Im-Politic: Abortion Really Did Prevent a Red Wave, Part I

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2022 election, abortion, Associated Press, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, economy, Edison Research, exit polls, Fox News, Im-Politic, inflation, midterms 2022, National Opinion Research Center, NPR-Marist Poll, politics, polls, Red Wave, Republicans, Roe vs. Wade, Supreme Court

At the risk of blowing my own horn, I think it’s of more-than-usual interest to report the evidence that I’ve been proven right on my prediction that the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down abortion rights, and Republican support for such efforts, would be nothing but trouble for the GOP in this year’s mid-term elections.

Indeed, the exit polls – which, to be fair, are preliminary at this point – show that public anger at the Dobbs decision, and fears of it spurring a wave of draconian state-level and even federal abortion bans, influenced voting decisions nationally and in key swing states nearly as much as resentment over the state of the economy. And this development supported, in spades, my belief that whereas before Dobbs, Democrats had little or nothing going for them as the election approached, the Supreme Court gave them something. If anything, though, I underestimated how big this “something” would be, for it appears important enough to explain by itself why the “Red Wave” widely expected didn’t materialize.

Let’s start with with a survey conducted for some major broadcast and cable news networks by Edison Research. Practically up to Election Day, polls were showing that inflation was voters’ most pressing concern, with abortion trailing far behind. For example, this NPR/PBS/Marist College sounding from late October found the margin to be 36 percent to 14 percent among adults and registered voters, and 36 percent to 11 percent among those saying they’d “definitely vote” in the contest.

In addition, respondents believed that Republicans could control inflation better than Democrats by nearly two-to-one. No wonder so many in the GOP was so optimistic. 

But Edison’s exit poll found a much smaller margin for inflation’s paramount importance –  just 31 percent to 27 percent for abortion.

Findings like this, however, can be of only limited value, because Americans can be concerned about various issues for different reasons. So it was smart of Edison to publish a party breakdown. And with abortion ranking as “the most important issue for your vote” by 76 percent of Democrats but only 23 percent of Republicans, the Dobbs decision and its aftermath looked like definite political losers.

Backing up this conclusion: According to Edison, 37 percent of voters viewed the overturning of the 1973 Roe vs Wade high court decision establishing a privacy-grounded right to an abortion to some extent with “enthusiasm” or “satisfaction,” while 60 percent reacted with “dissatisfaction” or “anger.” And nearly two-thirds of that 60 percent were angry.

The second major exit poll is one conducted for the Associated Press and Fox News by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center. Its findings came with a major quirk. As with so many pre-election surveys, respondents ranked the “economy and jobs” as “the most important issue facing the country” by far. It claimed the top spot for 48 percent of those contacted versus just nine percent for abotion. In addition, respondents overwhelmingly (78 percent) thought the economy was in “not so good” or “poor” condition, and gave President Biden poor grades on handling this challenge.

But many more respondents (24 percent) called abortion “the single most important factor” behind their vote (versus 51 percent for the economy). And again, the decided (61 percent to 39 percent) backing for “a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide,” and the emotions registered over Roe’s demise (41 percent “happy” or ”satisfied,” 59 percent dissatisfied or angry, and 33 percent angry), demonstrate unmistakably how the issue cut politically against more powerfully than generally anticipated against Republicans. All the more so given how close so many key state and local elections were.   

And speaking of these state and local elections, since especially for matters like control of Congress, what counts most are those results (particularly for the supposed swing states where the GOP saw real promise of victory), not the nation-wide findings. As I’ll show tomorrow, the state and local results, too, all but clinch the case that the Dobbs ruling dashed those Republican hopes.

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Making News: Back on National Radio Talking Midterms and the Economy

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2022 election, economy, inflation, Making News, Market Wrap with Moe Ansari, midterms 2022, politics

I’m pleased to announce that I’m scheduled to return tonight on the nationally syndicated “Market Wrap with Moe Ansari.” Our subjects: today’s midterm election, how it could shape the U.S. economy…and vice versa!

“Market Wrap” airs weeknights between 8 and 9 PM EST, these segments usually begin midway through the show, and you can listen live on-line here.

As usual, if you can’t tune in, I’ll post a link to the podcast of the inteview as soon as it’s available.

And keep on checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Making News: Back on NYC Radio to Talk Midterms, Inflation, Ukraine…& More?

