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      We Talked to Some Kamala-but-Not-Joe Voters. Here’s What They Said.

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      A slice of voters would vote for Vice President Harris but not President Biden, reflecting his challenges and opportunities.Bridgette Miro, 52, a retired state employee in Glendale, Ariz., is a Republican, but said she would vote for President Biden because Kamala Harris was on the ticket.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesIn our recent poll of voters in battleground states, we asked how people would vote if Kamala Harris were running for president. Though Donald J. Trump still led in this hypothetical matchup, Vice President Harris performed slightly better than President Biden.She did particularly well among young and nonwhite voters — voters who were a key to Mr. Biden’s 2020 victory but who the poll suggests are less supportive of him this time.The voters who backed her but not Mr. Biden — about 5 percent of swing-state voters — would have given Mr. Biden the lead in the New York Times/Siena polls if they had supported him.We called back some of these Harris supporters to understand why they didn’t support Mr. Biden, and whether he could win them over.They show the serious challenges Mr. Biden faces. Some said he was too old, or they didn’t think he’d done much as president. Black voters in particular said they didn’t believe he was doing enough to help Black Americans.They also point to the opportunities for Mr. Biden. Though many said they’d probably vote for Mr. Trump, nearly all said that they weren’t excited about either option, and that Mr. Trump had personally offended them. For some, Democratic messaging on issues important to them, like abortion and the economy, hadn’t reached them.In a telling indication of how unsettled voters remain with a year to go, many of them expressed different opinions during the follow-up interviews than they did during the survey. In response to neutral questions, some who had said they were unsure became more sure of their support for either candidate by the end of the interview, and others switched their support after recalling their impressions of both candidates and talking more about their priority issues.A telephone call with a New York Times reporter is not the same as a conversation with friends or family. It’s not the same as a campaign advertisement, either. But it was an opportunity for a group of voters, some of them relatively disengaged, to think about the candidates, issues and campaigns.Here’s how the Harris supporters broke down:Harris superfansIf Ms. Harris were running for president, Bridgette Miro, 52, a retired state employee in Glendale, Ariz., who is Black, would vote for her “one hundred thousand percent.”She likes the work Ms. Harris did in California, where she was attorney general and a U.S. senator before she became vice president. She likes “the way she handles herself.” She likes that “her skin color is like my skin color.”In the poll and at the beginning of the interview, Ms. Miro said she would vote for Mr. Trump this election. She’s a Republican who said “I don’t have any feeling at all” about the job Mr. Biden has done as president. But by the end, she had switched her support to Mr. Biden, after recalling her negative views about Mr. Trump, who she said was racist and didn’t do enough to prevent police violence against Black people.“All of my frustration comes from the killing of Black individuals,” she said. “If we can have just someone in office who can control the police force just a little bit, that gives us a little bit of hope.”And then there was Ms. Harris: “If she’s on the ticket, I’m going to vote for her. It’s Kamala versus everybody.”‘She’s a Black woman’“I just think she has a lot more to offer than the standard straight old white dude,” said a 40-year-old artist in Georgia, who declined to share her name because she feared blowback given the country’s polarization. “I like the idea of a female lawyer.”A lifelong Democrat, she said in the poll that she would vote for Mr. Trump over Mr. Biden, whom she called “too old and a bit out of touch” and “a bit of a doofus.” Yet she believes the problems in the country had more to do with gerrymandered congressional districts than with Mr. Biden. By the end of the interview, she said she “will likely vote for him again — I’m just not happy about it.”Antonio Maxon, 25, a garbage collector and Ms. Harris supporter in Farrell, Pa., considers himself a Democrat. But he plans to vote for Mr. Trump because “he’s helped out countless Black people.”Justin Merriman for The New York TimesAntonio Maxon, 25, a garbage collector in Farrell, Pa., still plans to vote for Mr. Trump. But he likes Ms. Harris for a simple reason: “She’s a Black woman.” He said he lost faith in the political system after Hillary Clinton lost in 2016. It’s important to him, he said, “just to see a female, a woman in power, being that I was raised mostly by females.” He added, “My father was not there, my mother raised me, my grandmother raised me.”Crime and police violenceFor some Black voters, Ms. Harris’s racial identity matters not only for representation, but because they say it gives her an understanding of the issues they face. It highlights a factor that may be driving some Black people from the Democratic Party. For years, it was seen as advancing the interests of Black voters, but these voters said Mr. Biden hadn’t done enough, while a Black president may have.“I feel like she would probably do more for us, because I feel like there’s not enough being done for Black people,” said Sonji Dunbar, 32, a program specialist for the Boys and Girls Club in Columbus, Ga. “I stay in a very urban area, there’s crime, so I feel like she could influence more programs to at least get that crime rate down, address police brutality.”Not Joe Biden“Honestly, it was more of a choice of it just not being Joe Biden,” said Clara Carrillo-Hinojosa, a 21-year-old financial analyst in Las Vegas, of her support for Ms. Harris. She said she would probably vote for Mr. Trump: “Personally, I think we were doing a lot better when he was in the presidency, price-wise, money-wise, income-wise.”Yet in some ways, Ms. Carrillo-Hinojosa is the kind of voter Mr. Biden hopes he can win once people start focusing on the race. Mr. Trump has offended her as a woman, she said, and she likes some of what Mr. Biden has done, including his support for Israel.Most of all, she said, she strongly supports abortion rights — and did not realize that Mr. Biden does, too. She said that because states’ abortion bans had gone into effect during his presidency, she assumed it was because of him. Ultimately, despite her misgivings about the economy, support for abortion rights would probably be what decided her vote, she said.Mr. Maxon, the 25-year-old garbage collector in Pennsylvania, considers himself a Democrat, though this election would be his first time voting. The Israel-Hamas war has made him doubt Mr. Biden’s handling of foreign affairs, and he recalls policies under Mr. Trump that helped him.“My biggest thing is not seeing America fall in shambles,” he said. “With this war I think Biden is way too lenient — with Hamas, Iran, Iraq, the whole nine yards. What I like about Trump is he was keeping everybody at bay and not wanting to mess with America.”Mr. Maxon, who is Black, said Mr. Trump had made racist remarks, yet he plans to vote for him. “He’s helped out countless Black people, more than Biden did by a landslide,” he said. Specifically, he said, it was through pandemic unemployment assistance and other relief funding at the start of the pandemic (the Biden administration also distributed relief funding).No good optionMs. Dunbar, the 32-year-old from Georgia, is a Democrat, but did not have positive things to say about either candidate, and is unsure whom to vote for.“I don’t know too much or hear too much about what he’s doing,” she said of Mr. Biden’s presidency. She leaned toward Mr. Trump in the poll, but in the interview she said he seemed to carry too much baggage — comments he’s made about women, generalizations about racial or ethnic groups, the indictments against him.She says it’s important to vote, even when on the fence. Democrats have one thing going for them, she said: support for the issue most important to her, women’s rights.“Abortion comes into play with that,” she said. “I still like women to have their own choice with what to do with their bodies. And the way things have gone, it’s an agenda on women, period. Not just Black women, but women in general.” More

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      Overturning Roe Changed Everything. Overturning Affirmative Action Did Not.

