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      The G.O.P.’s Culture War Shtick Is Wearing Thin With Voters

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      The Republican Party has always leaned on culture war issues to win elections, but for the last three years, since Joe Biden won office in 2020, an aggressive and virulent form of culture war demagoguery has been at the center of Republican political strategy.If the results of Tuesday’s elections in Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio tell us anything, however, it’s that this post-Roe form of culture warring is an abject failure, an approach that repels and alienates voters far more than it appeals to or persuades them.To be fair to Republican strategists, there was a moment, in the fall of 2021, when it looked like the plan was working. Glenn Youngkin, the Republican nominee for governor in Virginia, ran on a campaign of “parents’ rights” against “critical race theory” and won a narrow victory against Terry McAuliffe, a former Democratic governor, sweeping Republicans into power statewide for the first time since 2009. Youngkin shot to national prominence and Republicans made immediate plans to take the strategy to every competitive race in the country.In 2022, with “parental rights” as their rallying cry, Republican lawmakers unleashed a barrage of legislation targeting transgender rights, and Republican candidates ran explicit campaigns against transgender and other gender nonconforming people. “They kicked God out of schools and welcomed the drag queens,” said Kari Lake, an Arizona Republican, during her 2022 campaign for governor. “They took down our flag and replaced it with a rainbow.”Republican candidates and political committees spent millions of dollars attacking gender-affirming care for minors and transgender participation in youth sports. Republican opponents of Michigan’s initiative to protect abortion access in the state warned voters that it would give transgender youth the right to obtain certain forms of care without parental consent. An ad aired in opposition to Abigail Spanberger, a Virginia Democrat running for re-election to the House that year, portrayed gender-affirming care as a way to “chemically castrate” children.Lake lost her race. Michigan voters successfully amended their state Constitution to protect the right to an abortion. Spanberger won re-election, too. Overall, election night 2022 was a serious disappointment for the Republican Party, which failed to win a Senate majority and barely won control of the House of Representatives. The hoped-for red wave was little more than a puddle. The culture war strategy had fallen flat on its face.Undaunted, Republicans stepped back up to the plate and took another swing at transgender rights. Attorney General Daniel Cameron of Kentucky, the Republican nominee for governor of that state, and his allies spent millions on anti-transgender right ads in his race against the Democratic incumbent Andy Beshear. In one television ad, a narrator warns viewers of a “radical transgender agenda” that’s “bombarding our children everywhere we turn.” Beshear won re-election.Youngkin was not on the ballot in Virginia, but he led the effort to win a Republican trifecta in the state, targeting Democrats once again on parents’ rights and endorsing candidates who ran hard against transgender inclusion in schools. “No more are we going to make parents stand outside of the room,” Youngkin said, to a crowd of Republicans on Monday at a rally in Leesburg. “We are going to put them at the head of the table in charge of our children’s lives.”One candidate for State Senate Youngkin endorsed, Juan Pablo Segura, told Fox News that he wants to revisit a failed bill that would have required schools to notify parents if there was any hint a child was interested in transgender identity.Segura lost his race and Youngkin and his fellow Republicans failed to either flip the State Senate or hold on to the House of Delegates. He’ll face a Democratic majority in both chambers of the General Assembly for the rest of his term in office.Some Ohio Republicans also tried to turn their fight against a reproductive rights initiative into a battle over transgender rights, falsely stating that the wording of the amendment would allow minors to obtain gender-affirming surgeries without parental consent. On Tuesday, Ohio voters backed the initiative, 56 percent to 43 percent.I can think of three reasons that voters — going back to the 2016 North Carolina governor’s race, fought over the state’s “bathroom bill” — have not responded to Republican efforts to make transgender rights a wedge issue.There’s the fact that transgender people represent a tiny fraction of the population — they just aren’t all that relevant to the everyday lives of most Americans. There’s also the fact that for all the talk of “parents’ rights,” the harshest anti-trans laws trample on the rights of parents who want to support their transgender children.Additionally — and ironically, given the Republican Party’s strategic decision to link the two — there’s the chance that when fused together with support for abortion bans, vocal opposition to the rights of transgender people becomes a clear signal for extremist views. The vibe is off, one might say, and voters have responded accordingly.If the Republican Party were a normal political party that was still capable of strategic adjustment, I’d say to expect some rhetorical moderation ahead of the presidential election. But consider the most recent Republican presidential debate — held on Wednesday — in which candidates continued to emphasize their opposition to the inclusion of transgender people in mainstream American life. “If God made you a man, you play sports against men,” declared Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, at the conclusion of the debate.So I suppose that when the next election comes around, we should just expect more of the same.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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      How Abortion Could Define the 2024 Presidential Race