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2022 election, economy, Frank Morano, inflation, Making News, midterms 2022, politics, The Other Side of Midnight, Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia war

I’m pleased to announce that I’m scheduled to return tonight to New York City radio and Frank Morano’s popular “The Other Side of Midnight” program on WABC-AM. The segment, which is slated to air during the show’s 1 AM EST hour, will focus on many of the domestic and foreign headline issues of the day, including the U.S. midterm elections, inflation, and the Ukraine war.

You can listen live at this link, and as always, if you can’t or won’t stay up that late, I’ll post a link to the podcast as soon as one’s available.

And of course keep on checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Im-Politic: Has Biden Become the Democrats’ Biggest (Though Not A Real Big) Asset?

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2022 election, abortion, Biden, Capitol attack, Capitol riot, Congress, Democrats, Donald Trump, election 2022, FBI, generic ballot, Im-Politic, January 6, January 6 committee, Mar-a-Lago search, midterms, midterms 2022, Republicans

As next month’s U.S. midterms elections approach, some of the polling results are growing weirder and weirder. Principally, even as the Republicans have recovered virtually all of the lead they lost in the so-called Generic Congress Ballot (which tries to measure which major party voters would like to see control the House and Senate), President Biden’s approval ratings have rebounded pretty impressively. 

These trends (which of course could turn on a dime in this era of frequent bombshell news) are weird because the conventional wisdom holds that presidents’ popularity is an important determinant of how their party fares in the midterms. So all else equal, if Mr. Biden is being looked on more favorably by voters, Democratic candidates for Congress should be benefiting. But they’re not.

In other words, contrary to the signals being sent by so many Democratic politicians this election year (see, e.g., here), the President is far from the biggest problem troubling his party. Indeed, he might now be its biggest asset.  

Specifically, according to the widely followed average of polls compiled by the RealClearPolitics.com website, the GOP edge in the Generic Ballot today stands at 3.3 percentage points. That’s its highest level since June 24, when it was 3.4 percentage points.

Although this shift and these leads may seem small, keep in mind that during Mr. Biden’s term, the results have stayed within a distinctly narrow range. For example, the Democrats’ biggest lead was 6.7 percentage points, registered on June 21, 2021. The Republicans’ biggest lead – 4.8 percentage points – came this past April 28.

As for President Biden, his popularity is still underwater as of today – by 11.6 percentage points. But that’s up considerably from his worst showing – the 20.7 percentage gap reported by RealClearPolitics on July 21.

What I find especially notable are the changes in the Generic Ballot and Biden approval since three events that should have put the Republicans in scalding water: the Supreme Court’s decision striking down the right to an abortion, the beginning of public hearings held by the House of Representatives on the January 6^th Capitol attack, and the FBI’s search of former President Donald Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.

The abortion decision, which I speculated could seriously harm Republicans politically, was reported thanks to a leak to Politico.com on May 2. On that day, the GOP held a four percentage point Generic Ballot lead, and President Biden’s negatives exceeded his positives by 11 percentage points. As indicated above, the Biden gap doubled over the next two months, but his ratings have regained nearly all that lost ground.

After May 2, the Republicans’ Generic Ballot fortunes worsened so dramatically that the Democrats had built a 1.3 percentage point lead by September 21. Since then, however, these results have flipped markedly, so it seems reasonable to believe that the abortion decision has faded in importance for the midterms, even as Mr. Biden has become more popular.

The same conclusion looks warranted for the January 6^th Committee’s work. On June 9, when it held its first hearing, the Republican lead was 3.4 percentage points (just like its aforementioned June 24 margin), and President Biden’s approval ratings were 15.3 percentage points underwater. But thereafter, of course, both numbers trended in the Democrats’ direction until…they didn’t. On a relative basis, however, recently the President has been outperforming his party’s Congressional candidates.

And with the Mar-a-Lago search having taken place on August 9, the subsequent revelations about Trump’s handling of classified documents reveal a similar polling pattern.

The bottom line here isn’t that the Democrats are doomed to a wipeout next month, or that Mr. Biden has recently turned into Mr. Popularity. Instead, it seems to be that as unenthusiastic about the President voters clearly remain, they like what they see of Democrats in Congress today, and the slate of candidates offered by the party this year, even less.

At the same time, my belief that the abortion decision in particular has hurt the GOP politically isn’t completely dead yet. It’s still possible that it could wind up exacting an opportunity cost on the party’s 2022 performance. That is, even if the Republicans win both the House and Senate, it might still be plausible to contend that their margins might have been even greater had the Court stayed its hand.

But that case can’t be proven until the ultimate poll results come in – on Election Day itself.

