions”). On abortion, the GOP is the car chasing dog that actually caught the car. Instead of using results in Ohio and VA to buttress the meme of Biden being “deeply unpopular,” the media might want to consider those results as an indication that the GOP is moving father and farther from what normal Americans consider to be mainstream.
I really think the Democrats need to push forward beyond abortion to a Freedom Agenda. Freedom of choice, Freedom to choose your mate, Freedom to plan your family, Freedom of privacy. Linking back in history to Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms would also be a positive.
And fly the American flag while doing it.
AFAIK Democrats overperformed pretty much all across the board.
I’m not going to pretend that I know what this means, but it’s probably something more than off-year randomness.
@Scott: I think the Democratic message in the square states should be, “Those Republicans just want to get into your business. They want to monitor how live your life and if they decide you don’t meet their standards they want to get all up in your face. Do you really want these guys following you into the bathroom so they can do a junk check?”
FTFNYT.
Maybe on their next Cletus safari they should talk to some Democrats.
Well, if US “off-year” elections are anything like UK local elections, they may not be predictive.
But if your key voters are turning out in non-general elections, it’s usually a good sign for the general.
@drj: When taken into account alongside the over-performance in special elections leading up to this off-off-year election cycle, yes.
Any election can be viewed as an outlier when examined in isolation. However, when one takes the results from special elections into account along with these results, it would be foolish for Republicans to get overly comfortable with their current polling.
@drj: Democrats have, in my view, overperformed in nearly every election since 2018.
MAGA is passionate but thin – and it’s turning off way more people than it’s turning on.
I think it’s a mistake to view the Dobbs effect in terms of how relevant it may or may not be to a specific race. They’ve been overperforming even in elections where abortion wasn’t likely to be impacted. And regardless of whether you think a reinstated Trump with a Republican Congress would be likely to scrap the filibuster and enact a nationwide ban on abortion (and I’m not at all comfortable assuming they wouldn’t do just that), I think the issue is just something that gets Democratic voters engaged, period, and it’s tied to an overall theme of battling extremist restrictions of people’s rights. It’s kind of become the Dems’ version of gun rights, where it’s as much about how the other party is branded in their minds as it is about the practical consequences of their being elected.
I’m happy for the pro-choice folks in Ohio but – and correct me if I’m wrong – isn’t even a state constitutional right meaningless should a federal ban be put in place? Supremacy clause and all…
Wish the Ohio thing had been on the ballot in 2024. My guess is that the GOP avoids putting any abortion plans out until after the 2024 elections. Dems need to try to put them on the ballots. That said, they need to broaden their appeal also.
Steve
I’m a founding member of an under-the-radar group of kidlit authors who raise money for state legislative races. This year the group’s aim was to defend the VA Senate and flip the House. Katherine and I contributed $10,000 . It’s very gratifying when the return is this clear and convincing, a very nice bang-for-buck.
Beshear obviously moves into the 2028 presidential sweepstakes.
The execrable Dobbs decision brings to mind something Spock said: “You may find that having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.”
Trying to achieve a desired outcome energizes the electorate, and in particular the base, far more than achieving it. The Leonard Leo Court would have done best to slowly chip away at Roe than to overturn it.
@MarkedMan: Well, maybe Boebert.
Scott! Scott! Behave! This is a respectable blog!
Joe Biden, a geriatric, dull, unpopular President who is running against a geriatric, demented, bat shit crazy, seditionist, unpopular former president.
I think I know which of the 2 I am putting my money on.
Every state in play should put Marijuana and Abortion on the ballot. Both. In every state possible.
For 2024, they need to hammer the fact that Trump in specific and Republican in general are responsible for the Dobbs decision.
Looking forward to 2024.
@EddieInCA: It worked for GOPs back when Rove was getting anti-gay marriage initiatives on ballots wherever he could to drive turnout for W. Goose/gander.
Speaking of W, I wonder how he feels about virtually everybody saying the Israelis shouldn’t screw up like we did after 9-11.
They won’t hesitate to kill the filibuster.
If it spites the Democrats, he’ll sign it.
@Michael Reynolds: If it spites the Democrats, he’ll sign it.
To be fair, signing it would also be potentially personally profitable. Guy doesn’t gaf about whether those people can get abortions, he’ll sign an abortion ban (even a limited one) if he thinks he can grift off it. Which is more likely than if he sees one at his desk and doesn’t sign it. Can’t sucker the rubes if you tear up their marquee bill.
Big thing for me in Pennsylvania was the Democrats winning all of the statewide judicial elections, but they also swept all of the local county office elections and the local township and school boards
@Michael Reynolds:
There’s another component to it, which is that there is no group whose adulation Trump craves more than evangelicals. Now, it’s true that they seem to love him unconditionally, despite his wobbliness on the abortion issue, so it could be argued he’s got nothing to fear from losing their support. But the absolute love and worship he gets from these folks helps reinforce their power over him; he clearly is fearful of seeing a wane in their affections, which is why he hasn’t outright said fuck ’em, and he’s repeatedly done walkbacks whenever he’s been perceived as wavering.