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      What do the strikingly different public responses to two recent Supreme Court rulings, one on abortion, the other on affirmative action, suggest about the future prospects for the liberal agenda?Last year’s Dobbs decision — overturning the longstanding precedent set by Roe v. Wade in 1973 — angered both moderate and liberal voters, providing crucial momentum for Democratic candidates in the 2022 midterm elections, as well as in elections earlier this month. The hostile reaction to Dobbs appears certain to be a key factor in 2024.Since Dobbs, there have been seven abortion referendums, including in red states like Ohio, Kansas, Kentucky and Montana. Abortion rights won every time.In contrast, the Supreme Court decision in June that ended race-based affirmative action in college admissions provoked a more modest outcry, and it played little, if any, role on Election Day 2023. As public interest fades, so too do the headlines and media attention generally.There have been no referendums on affirmative action since the June decision, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College. Six states held referendums on affirmative action before that ruling was issued, and five voted to prohibit it, including Michigan, Washington and California (twice). Colorado, the lone exception, voted in favor of affirmative action in 2008.Do the dissimilar responses to the court decisions ending two key components of the liberal agenda, as it was originally conceived in the 1960s and 1970s, suggest that one of them — the granting of preferences to minorities in order to level differences in admissions outcomes — has run its course?On the surface, the answer to that question is straightforward: Majorities of American voters support racial equality as a goal, but they oppose targets or quotas that grant preferential treatment to any specific group.In an email, Neil Malhotra, a political economist at Stanford — one of the scholars who, on an ongoing basis, oversees polling on Supreme Court decisions for The New York Times — pointed out that “race-based affirmative action is extremely unpopular. Sixty-nine percent of the public agreed with the court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, including 58 percent of Democrats.”On the other hand, Malhotra noted, “the majority of Americans did not want Roe overturned.”The July 1-5 Economist/YouGov poll posed questions that go directly to the question of affirmative action in higher education.“Do you think colleges should or should not be allowed to consider an applicant’s race, among other factors, when making decisions on admissions?”The answer: 25 percent said they should allow racial preferences; 64 percent said they should not.“Do you approve or disapprove of the Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action, which ruled that colleges are not allowed to consider an applicant’s race when making decisions on admissions?”Fifty-nine percent approved of the decision, including 46 percent who strongly approved. Twenty-seven percent disapproved, including 18 percent who strongly disapproved.I asked William Galston, a senior fellow at Brookings, about the significance of the differing reactions to the abortion and affirmative action decisions, and he referred me to his July 2023 essay, “A Surprisingly Muted Reaction to the Supreme Court’s Decision on Affirmative Action”:In a marked contrast to last year’s Dobbs decision by the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, the response to its recent decision prohibiting the use of race as a factor in college admissions has been remarkably muted. The overall reason is clear: while voters wanted to preserve access to abortion by a margin of roughly 20 percentage points, they were willing by the same margin to accept the end of affirmative action.“To the surprise of many observers,” Galston writes, citing poll data, Black Americans “supported the court by 44 percent to 36 percent.”Key groups of swing voters also backed the court’s decision by wide margins, Galston goes on to say: “Moderates by 56 percent to 23 percent, independents by 57 percent to 24 percent, and suburban voters, a key battleground in contemporary elections, by 59 percent to 30 percent.”Sanford V. Levinson, a law professor at the University of Texas-Austin, wrote me by email thatThere has always been a certain ambivalence on the part of many liberals regarding the actual implementation of affirmative action. I thought that it would ultimately be done in by the sheer collapse of the categories such as “white” or “Black,” and the impossibility of clearly defining who counts as “Hispanic” or “Asian.”In contrast, Levinson continued,Abortion has become more truly polarized as an issue, especially as the “pro-life” contingent has revealed its strong desire to ban all abortions. Moreover, it’s become immediately and obviously clear that the consequences of Dobbs are absolutely horrendous for many women in Texas, say, and that the “pro-life” contingent simply doesn’t seem to care about these consequences for actual people.I asked Richard Pildes, a professor of constitutional law at N.Y.U., about the divergent responses to the two decisions, and he emailed his reply:There are two reasons the public and political reaction differs so dramatically between the two decisions. The first is that in public opinion polling, affirmative action has always had significantly less than majority support.Pildes pointed out thatin perhaps the most liberal state in the country, California, 57 percent of voters in 2020 voted to keep in place the state’s ban on affirmative action, even as Biden won the state overwhelmingly. Popular opinion on abortion runs the other way: a majority of the country supports the basic right of access to abortion, and we see strong majorities even in red states voting to support that right, as in recent votes in Ohio and Kansas.Pildes’s second reason involves the advance preparation of the public for the decisions. In the case of affirmative action in college admissions,It was widely expected the Supreme Court was going to ban it. That outcome did not come as a surprise; it had long been discounted into the assumptions of those who follow these issues closely.In the case of the Dobbs, according to Pildes, “there was far more uncertainty in advance, even though the expectation was that the court would uphold Mississippi’s ban on most abortions after 15 weeks.”While the court majority might have decided the case “on narrow grounds, without overruling Roe,” Pildes wrote, it took “the far more extreme path of overruling Roe altogether. That came as a stunning shock to many people and it was the first time the court had taken away a personal constitutional right.”Nicholas Wu reported last month in Politico (in “Why Dems Aren’t Campaigning on Affirmative Action”) that some of the strongest proponents of affirmative action in the House do not see campaigning against the court decision as an effective strategy.Representative Mark Takano, a California Democrat who believes affirmative action helped get him into Harvard, told Wu, “I don’t see it as a rallying point for Democrats.”Representative Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat and the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Education and Workforce, told Wu, “This is going to cause some heartburn, but we need to campaign on the fact that we are opening opportunities to everybody, and we’ll do everything we can to maintain opportunities.”