Im-Politic: Overturning Roe Could Backfire Big-Time on its Opponents

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2022 election, abortion, abortion rights, choice, Constitution, Democrats, election 2022, Im-Politic, midterms 2022, Republicans, Roe vs. Wade, Supreme Court

One of my favorite sayings has always been “Be careful what you wish for. You may get it.” And if life is remotely fair, it could well come back in spades to haunt supporters of the Supreme Court’s apparent decision to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion ruling.

Before explaining why, I should briefly re-lay my cards on the table on abortion generally. As explained in this May, 2019 post I’ve supported Roe because of all the evidence that it conforms with a strong, consistent, public consensus in favor of a thoroughly reasonable compromise solution to the abortion dilemma. Specifically, the national default position is that abortion should be legal, but individual states, reflecting the beliefs of their populations, should be able to impose some restrictions.

In other words, Roe never established an unqualified right to abortion – because unless we’re talking about hermits, rights in human societies, including those enshrined in the Constitution, can never be unqualified. There are simply too many rights, and they too often collide with other rights and imperatives. So durable balances need to be struck, and from time to time, they need to be modified in light of changing circumstances.

They don’t make everyone happy, and they leave important inequities. But given the existentially heated and fiendishly complex nature of abortion, despite all the resulting and inevitable controversy stirred by the ruling and by the underlying issue, Roe succeeded on those crucial grounds. In everyday parlance, it was “good enough.”

At the same time, almost none of Roe’s opponents really seem to believe that there is an unqualified right to life, much less that it begins at conception. Certainly, that’s not an argument made by the leaked Supreme Court ruling. Nor is it claimed by the Mississippi abortion law that the Court is still considering, or by the even stricter new Oklahoma statutes.

The above description of Roe doesn’t take into account the argument that the decision fails by purely legal and Constitutional standards. Indeed, even leading pro-choice Constitutional experts have agreed with that judgment. But the underlying assumption that law stands clearly apart from politics can’t withstand serious scrutiny – and certainly not in any system of representative government. In such systems, legitimate laws can’t help but originate ultimately in that society’s values and culture, and politics is one indispensible method of figuring out how to enable those preferences to govern behavior and resolve disputes in mutually acceptable ways.

As I noted in the 2019 post (quoting a prominent historian of the Constitution), a crucial test that the Supreme Court must pass, (including for its own public support), is avoiding getting too far ahead of public opinion or trailing too far behind. That is, responsible justices will be exceedingly mindful of politics, its changes, and the trends underlying them. For the past half century, the Supreme Court justices who upheld Roe achieved that objective.

So assuming Justice Samuel Alito’s draft ruling stands, how is it likely to backfire on Roe opponents? For starters, they’ll need to start thinking seriously about a challenge that the 1973 ruling has enabled them to duck for decades, especially if Roe’s demise does significantly reduce the numbers of abortions.  The Roe opponens will need to deal with making sure that all the babies that aren’t aborted under the new regime have a real chance of leading satisfactory lives. After all, if you believe in the right to life, how can you neglect the quality of that life?

So unless there’s any chance that private adoption services will be able to place all the newborns with competent, caring parents (spoiler alert: there’s no chance), then the biological mothers and, when they stick around, fathers, will need a wide range of pubicly provided services and supports. In other words, Hello, Big Government. And those services and supports, which may have to be very long-lasting for the many new moms who are teens, won’t come cheap. So get ready for much higher taxes or deficit spending or some combination of the two.

For older new mothers who need to work, these supports will need to include paid family leave – whether by government or employers or some combination of the two. And if the goal is to help all the new children, this leave will need to extend for years – not just a few weeks. Moreover, this paid leave will also be needed even for many mothers who have working spouses or stable partners of some kind, unless these spouses or partners earn enough to pay all the household’s bills on their own.

Of course, there’s an alternative for the working mothers: Taxpayers spring for childcare. For as long as it’s needed. If, as is likely, Roe opponents don’t want governments handling this responsibility, they’ll need to admit many more immigrants to fill all the new positions private providers presumably would create. But no responsible Roe opponent would ever permit just anyone care for children, whether in government or for-profit or non-profit outfits. So extensive vetting and even training systems will need to be put into place, too.

In addition, for all the states that ban abortion very early in pregnancies, when many women aren’t even aware they’re pregnant, it’s only fair that they hand out accurate pregnancy test devices or pay for tests by physicians’ offices. That is, more expenses – and taxes or debt.

Finally, Roe opponents may well rue its demise this year on political grounds. It’s true that they may be able to fire up their voters to turn out to defend anti-Roe candidates in this year’s midterm Congressional elections as Roe supporters are to mobilize theirs on behalf of office-seekers pledged to codify it as federal law, and/or support nominated judges likely to try restoring Roe or at least its protections.

