In the days and weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a 49 year-old landmark decision that protected a woman's right to an abortion, Republican legislatures across the country had a decision to make. They could've passed a series of 15 week abortion bans like the one Mississippi passed in 2018, which led to Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the case that became the linchpin on which the Court based its opinion.
Had they done so, they would've ostensibly boxed Democrats into a political corner. Poll after poll has shown that the vast majority of voters want abortion to be safe, legal and rare. A 15 week ban would've given women the right to an abortion within the first 15 weeks of pregnancy, significantly less than the 24 weeks Casey allowed, but still considerably more than Christian conservatives have been calling for since Roe was handed down in 1973.
Instead, what they did was pass a series of total abortion bans, many without any exception for the life of the mother or rape and incest. Almost immediately, Democrats railed against these draconian laws and used the issue to rally their base. And rally they did.
The first indication that Republicans had shot themselves in the foot politically was the Kansas abortion referendum, which had it passed would've allowed the legislature to rewrite the state constitution and ban abortions. Voters overwhelmingly voted against it. That many of those voters happened to be Republican was a fact not completely lost on the GOP. But like the proverbial dog that finally caught the car, Republicans had fallen into a trap of their own making. If they moderated their stance on abortion, they risked alienating their base, which had been waiting for this moment for almost five decades. If they dug in their heals, they risked losing moderates and independents, which is exactly what happened in Kansas.
As it turns out, the Kansas referendum was a harbinger of things to come. Since the SCOTUS decision was announced, Democrats have been over performing their elections by four points, while Republicans have been underperforming theirs by six. If you're counting, that's a ten-point swing, which in politics is huge. Two special elections in the New York 19th and 23rd portend potential problems for Republicans this November. In the former, Democrat Tim Ryan won by two points, exceeding Joe Biden's margin in 2020 by half a point. In the latter, Republican Joe Sempolinski won by 6.5 points, five points less than Trump won by. Additionally, the generic ballot has gone from plus 2.5 for Republicans to plus .5 for Democrats, a three point swing.
If ever there was a case of damned if you do damned if you don't for Republicans, it was the abortion issue. For Mitch McConnell, it was the ultimate nightmare scenario. With inflation at levels not seen since the the 1980s, he was hoping to make the midterms a referendum on Biden and the Democrats. With the Roe reversal, the DOJ criminal investigation into Trump and a slew of Republican candidates who, to borrow the a line from Saturday Night Live, are not quite ready for prime time, what should've been a slam dunk is now an uphill battle. The last thing he needed was another headache.
Enter Lindsey Graham. This week, the senator from South Carolina introduced a bill that would impose a national 15 week ban on abortions. I'll see your headache, Mitch, and raise you a migraine.
Let's start with the obvious. Nowhere in Graham's bill does he call for an end to the total abortion bans that have been springing up like gophers on a golf course in Republican states. Indeed, the only states that would be affected by this bill are Democratic states that allow abortions up to 24 weeks.
Cynical doesn't begin to describe Graham's motives here. He actually had the gall to believe that by introducing a national 15 week abortion ban with less than two months to go before the midterms, he could flip the script on Democrats. All he accomplished with his publicity stunt did was to undercut the "states rights" drivel his party has been peddling since the days of Lyndon Johnson. I would love to have been a fly on the wall of McConnell's office when he read Graham the riot act for being this colossally stupid.
If I'm the Democrats, I'd stay as far away from this shit show as possible. Let Republicans deal with Numb Nuts. All they have to do is to continue to remind voters that they are the party that will defend democracy and protect a woman's right to choose.
Based on the polling we've been seeing and the early election results, that appears to be enough.
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