“It’s difficult,” Scott added, “to bring back a strategy that the Supreme Court has directly ruled as unconstitutional.”Nicholas Dias, a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Pennsylvania, responded by email to my inquiry by noting that his “read of the existing data is that Americans care more about equality of opportunity than equality of outcome.”Dias conducted a study asking Americans how they prioritize three social goals in setting policies concerning wealth: “ensuring wealth is determined by effort (i.e., deservingness); providing for basic needs (sufficiency); and ensuring wealth equality.”He found that Republicans overwhelmingly give top priority to ensuring that wealth is determined by effort, at 70.5 percent, while Democrats give top priority, at 51.2 percent, to ensuring that everyone’s basic needs are met.Dias noted that very few Democrats, Republicans or independents gave wealth equality top priority.Dias sent me a 2021 paper, “Desert and Redistribution: Justice as a Remedy for, and Cause of, Economic Inequality,” in which Jacob S. Bower-Bir, a political scientist affiliated with Indiana University, makes the case that:People tolerate grave inequalities if they think those inequalities are deserved. Indeed, if outcomes appear deserved, altering them constitutes an unjust act. Moreover, people who assign a significant role to personal responsibility in their definitions of economic desert oppose large-scale redistribution policies because government intervention makes it harder for people to (by their definition) deserve their economic station.In short, Bower-Bir argues, “people must perceive inequality as undeserved to motivate a policy response, and the means of combating inequality must not undermine desert.”In that context, Dias wrote in his email, it would be inaccurate to say thatpolicies designed to benefit minority constituencies have run their course. There’s plenty of evidence that members of these constituencies lack economic opportunities or cannot meet their needs. However, I think many Americans need to be convinced of that.In a further elaboration of the affirmative action debate, three sociologists, Leslie McCall, Derek Burk and Marie Laperrière, and Jennifer Richeson, a psychologist at Yale, discuss public perceptions of inequality in their 2017 paper “Exposure to Rising Inequality Shapes Americans’ Opportunity Beliefs and Policy Support”:Research across the social sciences repeatedly concludes that Americans are largely unconcerned about it. Considerable research has documented, for instance, the important role of psychological processes, such as system justification and American dream ideology, in engendering Americans’ relative insensitivity to economic inequality.Challenging that research, the four scholars contend that when “American adults were exposed to information about rising economic inequality in the United States,” they demonstrated increased “skepticism regarding the opportunity structure in society. Exposure to rising economic inequality reliably increased beliefs about the importance of structural factors in getting ahead.” Receiving information on inequality “also increased support for government redistribution, as well as for business actors (i.e., major companies) to enhance economic opportunities in the labor market.”The intricacies don’t end there.In their April 2017 paper, “Why People Prefer Unequal Societies,” three professors of psychology, Christina Starmans, Mark Sheskin and Paul Bloom, write thatThere is immense concern about economic inequality, both among the scholarly community and in the general public, and many insist that equality is an important social goal. However, when people are asked about the ideal distribution of wealth in their country, they actually prefer unequal societies.How can these two seemingly contradictory findings be resolved?The authors’ answer:These two phenomena can be reconciled by noticing that, despite appearances to the contrary, there is no evidence that people are bothered by economic inequality itself. Rather, they are bothered by something that is often confounded with inequality: economic unfairness.Human beings, Starmans, Sheskin and Bloom write, “naturally favor fair distributions, not equal ones, and that when fairness and equality clash, people prefer fair inequality over unfair equality.”My interest in the subdued political response to the court’s affirmative action decision was prompted by a 2021 book, “The Dynamics of Public Opinion,” by four political scientists, Mary Layton Atkinson, James A. Stimson and Frank R. Baumgartner, all of the University of North Carolina, and K. Elizabeth Coggins of Colorado College.The four scholars argue that there are three types of issues. The first two types are partisan issues (safety net spending, taxation, gun rights etc.) and nonpartisan issues, like the space program. Public opinion does not change much over time on these two types of issues, they write: “Aggregate opinion moves up and down (or, left and right) but fifty years later remains roughly where it started.”Such stability is not the case with the third category:These are social transformations affecting society in powerful ways, literally shifting the norms of cultural acceptability of a given issue position. These can be so powerful that they overwhelm the influence of any short-term partisan differences, driving substantial shifts in public opinion over time, all in the same direction.Two factors drive these transformations:Large swaths of the American public progressively adopting new, pro-equality positions on the issue, and the generational replacement of individuals with once-widespread but no-longer-majority anti-equality opinions — with younger individuals coming-of-age during a different time, and reflecting more progressive positions on these cultural shift issues.Opinion on these mega issues, Atkinson and her co-authors argue, has been moving steadily leftward. “The overall trend is unmistakable,” they write: “The public becomes more liberal on these rights issues over time,” in what Atkinson and her co-authors describe as the shifting “equality mood.”While trends like these would seem to lead to support for affirmative action, that is not the case. “We cannot treat belief in equality as a normative value as interchangeable with a pro-equality policy preference,” Atkinson and her co-authors write:This is particularly true because many pro-equality policies emphasize equality of outcomes rather than equality of opportunity. And while equality of opportunity is the touchstone of a liberal society (i.e., all Americans are entitled to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness), the right to equality of outcomes has not been equally embraced by Americans. Once equality of opportunity is significantly advanced, or de jure equality is established, public support for further government action focused on equalizing outcomes may not exist, or at least wanes significantly.In other words, there has been a steady leftward movement on issues of equality when they are described as abstract principles, but much less so when the equality agenda is translated into specific policies, like busing or affirmative action.Atkinson and her co-authors point specifically to growing support for women’s equality in both theory and in practice, reporting on an analysis of four questions posed by the General Social Survey from the mid-1970s to 2004:When asked whether women should let men run the country and whether wives should put their husbands’ careers first, the policy responses look nearly identical to women’s ‘equality mood.’ The series trend in the liberal direction over time and reach a level of approximately 80 percent liberal responses by 2004.But when asked whether it is better for women to tend the home and for men to work, and whether preschool children suffer if their mothers work, the responses are far less liberal and the slopes of the lines are less steep. While responses to these questions trend in the liberal direction during the 1970s and 1980s, by the mid-1990s the series flattens out with liberalism holding between 50 and 60 percent.I asked Stimson to elaborate on this, and he emailed in reply:We have long known that the mass public does not connect problem and solution in the way that policy analysts do. Thus, for example, most people would sincerely like to see a higher level of racial integration in schools, but the idea of putting their kids on a bus to achieve that objective is flatly rejected. I used to see that as hypocrisy. But I no longer do. I think the real issue is that they just do not make the connection between problem and solution. That is why affirmative action has such a troubled history. People are quite capable of supporting policy goals (e.g., racial balance in higher education) and rejecting the means.Where does that leave the nation? Galston, in his Brooking essay, provided an answer:In sum, the country’s half-century experiment with affirmative action failed to persuade a majority of Americans — or even a majority of those whom the policy was intended to benefit — that it was effective and appropriate. University employers — indeed the entire country — must now decide what to do next to advance the cause of equal opportunity for all, one of the nation’s most honored but never achieved principles.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Why Trump Seems Less Vulnerable on Abortion Than Other Republicans