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      With two election cycles after the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization under our belts, it cannot be denied: Abortion rights are the dominant issue in American politics. And when supporters of abortion rights — a clear majority of Americans — see a connection between their votes and protecting what was once guaranteed by Roe v. Wade, they are more likely to vote.With a second Trump term possibly hanging in the balance in next November’s election, these are lessons Democrats must seize.Abortion rights won big on Tuesday night. In Ohio, a constitutional amendment enshrining protections for abortion rights was on the ballot, and in Virginia, control of both chambers of the state legislature was considered a tossup, and both parties made abortion rights the central issue of their campaigns. The pro-abortion-rights measure in Ohio passed by a wide margin. In Virginia, the Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, made his proposal for a ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy the central argument for electing Republicans in the state legislature. Republicans failed to win back control in the Senate and lost their narrow majority in the House of Delegates as turnout surged to historically high levels in key swing districts.Before this week’s elections, most of the attention of the political class and the public was focused on national polls showing Donald Trump holding a lead over President Biden in the 2024 presidential contest. But it is now clearer than ever that the backlash against the Dobbs decision — and voters’ general distaste for strictly limiting abortion access — could play a crucial role in winning Mr. Biden a second term. Certainly, there will be many other major issues at play in this election, including war and voters’ perceptions of the economy. But abortion could plausibly be the deciding factor next November.Mr. Trump’s narrow lead in recent polls is largely due to Mr. Biden’s underperforming with younger voters and voters of color relative to his support levels in 2020. While there is evidence that these polls overstate the risk to the president’s coalition, perhaps more important, these voters have proved over the course of the past year that they are highly mobilized by abortion rights and will provide strong support to candidates who share their position on the issue. By analyzing the individual-level turnout data from post-Dobbs elections, we know that women and younger voters are most likely to be inspired to vote when they see an opportunity to defend abortion rights and that this coalition is broad and diverse, including a large segment of voters of color.To date, the post-Dobbs political battles have been fought almost exclusively at the state level. Republicans in Congress, with control of the House of Representatives, have shown little appetite for passing a federal ban, saying the issue is best left to the states to decide. The implausible path for such legislation through a Democratic majority in the Senate, not to mention a certain veto from Mr. Biden, has spared the Republican majority in the House from any substantial pressure to advance such legislation. That said, in the immediate aftermath of seeing his state overwhelmingly support abortion rights this week, the Republican senator J.D. Vance of Ohio is urging a national Republican position on abortion in the form of a 15-week ban.The base of the Republican Party clearly expects its candidates to prioritize abortion bans. To ignore these calls is to risk a demoralized base on Election Day next year, making the path to victory that much narrower for a party that has won the national popular vote for the presidency only once in the past 35 years. Yet at the same time, the 2022 and 2023 elections have proved that standing firm in support of abortion bans energizes progressive voters and swings independents toward Democratic candidates. Given that Mr. Trump faces the challenge of expanding his coalition beyond that of his 2020 shortfall, such a development could doom his hopes of returning to the White House.Mr. Biden and his team have no doubt grasped this dynamic and will presumably force Mr. Trump to pick one of the two daunting paths before him. Before the Virginia elections, national Republicans clearly hoped that Mr. Youngkin had found the consensus choice, with what they emphasized as limits on abortion, not bans. These hopes were dashed in polling places across Virginia on Tuesday, something that surely did not go unnoticed in the White House.Abortion rights have had the biggest impact on elections over the past year and a half where voters believe abortion rights to be threatened and when they plausibly see their votes as a means to protect or reinstate abortion rights, it is good news for Democrats and for expanding