But it’s also true that whereas before yesterday, Roe supporters (who tend to be Democrats and Democratic leaners, just as opponents trend the opposite way) had almost no issues with which they could inspire their voters (because of the Biden administration’s failures on so many fronts), now they may have one issue that can help close the so-called enthusiasm gap and improve their performance this fall. So that shapes up as a net loss for Roe opponents and the GOP overall.

The opponents’ losses could be even worse, however, since (as shown by the poll linked above) Roe is pretty popular with the moderate Republicans who deserted the party in the 2020 presidential election and helped Joe Biden win the White House. They may not be incredibly numerous, but by definition they’re often found in many of the swing districts and states that could greatly determines which party controls the House and Senate. (It’s their presence that makes these precincts up for grabs – when it’s not the presence of moderate Democrats.)

Nonetheless, it’s also distinctly possible that such a Roe effect may not materialize, or flare briefly and then fade between now and November. (That’s clearly been the case so far for the January 6 Capitol riot, to my surprise.)  Further, abortion won’t be the only issue on voters’ minds, and any number of events could intervene in the weeks and months ahead to alter the political odds. 

Whatever the political impact, however, the nation seems fated to deal with some serious and potentially tragic real world fall-out from the Supreme Court’s seeming plans for Roe, unless the justices reverse course. Is it too much to hope that they remember another of my favorite expressions:  “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”?              

Im-Politic: Fake News About a Fake Wall Street China Hawk

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2022 election, Bloomberg.com, Bridgewater Associates, China, David McCormick, finance, George W. Bush, human rights, Im-Politic, investment, Katherine Burton, Pennsylvania, Ray Dalio, Republicans, Sridhar Natarajan, U.S. Senate, Wall Street

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen an article contain more sheer garbage per word than today’s Bloomberg.com account of a supposed dispute on dealing with China between two kingpins at the same big American hedge fund.

As the article explains, this ostensible disagreement began this past Tuesday when Ray Dalio, founder and Co-Chairman of Bridgewater Associates told a CNBC interviewer that China’s longtime practice of “disappearing” critics of its thug regime amounted to behaving “like a strict parent….That’s their approach.”

Dalio’s comments unleashed a torrent of outrage that was often as cynical as it’s become predictable these days. For with the exception of making isolated protests about especially egregious Chinese human rights violations (e.g., against the Muslim Uyghur minority), or backing piecemeal controls over cooperation with entities directly tied to the Chinese military, many of those who claim to be appalled by Dalio’s excuse-making for Beijing’s brutality wouldn’t dream of urging Bridgewater – or any American finance firm or other kind of business – to even slow its plans to expand its operations in China. 

In other words, they wouldn’t dream of systematically clamping down on practices that for decades have inevitably helped channel massive amounts of resources and knowhow from around the world into the People’s Republic to use as Beijing’s dictators see fit. And in the case of U.S. investment companies, which look to be just getting started in luring capital to China, these operations will just as inevitably improve the efficiency of China’s own financial system, which will just as surely help enrich it economically and strengthen it militarily.

The Dalio rebuke reported by Bloomberg was genuinely unpredictable, but no doubt even more cynical – for it came from Bridgewater’s own CEO, David McCormick. According to reporters Sridhar Natarajan and Katherine Burton, “on a company call,” McCormick “told staff he’s had lots of arguments about China over the years with Dalio and that he disagrees with the billionaire’s views….”

But of course, the “people with knowledge of the matter” who made certain that this alleged dissent would be made public passed along nothing about what McCormick’s problems with his colleagues’ views entailed. And apparently neither Natarajan nor Burton pressed for elaboration.

The authors did make clear that there was no indication that McCormick favored putting the kibosh on Bridgewater’s recent decision to launch a $1.3 billion investment fund in the People’s Republic, which they wrote would bring the Chinese assets under its management to more than $1.6 billion.

But there was no excuse for Natarajan, Burton, or their editors simply to parrot claims from McCormick’s friends and associates that the Bridgewater CEO is a China “hawk” who views the People’s Republic as “an existential threat to our country” – especially since these same persons are encouraging McCormick’s interest in running in Pennsylvania’s upcoming race to replace retiring Republic U.S. Senator Pat Toomey.

And how on earth could the Bloomberg team allow McCormick buddy Jim Schultz (bizarrely, “a former lawyer in the Trump administration”), to get away with pointing to McCormick’s service in former President George W. Bush’s Treasury Department as evidence that the Bridgewater CEO “has dealt with China in the past…knows how to talk to them, and…will be tough on China as a U.S. senator.”

