Election Day
In several states, yesterday was election day. Here in Ohio, at least as a Democrat in Pataskala, there wasn’t much to vote on. There were candidates for the Ohio Democratic Central Committee. All the Democratic State Representatives and Senators here weren’t on the ballot, there was only one candidate running for each seat. So there’s wasn’t much to “drive” me to the polls.
But in Michigan and Missouri, Kansas and Arizona there were massively important elections.
Referendum on Abortion
Let’s start with Kansas. With the end of Roe v Wade, The Republican legislature of Kansas wanted to ban abortions in the state. But the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the State Constitution guaranteed the right of women to choose their health care, including abortion. So the legislature decided to put a Constitutional amendment on the statewide ballot, allowing them to ban abortions.
They did it in the August primary election, the least “attended” election in almost every state. Like the failed strategy of “passing school levies” when nobody votes, the idea was that the Amendment would slide on through with only 10% of the voters showing up.
But Kansans showed up in droves, rivaling a Presidential election. And the people of “red” Kansas, conservative Kansas, the Kansas of Bob Dole, did what they often do. They surprised us.
Kansas has a Democratic Governor. That’s great, but it has more to do with the fact that she ran against Kris Kobach, a candidate even the Republicans couldn’t stomach. But to say Kansas is all Republican, all the time, just isn’t true. And the people of Kansas made a statement yesterday. While many of them might not support abortion, they voted to keep “choice” in the Kansas Constitution. And they did 58.8% to 41.2%, with a turnout rivaling the 2012 Presidential election.
History Lesson
History tells us that the Party who wins the Presidency, loses seats in the Congress in the next election. All of us history teachers know the “drill”; with the Senate tied and Democrats having a five vote margin in the House, Republicans should take over the Congress. But the results of “red-red” Kansas should be both a warning and a lesson. For Republicans, a warning: the Roe v Wade overrule is going to drive folks to the polls, and they are going to vote against the Republicans who fought for it. For Democrats, a lesson: be smart, campaign against the “extreme” Supreme Court. Hang it on the Republicans.
But in Michigan, Missouri and Arizona; there was another lesson to be learned. The Republican Party remains in the thrall of Donald Trump, the “Stop the Steal” lie, and willing to curtail democracy to maintain power. In state after state, “dedicated Trumpers” were nominated to run for office, even against more moderate Republicans.
Extremists
In Arizona, Mark Finchem, an avowed election conspiracy theorist who was on the steps of the Capitol participating in the Insurrection of January 6th, is the Republican candidate for Secretary of State. In states, the Secretary of State is the chief election official. So now, in Arizona, one of the two candidates to be in charge of elections, believes that Arizona’s 2020 election, so often recounted and even “Cyber-Ninja’ed” and found to be correct, was stolen.
And in many other elections in Arizona and others, the Republicans nominated the most extreme candidates possible. So voters in November will have a clear choice in those elections. They can choose a 2020 Trumper, a Stop the Steal conspirator, a pro-Insurrectionist; or they can vote for the Democratic candidate. And that’s exactly what the Democratic Party wanted.
Democrats want to run against the Supreme Court and for the Roe ruling. Democrats want to run on what many would call “libertarian” values, letting people choose how they live their personal lives. And the Supreme Court is giving them the issue, allowing state governments to determine who can make those choices, and who can’t.
Foolish
But most of all Democrats would like to do what they did in 2018. They want to run against Donald Trump. In 2018 you might remember the “slow-motion blue Tsunami” that brought Democrats to power in the House and Nancy Pelosi back to the Speakership. That was all a reaction to the 2016 election of Trump, and fell in line with the historic trends mentioned earlier. And now with the nomination of so many Trump supporters to run as the Republican candidates, Democrats are getting exactly what they hoped for.
In fact, in some cases Democrats did more than hope. In Michigan (and other states) the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee played “hardball”, and actually ran commercials designed to support the most extreme Republican candidates. Their reasoning was simple: any Republican elected to Congress was going to vote for Kevin McCarthy for Speaker, and generally back the Republican Party. So Democrats might as well help Republicans choose the candidate easiest for a Democrat to defeat in the general election.
So they’ve got it: folks like Finchem and Lake in Arizona, Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania, Hershel Walker in Georgia, and even JD Vance in Ohio. Democrats can contrast their moderate to Progressive views, to Trumpian extremes.
“The die is cast” as Julius Caesar would say. 2022 will be another election of extremes in the what historically will be called the “Trump Era”. Democrats will likely quote Lincoln:
“You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
Democrats can hope that it’s past time for all the people to be fooled. Or to quote another great statesman, Peter Townsend of the Who, “We won’t get fooled again”.
