Abortion Is Going To Crush Trump No Matter How Hard The Press Tries To Ignore It
The coming blue wave is powered by the rage of women while the press is building little sandcastles on the beach.
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The New Republic has a helpful review of how badly Republicans misjudged the impact overturning Roe would have on elections. They honestly thought that women would just…get over it:
Concerned about the political blowback from the decision, Senate Republicans circulated a memo (scooped by Axios) that was little more than a big smiley button on how to handle abortion. Written immediately after the Alito leak, the memo recommends, “Be the compassionate, consensus-builder on abortion policy.… While people have many different views on abortion policy, Americans are compassionate people who want to welcome every new baby into the world.”
Ted Cruz said women would quickly realize that, really, no big deal because nothing’s actually different. Josh Hawley hilariously thought it would be good for Republicans because all of them baby-killin’ liberals would flee red states, consolidating GOP power.
This was across the board. You would have to look far and wide to find a Republican who spoke about the coming nightmare. A nightmare inflicted on the GOP by the corrupt Republican Justices of the Supreme Court, 3 of whom perjured themselves to get their seats.
Republicans had gotten high on their own supply. They had spent decades inside their ideological bubble, speaking only to people who would tell them what they wanted to hear. Even as they accused liberals of living in “ivory towers,” the GOP had sealed itself off inside of septic tanks, breathing toxic fumes they swore smelled like Mom’s Apple Pie™ and Reagan’s America.
To be fair, they had some basis for this wild optimism. Republicans have been using the courts to strip away the rights of various groups of people for decades and never once paid a price for it. With that kind of track record, why wouldn’t they assume they’d get away with it again?
Of course, those were either marginalized groups, like the LGBTQ community, or rights that were not life-threatening, like the right to vote. Women, on the other hand, are slightly over half the population of the country and abortion is, in fact, a critical life-saving procedure.
This is why, over the last two years, Republicans have been getting their faces ripped off at the ballot box over and over again.
For over 40 years, the GOP weaponized abortion and used it as a cudgel in elections. They can’t quite seem to grasp that their weapon has been turned on them and is in the process of beating them to death. They might be forgiven for their inability to understand what is happening to them. They don’t live in the real world, just the fictional one they’ve created for themselves.
The press, on the other hand, doesn’t have the same excuse. Politico had hardcore Republican Rich Lowry go on about how the Dobbs decision wouldn’t help Democrats at all. That was just 4 months before the GOP’s 2022 “red wave” crashed headlong into millions of extremely angry women and turned into a red trickle.
But Lowry and the rest of the right-wing media were far from the only ones insisting that ending Roe wouldn’t have much of an impact on American politics.
This was three weeks before the election:
Two weeks before:
A little over a week before election day:
At one point, the press started to ignore its own polling showing how much trouble Republicans were in. They wanted a red wave and by fucking god, they were going to manifest one!
To put it another way, back in 2010, the press made it very clear to everyone that Democrats losing special elections before the midterms was Very Important. It was a clear and unmistakable sign that Republicans were going to win big.
In 2018, the press did not want to talk about special elections before the massive blue wave.1 In 2022? Republicans were kind of winning special election right up until Roe was overturned. Then they started to lose. By a lot. Everywhere. Including deep red places Democrats aren’t supposed to win.
The press looked at that and…pretended it wasn’t happening. Nope. Big red wave coming. No stopping it! Angry women? What angry women?
The same thing happened in the 2023 off-year elections. Republicans were crushed like rotten grapes and the press was “surprised.”
Even now, that same press keeps looking at deeply flawed polling showing women supporting Trump and thinks, “Yeah, that sounds right.” As if the last two years just didn’t happen. As if women have not been exacting bloody vengeance on the GOP at every opportunity, no matter how hard Republicans try to cheat.
Republicans are still losing special elections. Abortion is on the ballot in several swing states. It’s also on the ballot in Florida, which just enacted a cruel abortion ban. Florida, which had become a safe haven for the GOP, is now very much in play. Losing those 30 electoral votes would mean Trump’s path to victory would be paper thin. And the paper would be on fire.
But the press doesn’t really want to talk about that. They’d rather keep trying to talk about, I kid you not, Biden’s fucking age even as Trump literally cannot stay awake in court.
I for real thought they were going to have to move on from this but it legitimately appears to be all they have left. There’s a limit to the Trump cheerleading the press can do while he sits in court and dozes (and farts).
But the press can, for sure, try to downplay the rage of women. If we don’t talk about it, maybe it won’t happen? Good luck with that.
One gets the sense that after decades of marveling at the cleverness of Republicans in weaponizing reproductive rights, the press is offended that Democrats are doing the same thing. It assaults the media’s sense of “how things should be.” Abortion is an issue the right gets to run on, not the left. It would be like if Donald Trump suddenly ran on gun control and started winning. Although one has a hard time imagining the press wringing its hand in consternation since they desperately want Trump back.
There are still 6 months to go and Republicans will continue to heap scorn and hate and insult on women because they can’t stop being assholes, even in the face of electoral annihilation. The press will continue to do their part to help because a country run by Democrats is a boring country and boring is bad for the news business.
Of course, the millions of women Republicans are putting in danger could give a flying fuck what the press thinks. Come November, the press can be “surprised” yet again as Republicans reach their new permanent status of “Find Out” after years of fucking around.
Will Republicans or the press learn their lesson after that? I wouldn’t bet on it.
There are 189 days until the 2024 election. Vote blue like your life depends on it.
I promise you, if (when) Biden wins in November and if (a big if) Republicans start doing well in special elections again before 2026? The press will be very interested in special elections again.
They will welcome every new baby by not supporting the family's medical care, not supporting child tax credit, not supporting public schools, not supporting minimum wage, not supporting free community college, not supporting student debt relief, not supporting affordable housing efforts, not supporting Medicare or retirement.
So basically after we get votes by throwing red meat to brainwashed religious nutters and other sappy idiots and racists, fuck all the rest of you because we never liked you public people anyway and you can go die under the freeway abutment of your choice. Freedumb!
As many on the right have now said out loud (lookin’ at you, Clarence), abortion is a stepping stone to curbing access to contraception and a host of other reproductive rights we’ve come to take for granted, on the way to building a ‘righteous’ “Christian” nation. A quiet yet significant bloc of informed women voters and others is paying attention and has no interest in living in a theofascist nation; I agree that the right (and the press) are likely to be dismayed in November. 🤞🏻