or protecting abortion access. States with abortion on the ballot in the form of ballot measures have seen the biggest effect, but similar effects have been felt in states like Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona, where the issue was at the forefront of campaign messaging.While Republicans find themselves boxed into a corner on the issue of abortion, in many ways Mr. Biden is the ideal messenger to connect the dots for moderates on this issue. His personal journey on abortion rights has been well documented and mirrors that of many Americans. This year Mr. Biden said: “I’m a practicing Catholic. I’m not big on abortion. But guess what? Roe v. Wade got it right.” Polling shows a sizable portion of moderates and even conservatives more or less agree with him: They may not consider themselves activists on the issue of abortion rights, but at the same time, they are deeply uncomfortable with the Dobbs decision and how it stripped so many Americans of individual freedoms.This presents both a challenge and an opportunity for Mr. Biden in 2024: Republicans are on the defensive when it comes to abortion rights, and are losing ground every day. Mr. Trump, in calling bans on abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy “a terrible thing and a terrible mistake,” has shown he is aware of the liability the issue represents for his presidential campaign. Yet he is left without a solution that will mollify his supporters while not alienating moderates or mobilizing progressives.Democrats exceeded expectations and precedent in key races in 2022 and 2023 by putting abortion rights and Republican extremism front and center. In 2024 all voters must understand that their votes will decide the future of abortion rights, everywhere.Tom Bonier is a Democratic political strategist and the senior adviser to TargetSmart, a data and polling firm.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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      in US Politics

      Elections 2023: Republicans lose big on issue of abortion – podcast

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      Tuesday was a big night for the Democrats, with big wins in some unexpected places: Ohio, Virginia and Kentucky. Abortion rights advocates were celebrating, their hopes lifted ahead of next year’s presidential election, despite some gloomy polls for Joe Biden. Republicans, meanwhile, like the presidential candidates who took to the debate stage on Wednesday, are reeling.
      So what do the results mean for 2024? Should Republicans rethink their message on abortion? And why is it that despite Donald Trump spending the week in court on trial for fraud, it’s Joe Biden who’s suffering in the polls?
      Jonathan Freedland is joined by Tara Setmayer and Simon Rosenberg to discuss it all.

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      West Virginia Democratic senator Joe Manchin will not seek re-election in 2024 – US politics live

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      West Virginia’s Democratic senator Joe Manchin has announced that he will not seek re-election in the Senate.In a statement released on Thursday, Manchin, who has held his Senate seat since 2010, said:
      “After months of deliberation and long conversations with my family, I believe in my heart of hearts that I have accomplished what I set out to do for West Virginia. I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate, but what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.
      To the West Virginians who have put their trust in me and fought side by side to make our state better – it has been an honor of my life to serve you. Thank you.
      Every incentive in Washington is designed to make our politics extreme. The growing divide between Democrats and Republicans is paralyzing Congress and worsening our nation’s problems. The majority of Americans are just plain worn out…
      Public service has and continues to drive me every day. That is the vow that I made to my father 40 years ago, and I intend to keep that vow until my dying day.”
      In the statement announcing he would end his Senate career, Joe Manchin said “I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate, but what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.”That line stoked speculation he could launch a third-party presidential run next year, perhaps with the help of centrist group No Labels. Democrats have been fretting over that possibility for months, as a Manchin candidacy could swing voters away from Joe Biden, whose re-election campaign has been dogged by worrying poll numbers.At the Capitol, Politico says some of Manchin’s counterparts don’t believe he has presidential ambitions:There are two main Republicans vying for West Virginia’s Senate seat, which Democrat Joe Manchin just said he would not stand for again.The first is governor Jim Justice, who in 2017 left the Democratic party and joined the GOP at a rally for Donald Trump. “Senator Joe Manchin and I have not always agreed on policy and politics, but we’re both lifelong West Virginians who love this state beyond belief, and I respect and thank him for his many years of public service,” Justice said in a statement after Manchin’s announcement.The second is Alex Mooney, a fifth term House lawmaker representing the northern half of the state. He is what he had to say about Manchin’s departure:The state’s primary elections are scheduled for 14 May of next year.Minutes