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      He appointed judges who overturned Roe, but his vague statements on the issue may give him some leeway with voters.Donald J. Trump is showing surprising resilience on the abortion issue, appearing less vulnerable than fellow Republicans despite his key role in shaping the Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade.An Ohio referendum last Tuesday guaranteeing abortion access and similar election results have bolstered Democrats’ hopes that they could repeat those successes in 2024.But Mr. Trump has held steady in recent surveys even among voters who favor keeping abortion mostly legal. President Biden, who holds a big lead among those who want abortion always legal, led the “mostly legal” group by only one percentage point against Mr. Trump in the recent New York Times/Siena College surveys of battleground states.Mr. Trump seems to have effectively neutralized abortion as an issue during the Republican primary. He appears to be attending to general election voters by employing vagueness and trying to occupy a middle ground of sorts, perhaps allowing voters to see what they want to see. And traditionally in presidential elections, a relatively small share of people will vote based on any one social issue, even if that issue is abortion.Voters who want abortion to be “mostly legal” are about twice as likely to say they are making voting decisions based on economic issues over social issues like abortion. The only group of voters across the six swing states for whom societal issues are even close to as important as economic issues are white college-educated voters, and those voters are expected to be a smaller share of the electorate in a presidential year than in a low-turnout off-year election like the Ohio abortion referendum.The share of voters who prioritize economic issues over social issues has increased by more than 12 percentage points in favor of the economy since the 2022 election, according to Times polling in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona.Joel Graham, 49, of Grant County, Wis., said he would like abortion access to remain widespread: “In my mind, it’s not a politician’s choice, it’s a woman and a family’s choice.”“If Trump is elected, I have some concerns that there’s a chance he would put more hard-core conservatives on the Supreme Court and they might crack down more on abortion,” he said. Still, he says he plans to vote for Mr. Trump again because of his economic policies and concerns about the Biden administration’s foreign policy.Mr. Trump has been on many sides of the abortion issue over the years. In 1999, as a member of the Reform Party, he said he was “very pro-choice.” When he ran for office in 2016, he said women should be punished for having an abortion, then later took it back. Recently, he took full credit on his social media platform for being the one who ended the constitutional right to abortion in America: “I was able to kill Roe v. Wade.”When pressed in September whether he would sign a federal abortion ban at 15 weeks, he declined to give a definitive answer. “I’m not going to say I would or I wouldn’t,” he said.Conservative Republicans such as evangelicals have urged Mr. Trump to come out more forcefully against abortions, but they been among his biggest backers, and he is unlikely to lose them. And for many Republicans who want some abortion access, his lack of a defined stance — combined with his seeming long-term indifference on the issue — has not been a problem.“I haven’t seen Trump say something either way on abortion; he doesn’t seem to care either way and that’s fine with me,” said one of the respondents, a 38-year-old woman from Schuylkill County, Pa., who spoke on condition of anonymity. She wanted abortion to be mostly legal, she said, and planned to vote for Mr. Trump again.With the possible exception of Nikki Haley, Mr. Trump’s opponents for the Republican nomination have seemed to struggle to address shifting views on abortion. Gov. Ron DeSantis largely avoided the topic on the campaign trail, having signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida, a law that has been called extreme by some members of his own party. Mr. Trump called it “a terrible mistake.”Mr. DeSantis quietly came out in support of a federal 15-week abortion ban earlier this year, after months of dodging questions, and criticized Mr. Trump: “Pro-lifers should know he is preparing to sell you out.”But Mr. Trump has distanced himself from more restrictive abortion laws, favored by some in his party, seeming to recognize their unpopularity. Half of swing state voters oppose a federal 15-week abortion ban, while 42 percent are in favor. Voters who want abortion to be mostly legal are fairly divided on a 15-week ban, with a slim majority opposed.For those who want abortion to be mostly legal, Mr. Trump’s role in overturning Roe doesn’t appear to be a big concern.“I don’t think Trump was responsible for the Supreme Court’s decision,” said Michael Yott, a 37-year-old police officer from the Detroit area. “I honestly think that Trump is just for less government and states’ rights, and I’m fine with that. Now with Roe being gone, it’s up to each state to create their own rules and that’s fine.”Mr. Yott said he hoped some access to abortion would be maintained, particularly in early stages of pregnancy, but added, “My answer contradicts the stance of Republican candidates, but it’s just not that high on my list of issues.” More

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      The New Republican Party Isn’t Ready for the Post-Roe World

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      Ohio is not a swing state, not any longer. Donald Trump won it by eight points, twice. It has a Republican governor, and while its senators are split between the parties, its U.S. House delegation is made up of 10 Republicans and five Democrats. And yet Ohio just passed an abortion-rights referendum by a margin of more than 13 points.There’s no way to spin this result. There’s no way to spin every other pro-choice result in every other red-state referendum. The pro-life movement is in a state of electoral collapse, and I think I know one reason.In the eight years since the so-called New Right emerged on the scene and Trump began to dominate the Republican landscape, the Republican Party has become less libertarian but more libertine, and libertinism is ultimately incompatible with a holistic pro-life worldview.I’m not arguing that the pro-choice position is inherently libertine. There are many millions of Americans — including pro-choice Republicans — who arrive at their position through genuine philosophical disagreement with the idea that an unborn child possesses the same inherent worth as anyone else. But I’ve seen Republican libertinism with my own eyes. I know that it distorts the culture of the Republican