Even loonier: “’The president of China complained about the decisions he was making about technology at the time,’ Schultz said.”

For anyone who knows anything about U.S.-China relations in the last few decades knows that no administration enabled China’s dangerous rise to dangerous superpower status with lenient trade and technology transfer policies more enthusiatically than W’s.

Natarajan and Burton correctly note that “A hawkish stance on China is all but essential in GOP politics if McCormick makes a run” and that since “Bridgewater has been expanding in China…McCormick would undoubtedly have to navigate China-bashing in the Rust Belt state….”

What they left out is that if the press coverage of this possible campaign is as brain-dead as theirs, McCormick’s challenge won’t be terribly difficult.

Im-Politic: Why Virginia Really Revealed a Winning Trumpism-without-Trump Playbook

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2016 election, 2017 election, 2020 election, 2021 election, 2022 election, 2024 election, battleground states, Donald Trump, Ed Gillespie, Glenn Youngkin, governor, Im-Politic, midterm elections, midterms 2022, Populism, Republicans, Virginia

Since the 2020 election results came in, I’ve been convinced that the biggest question hanging over the future of the Republican party – and one of the biggest hanging over American politics – was whether the GOP could foster what you could call Trump-ism without Trump that produced political winners.

That is, could Republicans find a strategies and candidates that (1) embraced the policies pursued by the former President capitalize on their popularity with a broad group of voters that includes conservatives, many independents and moderates, and growing numbers of African Americans and Hispanics, while rejecting the kinds of behavior that clearly turned or outright disgusted so many voters outside Trump loyalist ranks, but (2) conveyed enough of the anti-establishmentarianism and overall combativeness that appealed to the loyalists and inspired them to vote robustly?

Since this year’s Virginia governor’s race unexpectedly turned competitive this fall, it became clear that Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin was pursuing a Trump-ism without Trump strategy – to the point of successfully discouraging the former President from campaigning personally in the state for him. He also seemed likely to pass any personality tests required by gettable voters outside the Trump diehards’ ranks.

But I wasn’t convinced that he could generate the kind of diehard turnout he’d also need to carry an increasingly but still not entirely blue state like Virginia – and that could translate into Republican wins in other battleground states.

After looking at the details of Youngkin’s upset victory last night, I’m now pretty convinced that he accomplished exactly that goal. The evidence? His actual turnout numbers in the southwestern part of the state, whose largely rural and semi-rural counties aren’t especially populous, but whose voters gave Trump overwhelming triumphs both in 2016 and last year.

My methodology: I looked at the Youngkin vote last night, the Trump votes both last year and in 2016, and for losing Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie in 2017, for 22 counties west of the city of Roanoke (and including Roanoke County). My source: Politico.com‘s county-by-county tallies for the four years in question, found here, here, here, and here.

These elections of course aren’t strictly comparable – chiefly because presidential election turnout is usually greater than voting in state-wide and local races. The issues dominating each contest weren’t identical, either – because things change.

But what the numbers make emphatically clear is that this big slice of the Trump loyalist vote in Virginia decreased much less between last year’s presidential election and this year’s gubernatorial race than it did between the 2016 White House contest and the 2017 gubernatorial race. That is, Youngkin kept Trump base voters considerably more energized than Gillespie.

Specifically, between 2020 and 2021, the Republican vote in these counties fell by 11.05 percent. But between 2016 and 2017, it plunged by 40.85 percent. Also important, and potentially a sign of Trump fatigue: The former President won 6.21 percent fewer votes in these counties in 2020 than in 2016 – even though total Virginia turnout in 2020 was 12.60 percent higher than four years before.

Youngkin’s success by no means guarantees Republican victories anywhere in the upcoming mid-term elections, much less in the 2024 campaigns for the White House and Congress. Too much can happen between now and both of those “thens,” and regarding the next presidential race, there’s no telling who the Democratic nominee will be. Moreover, of Trump’s hot button issues, one understandably didn’t come up at all in the Virginia election (trade) and Youngkin pretty much ignored another (immigration). Finally, though the state’s gubernatorial race wasn’t generally expected to be even competitive, Youngkin didn’t exactly win in a landslide.

Not very surprisingly, Trump has rejected the idea that Virginia represents evidence of his expendability. In fact, he appears to be taking credit for the results. But if you look closely at his phrasing, his emphasis on the Make America Great Again movement rather than his own actions could signal a recognition that his lasting impact on American politics might wind up being much more ideological than personal.