after Joe Manchin announced he would not run for re-election, Ohio’s Democratic senator Sherrod Brown made a veiled reference to the West Virginia senator’s decision:Brown represents Ohio, which has supported Republican candidates in the past two presidential elections, albeit by a much smaller percentage than West Virginia. With Manchin gone and almost certain to be replaced by a Republican, Brown’s victory next year is essential if the party has any chance of staying in the majority in the Senate.Following Joe Manchin’s decision not to seek re-election, the Cook Political Report has changed its rating of the race to “solid Republican”.That’s the same rating given to Senate races in other deep-red states like Nebraska, Tennessee and Wyoming:In the 2020 election, West Virginia voted more than 68% for Donald Trump, his second biggest-margin of victory after Wyoming.Joe Manchin first arrived in the Senate in 2010 after a stint as West Virginia’s governor, but the peak of his political power came in the first two years of the Biden administration.Democrats held a 50-seat majority in the Senate those two years, meaning the party had to vote unanimously on legislation that Republicans would not support. While Manchin backed most of Joe Biden’s agenda, he flexed his muscles in the negotiations over Build Back Better, an expansive plan to fight climate change and invest in a host of social programs that the president wanted approved.Manchin opposed several of its measure, including continuing the expanded child tax credit that was credited with cutting child poverty in half in 2021. Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, then a member of the Democratic party, also rejected tax changes to offset some of the bill’s costs. Negotiations over the legislation dragged all through 2021 and into 2022, and appeared to have stalled completely by that summer.Then, suddenly, Manchin and the Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer announced they had reached an agreement on a different bill called the Inflation Reduction Act, which included some measures to fight climate change and lower prescription drug costs, but lacked some of Build Back Better’s most expansive proposals.For climate activists who blamed the West Virginia senator and coal businessman for defanging attempts to lower America’s carbon emissions, it was a surprising change in course. Here’s more from the Guardian’s Oliver Milman’s piece from last year analyzing Manchin’s role in the agreement:
      Climate advocates reacted with surprise and delight to Joe Manchin’s decision to back a sweeping bill to combat the climate crisis, with analysts predicting the legislation will bring the US close to its target of slashing planet-heating emissions.
      The West Virginia senator, who has made millions from his ownership of a coal-trading company, had seemingly thwarted Joe Biden’s hopes of passing meaningful climate legislation – only to reveal on Wednesday his support for a $369bn package to support renewable energy and electric vehicle rollout.
      The move by the centrist Democrat shocked many of Manchin’s colleagues, who despaired after more than 18 months of seemingly fruitless negotiations with the lawmaker, a crucial vote in an evenly divided Senate.
      “Holy shit,” tweeted Tina Smith, a Democrat from Minnesota. “Stunned, but in a good way.”
      Should the bill pass both chambers of Congress and be signed by Biden, it will be the biggest and arguably first piece of climate legislation ever enacted by the US. The world’s largest historical carbon polluter has repeatedly failed to act on the climate crisis due to missed opportunities, staunch Republican opposition and the machinations of the fossil fuel lobby.
      The climate spending, part of a broader bill called the Inflation Reduction Act, “has the potential to be a historic turning point” said Al Gore, the former vice-president.
      Joe Manchin’s decision not to seek re-election makes Democrats’ quest to preserve their majority in the Senate even more difficult.Manchin was one of three Democratic senators representing red states who are facing voters next year, and the party is not viewed as having a strong replacement candidate in West Virginia, a deeply Republican state.The focus now shifts to Montana’s Jon Tester and Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, both of whom have said they will stand again, but face difficult paths to victory. There is also the question of whether Kyrsten Sinema, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, will stand again in purple state Arizona, or if she will be replaced by a Democrat. The GOP may also launch offensives against incumbent Democratic senators in swing states Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and try to win the open Senate seat in Michigan.Even if Democrats fail in West Virginia but win all the other races, they could still lose their Senate majority. That best-case scenario would give the party only 50 seats, one short of a majority, and control of the chamber would come down to whether Joe Biden wins re-election, or is replaced by a Republican.Israel’s decision to allow hours-long pauses to its bombing campaign in Gaza is “heartless” and falls far short of what is necessary to protect civilian life in the territory, said Congresswoman Cori Bush, a Missouri Democrat who is the lead sponsor of a ceasefire resolution.The White House said on Thursday that Israel has agreed to four-hour daily humanitarian pauses in its bombardment of northern Gaza, part of a negotiated deal to allow aid and assistance to flow to the enclave’s increasingly desperate population of 2.3 million.