Party and red America.The difference between libertarianism and libertinism can be summed up as the difference between rights and desires. A libertarian is concerned with her own liberty but also knows that this liberty ends where yours begins. The entire philosophy of libertarianism depends on a healthy recognition of human dignity. A healthy libertarianism can still be individualistic, but it’s also deeply concerned with both personal virtue and the rights of others. Not all libertarians are pro-life, but a pro-life libertarian will recognize the humanity and dignity of both mother and child.A libertine, by contrast, is dominated by his desires. The object of his life is to do what he wants, and the object of politics is to give him what he wants. A libertarian is concerned with all forms of state coercion. A libertine rejects any attempt to coerce him personally, but he’s happy to coerce others if it gives him what he wants.Donald Trump is the consummate libertine. He rejects restraints on his appetites and accountability for his actions. The guiding principle of his worldview is summed up with a simple declaration: I do what I want. Any movement built in his image will be libertine as well.Trump’s movement dismisses the value of personal character. It mocks personal restraint. And it’s happy to inflict its will on others if it achieves what it wants. Libertarianism says that your rights are more important than my desires. Libertinism says my desires are more important than your rights, and this means that libertines are terrible ambassadors for any cause that requires self-sacrifice.I don’t think the pro-life movement has fully reckoned with the political and cultural fallout from the libertine right-wing response to the Covid pandemic. Here was a movement that was loudly telling women that they had to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, with all the physical transformations, risks and financial uncertainties that come with pregnancy and childbirth, at the same time that millions of its members were also loudly refusing the minor inconveniences of masking and the low risks of vaccination — even if the best science available at the time told us that both masking and vaccination could help protect others from getting the disease.Even worse, many of the same people demanded that the state limit the liberty of others so that they could live how they wanted. Florida, for example, banned private corporate vaccine mandates.This do-what-you-want ethos cost a staggering number of American lives. A 2022 study found that there were an estimated 318,981 vaccine-preventable deaths from January 2021 to April 2022. Vaccine hesitancy was so concentrated in Republican America that political affiliation was more relevant than race and ethnicity as an indicator of willingness to take the vaccine. Now there’s evidence from Ohio and Florida that excess mortality rates were significantly higher for Republicans than Democrats after vaccines were widely available.And this is the party that’s now going to tell American women that respect for human life requires personal sacrifice?It’s not just that libertinism robs Republicans of moral authority; it’s that libertinism robs Republicans of moral principle. The Ohio ballot measure could fail so decisively only if Republicans voted against it. The same analysis applies to ballot referendum losses in pro-Trump states like Kansas, Montana and Kentucky.In each state, all the pro-life movement needed was consistent Republican support, and it would have sailed to victory. All the Democrats in the state could have voted to protect abortion rights, and they would have lost if Republicans held firm. But they did not.“Do as I say and not as I do” is among the worst moral arguments imaginable. A holistic pro-life society requires true self-sacrifice. It asks women to value the life growing inside of them even in the face of fear and poverty. It asks the community to rally beside these women to keep them and their children safe and to provide them with opportunities to flourish. It requires both individuals and communities to sublimate their own desires to protect the lives and opportunities of others.As the Republican Party grows more libertine, the pro-life movement is going to keep losing. Of course, it’s going to keep losing with Democrats and independents, many of whom have always been skeptical of pro-life moral and legal arguments. But it’s also going to lose in the Republican Party itself, a party that is increasingly dedicated to outright defiance.An ethos that centers individuals’ desires will bleed over into matters of life and death. It did during Covid, and it’s doing so now, as even Republicans reject the pro-life cause.The challenge for pro-life America isn’t simply to raise more money or use better talking points. As Republican losses in Virginia demonstrate, advocating even a relatively mild abortion ban — a 15-week law, not a so-called heartbeat six-week bill — is fraught. The challenge is much more profound. Pro-life America has to reconnect with personal virtue. It has to model self-sacrifice. It has to show, not just tell, America what it would look like to value life from conception to natural death.At present, however, the Republican Party is dominated by its id. It indulges its desires. And so long as its id is in control, the pro-life movement will fail. There is no selfish path to a culture of life.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Ohio Republicans move to exclude judges from interpreting enshrined abortion rights

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      Four Ohio Republican state lawmakers are seeking to strip judges of their power to interpret an abortion rights amendment after voters opted to enshrine those rights in the state’s constitution this week.Republican state house representatives Jennifer Gross, Bill Dean, Melanie Miller and Beth Lear said in a news release on Thursday that they will push to have Ohio’s legislature – not the courts – make any decisions about the amendment passed on Tuesday.“To prevent mischief by pro-abortion courts with [the amendment], Ohio legislators will consider removing jurisdiction from the judiciary over this ambiguous ballot initiative,” said the mix of fairly new and veteran lawmakers who are all vice-chairs of various house committees. “The Ohio legislature alone will consider what, if any, modifications to make to existing laws based on public hearings and input from legal experts on both sides.”The statement also contained unsubstantiated references to “foreign election interference” by billionaires before voters enshrined abortion rights in Ohio’s constitution.It’s the latest development in the struggle over abortion rights between Ohio’s Republican-dominated legislature and the majority of the voters, who passed the amendment by a margin of 57% to 43%.Abortion rights advocates plan to ask the courts to repeal any remaining abortion bans and restrictions on the books in Ohio, including a mandatory 24-hour waiting period before abortion seekers can have the procedure and a ban on abortions after a fetal diagnosis of Down syndrome.The house speaker, Jason Stephens, declined to comment on the release, according to his spokesperson, Aaron Mulvey. However, Stephens was among the dozens of legislative Republicans who have vowed to fight back against the new amendment.“The legislature has multiple paths that we will explore to continue to protect innocent life. This is not the end of the conversation,” Stephens previously said in a news release.If the amendment or any other abortion restrictions were to end up being challenged in the courts, it’s unclear how they would fare. The state supreme court has a conservative majority and has the final say over state constitutional issues.Guardian staff contributed reporting More

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      Ohio Voted to Protect Abortion Rights. Could Florida Be Next?