Here in Texas there was very little to vote for (at least in my area) and turnout reflected that. However, there was 14 amendments to the Texas Constitution. Now that in itself doesn’t have much meaning because the Texas Constitution is the second longest in the nation (Alabama’s is largest) and we amend it for the most trivial of reasons. Anyhow, 13 of the 14 Propositions passed with flying colors. The one Proposition that went down was intended to raise to raise the mandatory retirement age for judges from 75 to 79. It lost by 63-37 percent. So now I’m wondering if there is any meaning behind that. Is it because, like me, there is a belief out there that us old folks should just get the eff out of the way and stop hanging on to power?
I’m less worried about Trump today than I was yesterday. But it’s interesting to speculate on how he’d behave. Would he feel he’s a lame duck or would he think he can force a third term, or extend his second? If he thinks he might do another election he’ll focus on a GOP primary and sign an abortion ban. If he thinks he’s out in four years gawd knows what he might do. He has no policy positions except his own wealth and aggrandizement. He might go for Götterdämmerung.
@Jen:
Two candidates ran for our local school board (NJ) with the Moms For Liberty endorsement. Neither one. I’m not sure how realistic their prospects were but did see several people on FB trying to suss out which candidates got that endorsement and then declaring their support for someone else.
@Paine:
As with these things, it’s complicated. Regarding criminal charges, it would all depend on whether or not the Federal Government was willing to prosecute in those States. Doctors would not be able to be prosecuted under local law (this is what happens in states with different forms of drug legalization).
However, a Federal Ban could easily make it all but impossible to conduct abortions due to regulatory restrictions. This is a massive issue with the legal marijuana industry, where you can’t get banking and other business services due to federal legislation, which makes it really difficult to run a business.
@EddieInCA:
One of the challenges of the last three election cycles is that neither Clinton nor Biden are willing to support marijuana legalization at the federal level in any serious way. And from what I have heard, neither is willing to budge on that particular policy positions.
@wr:
Talkers talk. Many of the talkers are still woefully out of touch with the American people, having learned nothing from their “Red Wave 2022” debacle. Some keep getting paid very well even when wrong, so there’s no incentive to change. They just skip right on to their more overconfident, out-of-touch hot takes and flawed analysis.
Democrats are out among the people, on the ground, doing the work — that’s why they keep winning. Work > talk talk talk.
@Michael Reynolds:
My thought exactly.
Nice to come back to this after a few weeks in Italy with zero US politics.
@mattbernius:
I suspect this position is going rapidly become untenable. The only thing that was able to fully knock me out of my PTSD funk yesterday was an edible. I was able to put some distance between myself and my problems in a way that let me handle them and wake up today and actually work. We need Dems to get out there and explicitly say that the War on Drugs needs to be ended.
This should be part of a larger discussion with abortion about leaving it to people to manage their own bodies. Hell, I wish I could get psychedelics from Pfizer and know what I’m getting instead of whatever the rando chemist has.
Lol, paint the Republicans as supporting the Cartels and fentanyl poisoning with the War on Drugs.
@DK:
The only actual data I’ve seen says pundits get paid better the more they’re wrong. The key to financial success is to find an audience and tell that audience what it wants to hear. And that peddles papers, so their bosses are good with them being wrong.
George Will has been a hugely successful pundit. This morning he has a particularly dumb, and spectacularly ill timed, column concern trolling Ds that they’d better dump old man Biden while they still can. Not gonna waste a gift link on it. It should have gone in the waste basket last night, alongside Youngkin’s prez announcement.
@Beth:
That has more potential than we might realize. If only there were gangsters these days who were willing to go public on social issues in the mode of Al Capone. ETA: Alas, all the big deal people are invisible these days. On the other hand, easier to reach out to Congress that way. 🙁
@anjin-san:
He could theoretically even carry his home state in a presidential election. Blue Kentucky? To match the grass?
The GOP beat on Beshear pretty hard over his veto of an anti-trans law. And he still improved his numbers over his initial election. Interesting.
@Beth: @Just nutha ignint cracker: I think that to a certain degree, fentanyl panic has replaced reefer madness as the (heavily racialized) Republican wedge issue when it comes to drugs. There are still plenty of anti-weed Republicans, and it’s enough to stand in the way of full legalization, but it’s not where the party’s energy is anymore.
I’m fascinated to see how the anti-choice candidates (all of them, IIRC) at the debate tonight respond to the drubbing they received last night.
Will they double down like Sporkfoot did, today?
Will they fall back on the states-rights malarky (likely)?