“How dare we treat humans in that way,” Bush said, her voice rising with anger. “How dare we be so careless and so inhumane and heartless to decide that four hours is enough time to get you some stuff so that you can live a little bit longer until the bombs hit. How dare we? How dare we treat humans as if we don’t understand what it’s like to be human.”“That’s not the way,” Bush added. “We don’t want four hours. We don’t want 16 hours. We don’t want 22 hours. We want a ceasefire now.”The Israeli military has said it has not agreed to a ceasefire but that it will continue to allow “tactical, local pauses” to let in humanitarian aid. It comes as Biden administration officials push Israel to agree for a longer stoppage in the fighting as part of an effort to free the hostages held by the militant group.Asked about the prospect of a formal ceasefire on Thursday, Biden said that there was “no possibility” at the moment.His response angered a group of veterans gathered with Bush on Capitol Hill to call for an end to the hostilities. Drawing on their own recollections of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, they said peace and security could only be won through diplomacy.Shaking with anger, Brittany Ramos DeBarros, a combat veteran and former army captain, addressed Biden directly.“Mr President, you are the commander in chief of one of the most powerful militaries on the face of this planet in the history of the world,” she said. “How can you be so powerful and so weak as to say that you are incapable of negotiating peace?”Bush was also joined by congresswomen Summer Lee of Pennsylvania and Delia Ramirez of Illinois, who are among the 18 Democratic sponsors of the ceasefire legislation.Bush vowed to keep up the pressure on the White House to advocate for a ceasefire.“If that is his position today, there is also a this afternoon and a tonight. There is a tomorrow. There is a Saturday and a Sunday,” she said. “I expect that there will be change. There will be change because … the people that elected this president are screaming out saying we want a ceasefire now.”In response to the announcement from West Virginia’s Joe Manchin that he will not seek Senate re-election in 2024, the National Republican Senatorial Committee said:
      “We like our odds in West Virginia.”
      West Virginia’s Democratic senator Joe Manchin has announced that he will not seek re-election in the Senate.In a statement released on Thursday, Manchin, who has held his Senate seat since 2010, said:
      “After months of deliberation and long conversations with my family, I believe in my heart of hearts that I have accomplished what I set out to do for West Virginia. I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate, but what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.
      To the West Virginians who have put their trust in me and fought side by side to make our state better – it has been an honor of my life to serve you. Thank you.
      Every incentive in Washington is designed to make our politics extreme. The growing divide between Democrats and Republicans is paralyzing Congress and worsening our nation’s problems. The majority of Americans are just plain worn out…
      Public service has and continues to drive me every day. That is the vow that I made to my father 40 years ago, and I intend to keep that vow until my dying day.”
      Iowa’s Republican governor Kim Reynolds said that “it feels good to get in the game” after endorsing Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis for president. The Associated Press reports:After seven months of hosting Republican presidential candidates in Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds said it “feels good to get in the game” with her endorsement of of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. But the popular Iowa governor declined to say whether other candidates should concede and throw their support behind him as well, even as she acknowledged that a wider field could advantage former President Donald Trump. “At some point, if we don’t narrow the field, it’s going to be hard to … maybe, you know, that helps Trump,” Reynolds said in an interview with The Associated Press. “But I think that is for them to decide.”In making the endorsement earlier this week, Reynolds broke with a longstanding tradition of Iowa governors staying neutral in their party’s presidential contests, the first in the GOP nomination calendar…Still, Reynolds said DeSantis is best poised for victory in the general election, a race she doesn’t think Trump can win without attracting voters beyond his base. DeSantis “won in demographics that Republicans have never really won in Florida,” she said. More

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      Democrats Dominated Suburbs on Election Night, a Potential Preview of 2024