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      A coalition of groups collecting petition signatures for a ballot protecting abortion rights says its fund-raising got a boost after the Ohio results.Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, campaigns to protect abortion rights have galvanized voters in state after state. It has become Democrats’ most successful issue ahead of an uncertain 2024 election cycle — and their biggest hope, especially after voters in Ohio approved on Tuesday a measure to enshrine abortion rights in the State Constitution.That triumphant streak has propelled campaigns for similar abortion measures in swing, or potentially swing, states, including Arizona, Florida, Nevada and Pennsylvania. But none might be as tantalizing a prize as Florida, which has moved increasingly out of Democrats’ grasp in electoral contests.But getting a question on next year’s ballot in the state is hardly guaranteed.Like in Ohio, Florida’s government is controlled by Republicans. Also like Ohio, Florida has put in place a six-week abortion ban, with its enactment pending approval by the state’s Supreme Court. (That case centers on Florida’s existing 15-week ban, but affirming that restriction would then trigger the six-week ban approved by Gov. Ron DeSantis in April.)Abortion rights supporters reacted after the ballot measure in Ohio passed. Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe parallels between the two states give Florida organizers hope for success, despite steep obstacles that include a court review of the proposed ballot measure and a costly petition-gathering process. If voters in Florida get to weigh in on the abortion question, organizers say, they too are likely to want to protect their rights.“Florida has always been a deeply libertarian state,” said Anna Hochkammer, executive director of the Florida Women’s Freedom Coalition. “‘Find your tribe, find your people, live your life — we’ll leave you alone.’ It’s part of Floridian culture. And Floridians reject outright that the government should be involved in these decisions. It is deeply offensive to Floridians’ sense of independence and freedom.”Since June 2022, when Roe was overturned, states have given voters a direct say on abortion access, either to protect abortion rights, weaken them or explicitly exclude them from state constitutions. Kansas, Kentucky and Michigan all voted to expand or maintain abortion rights.In Florida, a coalition of groups under the umbrella organization of Floridians Protecting Freedom, including Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union, has collected a little more than half of the nearly 900,000 petition signatures it needs for a ballot measure that aims to limit “government interference with abortion” before a fetus is considered viable, which is often around 24 weeks of pregnancy. Abortion was legal up to 24 weeks in Florida until last year.The coalition had collected about $9 million by the end of September but says its next report will show that more than $12 million has been raised. Most donations have come from Florida, with limited interest so far from the out-of-state donors who propelled campaigns in Ohio and elsewhere.The coalition raised more than $300,000 on Wednesday after the Ohio victory, Ms. Hochkammer said, with more people clicking through the group’s fund-raising emails or taking calls.State Senator Lori Berman of Florida speaking at a news conference in March to voice her opposition to the state’s near total abortion ban.Alicia Devine/Tallahassee Democrat, via Associated Press“The phones started ringing, and pledges started coming in,” she said. “I think that there were a lot of people that were sitting on their money, waiting to see what happened in Ohio. And we had a great day.”Among the places where volunteers and paid petition-gatherers have found eager supporters are screenings of the “Barbie” movie and the Taylor Swift Eras Tour movie, both of which have feminism as a key theme and strong female leads, said Laura Goodhue, executive director of the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates.The coalition still needs to collect — and the state must validate — about 400,000 more signatures by Feb. 1, a difficult and expensive task.The ballot language must also be approved by the conservative-leaning Florida Supreme Court. The state’s Republican attorney general, Ashley Moody, announced a challenge to the measure last month.She and several groups that oppose abortion have argued that the measure is too broad, vague and misleading. Florida requires that ballot questions be clear and limited to a single subject.“This effort to hoodwink the Florida electorate should be rebuffed,” Ms. Moody wrote in a legal brief filed Oct. 31.The ballot question, which would include a summary of the amendment that would be added to the State Constitution if the initiative passes, would read in part, “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s health care provider.” The question does not adequately define “viability”; whether “the patient’s health” would include mental health; and who would be considered a “health care provider,” Ms. Moody argued.“It’s abortion on demand for any reason,” said John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, a conservative Christian group. “It’s not only extreme, but it’s deceptive — and that’s a problem.”Mr. Stemberger said there was “a very good chance” that the State Supreme Court, whose ideological balance has shifted from liberal to conservative, could strike down the amendment. If not, his organization and others have already formed a political committee, Florida Voters Against Extremism, to prepare for a campaign.“Ohio is just a reminder that we still have a lot of work to do,” he said. “We have to go back to the drawing board and explain to people why unborn children are valuable, why adoption is always the better option.”Unlike in Ohio, where protecting abortion rights passed with about 57 percent of the vote, Florida requires citizen-led ballot initiatives to obtain more than 60 percent of the vote to pass. A University of North Florida poll found last year that 60 percent of residents opposed the 15-week ban after they were told that it does not include exceptions for rape or incest.Ms. Hochkammer said the coalition’s polling suggested that more than 70 percent of Floridians supported the abortion rights measure, including 64 percent of Republicans and 57 percent of voters who supported former President Donald J. Trump.Florida voters have tended to support ballot measures championing liberal causes, even while also electing Republican leaders who in many cases later watered down or undermined the implementation of those measures once in office.Until recently, Florida was considered the nation’s largest presidential battleground, with elections decided by tiny margins and former President Barack Obama winning the state twice. But Republicans have been making gains: Mr. Trump won by more than three percentage points in 2020, and Governor DeSantis by 19 points, a landslide, last year.Still, significant citizen-led constitutional measures have done well once they have overcome the hurdles to make it onto the ballot.In 2020, voters backed a $15 hourly minimum wage — and Mr. Trump. In 2018, they voted to restore felons’ voting rights — and for Mr. DeSantis. In 2016, they voted to legalize medical marijuana — and for Mr. Trump.“We are not a deeply conservative, extremist state,” Ms. Hochkammer said. “We are a deeply gerrymandered state, and the fact that our divided election results have been skewing a certain way should not mislead people about what the political appetite is in Florida.” More