DeSantis signed a six week ban in the dark of night, because ~56% of Floridians support abortion rights.
@Michael Reynolds:
I tend to assume Beshear has some positions that would be at odds with the national Democratic Party, such as on coal plants, though when I scanned his Wikipedia profile I couldn’t find any obvious deal-breakers. He’s more conventionally Democratic than, say, John Bel Edwards. That’s already an impressive square to circle. And, as we saw with Biden’s nomination in 2020, “purity” doesn’t always win in the Democratic primaries.
But that doesn’t mean he’d be an easy sell to the Democratic primary electorate, and if he did manage to win the nomination, it would almost certainly involve having to present himself in a way that made him less palatable to Kentucky voters. It’s part of what Al Gore ran into when he failed to carry Tennessee in 2000. The worst case scenario is someone like Romney, who contorted himself to such a degree in his move from MA governor to GOP presidential candidate, he came off as barely human.
I think we’re no longer in the era where a candidate’s home state can make a massive difference to what sorts of voters he or she attracts and what the eventual electoral map looks like. The last time it really happened was Bill Clinton with Arkansas, but that was in a historical context that no longer exists, where the Southern states had shifted heavily toward the Republican Party in presidential elections, but remained solidly Democratic at the state level, so that the moment one of these local Southern politicians became the Dem nominee, it was enough to bring back at least some of those states.
I suppose there could be marginal examples where it might work today, in states that slightly but not overwhelmingly lean toward one party, as might be the case if the Repubs nominated, say, Chris Sununu, or the Dems nominated Roy Cooper (putting aside for the moment whether either could win their party’s nomination for president).
@Michael Reynolds:
Best news of the day for me. I think long-term the trans issues will do badly, but I wonder how long it will take for long-term to overcome the short-term freakout. As a matter of electoral strategy, I think they started their initiative a year too early.
@DK: “Some keep getting paid very well even when wrong, so there’s no incentive to change. ”
You misspelled ‘every single one of them’
It goes without saying it’s imperative for Biden to win in 24, for reasons we all know too well.
Right now, though, I want him to win just to see how the media spins reelection as “Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad News for Biden.”
@Beth:
Glad to hear you are feeling better today.
B-b-but the NYT Vibescast(patent pending) showed Biden’s polling weakness across the board in key battleground states!
How could political reporters, a group of individuals notorious for their laziness to do any research or lack of commitment beyond the most conventional of narratives, get the attitude of America voters wrong?
@Kylopod: I’m seeing it as a long-term talking point rather than an instant winner “gotcha!”. People who want the War on Drugs to end are going to need to be as tenacious as anti-abortion evangelicals–in for the long haul.
@mattbernius:
Thanks. I’m trying to just be today. Hopefully that helps.
@Jay L Gischer: Trans issues are probably another issue where the supporters need to do the evangelical-type “in for the long haul” approach. It may take half a century to win this one. How long ago was Stonewall? And gays haven’t really “won” yet.
@Beth: I’m someone who rarely tried drugs in my youth. But now as a middle aged person with chronic pain and leery of opioids, I’m so frigging glad marijuana is legal in Washington state and I can find cannabis stores all over.
@Beth: Wacky Tobacky for the win! Be well.
@Kathy:
They’ll probably bring up the “second-term curse.”
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I’ve been watching the trans issue play out in social media, and having some insight from my extremely political trans daughter, and what I took away was that the trans movement had a Bull Run moment. They won the early battle, the other side looked ineffectual. They thought they had this. I was surprised at how much headway they made early on. I’ll admit I was right there with them thinking, charge!
But the bad guys didn’t just conveniently disappear, it just took them a beat to figure out how to grift off the issue. And our side acted like they’d won. To shift military metaphors, it was the Mongol trick of seeming to retreat, only to lure the eager pursuers into a trap. Our side underestimated the enemy, thought we had it, then realized oh, not just yet we don’t.
One last metaphorical shift. The first lesson of horror movies is never split up, but the second is: when the bad guy’s down, fucking kill him. Make 100% sure of it. No high-fives till you make sure he’s dead.
Live and learn. Hopefully.
@Michael Reynolds:
And remember that a large number of these guys are still fighting the War Of Northern Aggression.
Seriously. They never let it go because their worldview would make no sense.
@steve: “Wish the Ohio thing had been on the ballot in 2024. My guess is that the GOP avoids putting any abortion plans out until after the 2024 elections. ”
One Ohio Republican was bragging that Dems had really screwed up, because now that abortion was settled in Ohio Sherrod Brown lost his major campaign issue for 2024.
Then 37 R members of the Ohio House declared that the fight wasn’t over, and they would start introducing bills to reverse abortion rights. Which means they’ll be running on a platform of “We don’t care what you want — we’re going to take away your rights no matter what.”