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      Republicans had hope after 2022 that the nation’s residential redoubts were coming back to the G.O.P. But aside from New York, the suburbs on Tuesday swung back to the Democrats.From Northern Virginia to Northern Kentucky, the American suburbs rejected Republican candidates on Tuesday, sending a message that leafy residential communities where elections were once won and lost increasingly side with the Democratic Party — especially on abortion rights.Only in the New York suburbs of eastern Long Island did the Republican message on crime and “open borders” seem to resonate. Democrats took a drubbing in Suffolk County, where suburbanites may be recoiling at the migrant crisis plaguing the metropolis to the west.Elsewhere, in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., Louisville, Ky., and Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland, Ohio, voters rejected Republican messages on abortion, L.G.B.T.Q. issues and crime, sending a signal that while they may fret over President Biden’s age and capabilities, they may worry more about Republican positions in the era of Donald J. Trump.“Suburban America left the G.O.P. in 2016 when they didn’t like Trump’s behavior,” said Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and message adviser. “They began to come back in 2022 when they rejected Joe Biden’s economic policies, but they will leave again if the conversation is about abortion and social policy.”Abortion was dominant; suburban voters outside Ohio’s biggest cities voted overwhelmingly to establish the right to an abortion in the state’s constitution. Kentucky’s incumbent Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, who ran hard on abortion rights and kitchen-table issues like infrastructure spending, won not only Jefferson County, home to Louisville, and Fayette County, home to Lexington. He also beat his Republican challenger, Daniel Cameron, in Kenton and Campbell Counties, once reliably Republican redoubts across the Ohio River from Cincinnati.Two years ago, Glenn Youngkin’s victorious Republican campaign for governor in Virginia had some Democrats worried that their lock on the suburban sprawl outside the nation’s capital wasn’t as tight as they had thought. Those same suburbs on Tuesday made Danica Roem, a Democrat, the first transgender state senator in the South, while helping Democrats seize a majority in the Virginia General Assembly and hold control of the State Senate.“We let the Democrats drive the message and make it all about abortion,” said John Whitbeck, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia who lives in Loudoun County, a Washington exurb. “The Republican Party has to modernize its message on this issue if we’re going to convince Democrats and independents to cross over and vote Republican. The reality is Virginia has some districts that vote blue. In a year where Roe v. Wade is driving intensity, there’s no way for us to win those districts.”In retrospect, Mr. Youngkin’s victory may have been a hangover from the coronavirus pandemic, when suburban parents worried about school closures and responded to his singular focus on education, said Heather Williams, interim president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which works to elect Democrats to state legislatures.This time, she said, some of the same parents recoiled from Republican efforts to ban books with L.G.B.T.Q. themes from libraries and more generally inject socially conservative views into the school system.“The issue of fundamental freedoms still really resonates,” she said.In the highly contested school board races around Cedar Rapids, Iowa, voters soundly rejected every candidate endorsed by the right-wing group Moms for Liberty, which had been leading efforts to excise L.G.B.T.Q. books from libraries and exert more conservative control over curriculums.In 2021, with the pandemic still hanging over the schools, the group claimed victory in 33 school board seats in the swing Philadelphia suburbs of Bucks County, Pa. On Tuesday, Moms for Liberty candidates lost five school board races in central Bucks County.“They just got crushed,” said Jefrey Pollock, a Democratic pollster who worked with candidates in Pennsylvania. “Voters are looking for common-sense middle-of-the-road candidates, and that includes how they’ll view Donald Trump a year from now.”Tiffany Justice, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty and former school board member from Indian River County, Fla., expressed no regret, saying that across the country, about 90 school board candidates endorsed by her group did win, out of 202 total that it backed. The “win rate” of Moms for Liberty did slip, from better than 50 percent in 2022 to 43 percent on Tuesday, she said. But, she said, the group will be back in 2024 with 139 candidates, better training for candidates, more money and more professional political partnerships.“We’re just getting started,” she said.The one Republican bright spot was significant: New York. In an otherwise disappointing midterm election in 2022, Republican victories in the suburbs of the nation’s largest city secured the party its narrow control of the House. Democrats are banking on a comeback to help retake the House.But the signal sent on Tuesday was that where voters are seeing the huge upswell of migrants from the southern border, the Republican message on crime and border security is working. In these areas, voters were not asked to litigate the abortion issue.Ed Romaine easily flipped the Suffolk County executive’s office from Democrat to Republican. A Republican, Kristy Marmorato, won a City Council seat in the Bronx for the first time in more than 50 years.Of course, the threat of an abortion ban did not hang over those races — because reproductive rights are already secure in New York.Reid J. Epstein More

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      A Good Night for Democrats. A Bad Poll for Biden.