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      Party of the People review: Republican strength – and weakness – examined

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      On Tuesday, voters in Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia stood up for individual autonomy, saying no to rolling back abortion access. Ohio, a conservative state, enshrined such rights in its constitution. In Virginia, a closely contested battleground, both houses went Democratic, a rebuff to the Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin. In Kentucky, Andy Beshear, a Democratic, pro-choice governor, handily won re-election.The personal is the political. The supreme court’s rejection of Roe v Wade and attendant abandonment of privacy as a constitutional mandate stand to haunt the Republican party. Next year’s presidential election is no longer just about the possible return of Donald Trump, with his two impeachments and smorgasbord of civil and criminal charges. A national referendum on values looms.Into this morass jumps Patrick Ruffini, a founder of Echelon Insights, a Republican polling firm. Party of the People is his look at the US’s shifting demographics. Turns out, it’s not all bad for the Republican cause. With good reason, Ruffini’s subtitle is “Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP”.“A historic realignment of working-class voters helped Trump defy the odds and win in 2016, and brought him to within a hair of re-election in 2020,” Ruffini writes. “Joe Biden is faltering among the core Democratic groups that were once the mainstay of ‘the party of the people’ – working-class voters of color.”Cultural re-sorting continues. Since the 2000 election, educational polarization has come to prominence. Before then, Ruffini observes, “class – defined in terms of income – was widely understood to be the main dividing line in our politics”. Now it is educational attainment: where you and your spouse went to school.Once the home of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal coalition, the Democratic party has emerged primarily as a haven for college graduates, identity politics and multiculturalism. In one extreme outcome, in 2020, it helped birth an idiotic and self-defeating slogan: “Defund the police.” On race, white liberals are generally more fervent than communities of color.The Republicans are their mirror image. Over six decades, the GOP has morphed into a magnet for evangelicals, church-goers, southern white voters and white Americans without a four-year degree. It incubated the forces unleashed on January 6 and on display in Charlottesville, Virginia, where neo-Nazis marched in 2017. Significantly, however, the GOP also shows the potential to attract working-class voters across lines of race and ethnicity – a point Ruffini repeatedly and rightly stresses.“Numerous polls have shown Trump reaching nearly 20% of the Black vote and drawing to within 10 points of Biden among Hispanic voters,” he states. If those numbers hold next November, Trump may well be measuring the Oval Office curtains again.Despite what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of the progressive “squad” in Congress may say, crime and immigration resonate with voters of color. Open borders and wokeness? Less so. The expression “Latinx” is best kept in faculty lounges.One need look no further than New York. Immigration is no longer simply a Republican talking point. It is bringing the city to a boiling point. The mayor, Eric Adams, and the Biden administration are at loggerheads on the issue. Last Tuesday, residents of the Bronx, a borough made up mostly of people of color, put a Republican on the city council. On eastern Long Island, the GOP gained control of Suffolk county.Ruffini examines New York political history. He reminds us that in 1965, the conservative columnist William F Buckley ran for mayor. He finished at the back of the pack but gained marked support in white working- and middle-class enclaves. His embrace of the police and skepticism of welfare counted.Five years later, in spring 1970, lower Manhattan witnessed the “hard-hat riot”, aimed at anti-war protesters. Later that year, Buckley’s brother, James, won a US Senate seat with a plurality in a three-way race. In the presidential elections of 1972, 1980 and 1984, New York went Republican. Now, though it seems a Democratic sure thing, the state’s population is stagnating, its share of the electoral vote receding.Ruffini is not infallible. Wrongly, he downplays the salience of the Dobbs v Jackson supreme court decision, which gutted the right to abortion, and the subsequent emergence of abortion as a key election issue. He acknowledges that Dobbs provided a boost to Democrats in 2022 but does not spell out how it thwarted an anticipated red wave and hastened Kevin McCarthy’s downfall as Republican speaker.Party of the People contains multiple references to abortion but mentions Dobbs three times only. As for “privacy”, Ruffini never uses the word. “January 6” makes a single appearance – and only in passing. “Insurrection” is not seen. It is almost as if Ruffini is seeking to avoid offending the powers that be.“Trump redefined conservative populism in a secular direction, replacing issues like abortion with immigration and anti-PC rhetoric,” Ruffini tweeted on election night. “Many of his voters voted yes in Ohio.”Yes. But not that many.A little more than one in six Ohio Republicans backed the measure, according to exit polls. On the other hand, 83% of Black voters, 73% of Latinos, more than three-quarters of young voters and five out of eight college graduates identified as pro-choice.Though more conservative than white liberals, voters of color are generally pro-choice. Indeed, in Ohio, their support for abortion access outpaced that found in the general electorate. White voters backed the measure 53%-47%. It passed by 57%-43%.But Democrats should not gloat. The FDR coalition is dead. The party last won by a landslide in 1964. Inflation’s scars remain visible. Kitchen-table issues still count. Trump leads in the polls. Ruffini has a real and meaningful message.
