Roevember, Election Denialism, and the Swing States of America
When the Dobbs decision came down in June of this year, most agreed that the effect of it would be seismic and could shape the entire national landscape, especially with both chambers of Congress resting on threadbare Democratic majorities. But looking even further ahead, Dobbs may have also changed the calculus for the all-important 2024 presidential election. That outcome could depend upon who is governing in the key states that Biden took from Trump in 2020: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Arizona. It turns out, the question of whether women should have a right to an abortion overlaps in many instances with whether elections will be run freely and fairly in these states. Could a “Roevember” wave in 2022 save our democracy in 2024? Let’s take a closer look.
Whether voters realize it or not, abortion rights are threatened in all five Trump-to-Biden swing states. In some cases, archaic abortion ban laws that were on the books from the 1800s have threatened to spring—or in some cases as in Arizona have actually sprung—back to life after Roe was overturned by Dobbs. Moreover, because of extreme Republican gerrymandering, the legislatures in all of these states are controlled by the GOP, and often the only thing that stands between them and strict abortion laws are the possibility of Democratic governors. (If you want to understand how strongly gerrymandering favors the GOP in state legislatures, note how in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan there are Democratic governors elected by statewide vote, and Arizona and Georgia each have two Democratic senators elected by statewide vote. In other words, when the vote is statewide, Democrats often come out on top, but when it is district by district, the GOP’s skewed maps keep their state legislative majorities in power.)
The GOP gubernatorial contenders in these states, whether they are challengers or incumbents, all favor stricter abortion laws. In two cases, their positions are extreme. Tudor Dixon in Michigan has implied that even child victims of incestual rape should be required to take their pregnancies to term, because “a life is a life for me.” After the primary she has sought to walk back her public statements by saying she would abide by the will of the voters in a referendum on the Michigan ballot to protect abortion rights, plainly hoping voters in the state separate the issue of abortion from her campaign. That so far isn’t happening.
Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania has taken an even more extreme position, saying back in 2019 that he believes women who get an abortion should be charged with murder. As a legislator, he proposed a ban on abortion after a fetal Down syndrome diagnosis and a prohibition on abortion services obtained through telemedicine, and last year he re-introduced a proposal for a six-week abortion ban. Now, as the GOP candidate for governor, he also is hoping to temper this by saying his position is “irrelevant” because it’s up to the state legislature to pass such laws. But this is wrong on its face because the only reason some of his own proposed laws failed was because of a veto by the Democratic governor, Tom Wolf.
https://statuskuo.substack.com/p/roevember-election-denialism-and
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