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      Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat, Carlos Lozada and Listen to and follow ‘Matter of Opinion’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicThe election results on Tuesday made it clear that voters support Democratic policies and state politicians — but new polling shows they don’t love the president.On this week’s episode of “Matter of Opinion,” the hosts share their takeaways from the voting, and what it all means for 2024. Also, your calls about your presidential fantasy matchups.(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Illustration by The New York Times; Photograph by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty ImagesMentioned in this episode:“October 2023 Times/Siena Poll of the 2024 Battlegrounds”“The Woke Burnout is Real — and Politics is Catching Up”Thoughts? Email us at matterofopinion@nytimes.com.Follow our hosts on X: Michelle Cottle (@mcottle), Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT), Carlos Lozada (@CarlosNYT) and Lydia Polgreen (@lpolgreen).“Matter of Opinion” is produced by Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Phoebe Lett and Derek Arthur. It is edited by Alison Bruzek. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud and Sonia Herrero. Original music by Sonia Herrero, Carole Sabouraud, Efim Shapiro, Pat McCusker and Isaac Jones. Our fact-checking team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Annie-Rose Strasser. More

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      ‘Abortion is a winning issue’: rights victories in 2023 US elections raise hopes for 2024

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      More than a year after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, handing states the power to decide if and how to ban abortion, voters have again overwhelmingly rejected attempts to curtail access to the procedure. A string of successes for abortion rights groups on Tuesday are raising hopes among Democrats that, despite recent dismal polls, the issue will lift their odds in 2024.In Ohio, the only state to hold an abortion-related ballot referendum in 2023, more than 56% of voters agreed to enshrine the right to the procedure into the state constitution. In Virginia, Democrats won back full control of the state legislature after Republicans campaigned on the promise of a “sensible limit” that would ban most abortions past 15 weeks of pregnancy. In Kentucky, the incumbent Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, bested his anti-abortion Republican opponent. And in Pennsylvania, in a race dominated by talk of abortion, Democrats won a seat on the state supreme court.On Tuesday evening in downtown Columbus, Ohio, abortion rights advocates crowded into a hotel ballroom to watch as results streamed in. Once the vote was called in their favor, the conversation in the room immediately turned to the topic on everyone’s minds: what does the victory mean for next year? In 2024, abortion-related referendums may be on the ballot in roughly a dozen states, including in critical swing states like Nevada, Florida, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Iowa. Democrats will almost certainly lean on the issue to buoy their party in races for Congress and the White House. And Tuesday’s results in Ohio raise hopes that they might be able to pluck voters from the other side. While Joe Biden lost Ohio in 2020, garnering only about 45% of the vote, Issue 1, the proposal to add abortion rights into the state constitution, won with an estimated 56% of the vote on Tuesday. That sweep indicates that Republican voters are abandoning their party on this issue.“Abortion is a winning issue, including in states that are considered red,” said Kimberly Inez McGuire, executive director of Urge: Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity. “Young people, black voters, rural voters – voters all across the state came out and we saw support in every single corner of the state. The lesson for other states is: don’t take anyone for granted. Don’t assume they’re gonna support you, but also don’t assume that they’re gonna oppose.”The issue turns voters out in high numbers, which could also prove a boon for Biden at a time of low enthusiasm: nearly 4 million people voted this year on Issue 1, according to early data from Ohio’s secretary of state office. That’s only slightly less than the 4.2 million people who turned out to vote in Ohio’s gubernatorial race last year – even though 2023 was considered an “off-off” election year.The failures in Ohio and Virginia also leave Republicans without a clear roadmap for messaging on abortion – an issue that led them to underperform in the 2022 midterms. In Ohio, opponents of the ballot initiative, Issue 1, focused much of their message not on the morality of abortion, but on the idea that Issue 1 threatened parents’ rights to know if their children underwent an abortion or gender-affirming care. (That claim is dubious, legal experts told the Guardian.) In Virginia, Republicans tried to take advantage of Americans’ lack of support for abortion in the second and third trimester by proposing to ban abortion past 15 weeks with exceptions for rape, incest and medical emergencies.Both efforts were viewed as tests for next year – had either message won over voters, Republicans across the country may have adopted them in their own races in 2024. Now, their strategy is in question, and any course they choose risks alienating key constituencies. “If the GOP moves to the center on abortion, they’re afraid that they’ll lose conservative donors and base voters – who are the ones who tend to be the most passionate Republican voters, the ones who turn out the most reliably and also people who donate a lot of money,” said Mary Ziegler, a University of California, Davis School of Law professor who studies the legal history of reproduction. “Republicans have been trying to finesse that, with pretty much no success to date.”Despite being directly