      Party of the People is published in the US by Simon & Schuster More

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      Alarmed by Off-Year Losses, Mainstream Republicans Balk at Abortion Curbs

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      Worried about alienating critical blocs of voters, House Republicans from competitive districts are digging in against using spending bills for abortion and contraception restrictions.Two days after Republicans across the country suffered a drubbing, dragged down by their opposition to abortion rights in the off-year elections, G.O.P. leaders on Capitol Hill appeared not to have gotten the memo.House Republicans tried on Thursday to use a financial services spending bill to chip away at a District of Columbia law aimed at protecting employees from being discriminated against for seeking contraceptive or abortion services. Tucked inside the otherwise dry bill was a line barring federal funds from being used to enforce that law.But minutes ahead of an expected vote, Republicans were forced to pull the legislation from the floor. Mainstream G.O.P. lawmakers from competitive districts — concerned that their party’s opposition to abortion rights has alienated women — appeared unwilling to support the abortion-related restriction, sapping the measure of the votes necessary to pass.It was the latest reflection of the deep divisions among Republicans that have prevented them, for the moment, from coalescing around a strategy for averting a government shutdown.But this time, it was also an illustration of yet another disconnect — between a small group of Republicans in Congress who are trying to pivot away from an anti-abortion message that voters have rejected and a much larger coalition, including the party’s leaders, who are doubling down.Tuesday’s election results drove home to some Republicans in Congress what they already know and fear — that their party has alienated critical blocs of voters with its policies and message, particularly on abortion. And the results stiffened their resolve to resist such measures, even if it means breaking with the party at a critical time in a high-stakes fight over federal spending.“The American people are speaking very clearly: There is no appetite for national abortion law,” Representative John Duarte of California, a Republican who represents a district that President Biden won in 2020, said on Thursday. “And there’s enough of us in the Republican Party that are going to stand against it.”Given Republicans’ tiny majority, which allows them to lose only four votes on their side if all Democrats show up and unite in opposition, that resistance could be decisive. Between mainstream Republicans’ resistance to the abortion provision in the financial services bill and rising discontent among the hard-right flank that the legislation did not include a measure barring funding for a new F.B.I. building, it became clear the bill did not have the votes.Mr. Duarte said he and other more center-leaning Republicans had warned party leaders that they would be inclined to oppose other spending bills that contained “abortion language not core to a bill.” He said he would prefer that those provisions be pulled out of the spending bills and voted on separately.Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican who also represents a district that Mr. Biden won in 2020, told reporters that he, too, had opposed the financial services bill because of the abortion-related language.The rare pushback from members who represent the political middle of the Republican conference came two days after Ohio voters resoundingly approved a ballot measure enshrining a right to abortion in the state’s Constitution.The message that abortion remains the most potent political issue for Democrats was clear even where abortion itself was not on the ballot. In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, rode to victory after criticizing his Republican opponent’s defense of the state’s near-total abortion ban. And in Virginia, legislative candidates who opposed the 15-week abortion ban proposed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, prevailed.Ohio voters resoundingly approved a ballot measure enshrining a right to abortion in the state’s Constitution.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesIn the House, however, gerrymandering has made most Republican seats so safe that lawmakers routinely cater to the far-right wing of their party, and a slim majority has given hard-right lawmakers outsized influence. The result has been that House Republicans continue to draft legislation that is out of step with a vast majority of voters, including some of their own constituents, on social issues.That has forced Republicans from competitive districts to take politically perilous votes that many of them fear will cost them their seats, as well as the House majority, next year.In September, Representative Marc Molinaro, one of six New York Republicans who represent districts that Mr. Biden won in 2020, objected to an agriculture spending bill because it included language that would restrict access to mifepristone, a widely used abortion pill.That measure, which would fund the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration, ultimately collapsed on the House floor when other Republicans joined Mr. Molinaro in opposing it because of that specific restriction.Democrats had already swung into action to hammer Republicans on the issue. After the legislation was approved by the Appropriations Committee, the House Democrats’ campaign arm accused five vulnerable Republicans on the panel who voted to advance the bill of “putting the health and livelihoods of countless women at risk.”Then, after the bill failed on the floor, the House Democrats’ main super PAC hammered politically vulnerable Republicans who supported it, calling them “anti-abortion extremists.”On Thursday, Mr. Molinaro was part of the small group of Republicans who balked at supporting the financial services bill because of the anti-abortion language tucked inside.“There are approximately five to eight who aren’t supportive because of these provisions,” Mr. Molinaro said. “We must respect and love women faced with such difficult choices.”Mr. Molinaro said he opposed a national ban on abortion. While he noted that he was against late-term abortions, he said he did not want to impose any further abortion restrictions at the federal level — including through spending bills.“My constituents have reinforced my view, and results in Ohio may well confirm a position for that state,” he added.Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, has long railed against her party for not doing enough to show compassion to women. She has said that G.O.P. leaders are making Republicans like her from moderate districts “walk the plank” with abortion votes. Ms. Mace said on Thursday that she was part of the group of lawmakers Mr. Molinaro was referring to who would not support spending bills that quietly tried to expand abortion restrictions.“We can’t save lives, if we can’t win elections,” Ms. Mace posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday night as the election results became clear. “We need to talk about common sense abortion restrictions, while also promoting expanded access to contraception including over the counter.”Still, there are major minefields ahead. Senior House appropriators are planning as soon as next week to bring up the bill that funds the Labor Department and the Department of Heath and Human Services, which includes multiple anti-abortion measures. Democrats argue those measures are aimed at defunding Planned Parenthood and making funding for Title X, the nation’s family planning program, less accessible. The legislation also would target programs that provide referrals or information about abortion.While the bill does not single out Planned Parenthood by name, it includes a provision that would bar sending federal funds to “community providers” that are “primarily engaged in family planning services, reproductive health and related medical care.” It includes exceptions for abortions performed in the case of rape or incest, or in instances in which the mother’s life is endangered.It is exactly the type of legislation that mainstream Republicans like Mr. Duarte are warning against.“A lot of us in swing districts — a lot of us that want to be very respectful of where the American people are and aren’t on these social issues — are standing our ground,” Mr. Duarte said. More