responsible for overturning Roe v Wade through his appointments to the supreme court, Donald Trump has attempted to stem the damage by distancing himself from much of his party, coming out against a national abortion ban. But polling shows that voters don’t necessarily trust Republicans who say they will not totally ban abortion. That may be in part due to their decades-long partnership with an anti-abortion movement that would like to eliminate the procedure entirely.Hours before polls closed on Tuesday, Jamie Curry, Ohio regional coordinator for the anti-abortion group Students for Life, tried to convince passing Ohio State University students that Issue 1 was too extreme. “You seem to be in favor of a commonsense, middle of the road, but there’s plenty of people who align more pro-choice and are voting no on this issue,” Curry told one student.But Curry’s message of moderation and compromise were contrasted by her group’s nearby poster board, which read: “All human beings are valuable persons, no matter their stage in life.”“Republicans can spend their money saying that, ‘We are the moderates on this,’” said Joey Teitelbaum, vice-president of research for Global Strategy Group, a Democratic polling firm. “But in voting for Democrats in Virginia and voting for Andy Beshear, where abortion was a major part of that race and the communications, voters are clearly saying, ‘We do not trust Republicans on this.’” More

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      Election 2023: How Abortion Lifted Democrats, and More Key Takeaways

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      The political potency of abortion rights proved more powerful than the drag of President Biden’s approval ratings in Tuesday’s off-year elections, as Ohioans enshrined a right to abortion in their state’s constitution, and Democrats took control of both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly while holding on to Kentucky’s governorship.The night’s results showed the durability of Democrats’ political momentum since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the constitutional right to an abortion in 2022. It may also, at least temporarily, stem the latest round of Democratic fretting from a series of polls demonstrating Mr. Biden’s political weakness.After a strong midterm showing last year, a blowout victory in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race in April and a series of special election wins, Democrats head into Mr. Biden’s re-election contest with the wind at their backs. The question for the party is how they can translate that momentum to Mr. Biden, who remains unpopular while others running on his agenda have prevailed.Here are key takeaways from Tuesday:There’s nothing like abortion to aid Democrats.Democratic officials have been saying for months that the fight for abortion rights has become the issue that best motivates Democrats to vote, and is also the issue that persuades the most Republicans to vote for Democrats.On Tuesday, they found new evidence to bolster their case in victories by Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, who criticized his opponent’s defense of the state’s near-total ban; legislative candidates in Virginia who opposed the 15-week abortion ban proposed by the Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin; and, above all, the Ohio referendum establishing a right to abortion access. A Pennsylvania Supreme Court candidate who ran on abortion rights, Daniel McCaffery, also won, giving Democrats a 5-2 majority.Where Trump Counties in Ohio Voted to Support Abortion RightsOhio’s referendum drew support from both liberal and conservative areas of the state, and polled well ahead of President Biden’s results three years ago.Abortion is now so powerful as a Democratic issue that Everytown, the gun control organization founded and funded by Michael Bloomberg, used its TV ads in Virginia to promote abortion rights before it discussed gun violence.The anti-abortion Democrat who ran for governor of Mississippi, Brandon Presley, underperformed expectations.It’s a sign that no matter how weak Mr. Biden’s standing is, the political environment and the issues terrain are still strong for Democrats running on abortion access and against Republicans who defend bans.The last six Kentucky governor’s elections have been won by the same party that won the presidential election the following year. The president may not be able to do what Mr. Beshear managed — talking up Biden policies without ever mentioning the president’s name — but he now has examples of what a winning road map could look like for 2024.In Virginia, a Republican rising star faces an eclipse.Governor Youngkin had hoped a strong night for his party would greatly raise his stature as the Republican who turned an increasingly blue state back to red. That would at the very least include him in the conversation for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028, if not 2024.Democratic victories in the Virginia legislature undercut Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s agenda, which was focused on abortion.Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesBut Mr. Youngkin’s pledge to enact what he called a moderate abortion law — a ban on abortions after 15 weeks with exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of an endangered mother — gave Democrats an effective counter as he sought full control of state government.The Democratic argument won the day, at least in part. The party seized the majority in the House of Delegates, kept control of the State Senate and definitely spoiled Mr. Youngkin’s night. The results offered nervous national Democrats still more evidence of abortion’s power as a motivator for their voters while upending the term-limited Mr. Youngkin’s plans for his final two years in office, and possibly beyond.A Democrat can win in deep-red Kentucky, if his name is Andy Beshear.Being the most popular governor in the country turns out to be a good thing if you want to get re-elected.Mr. Beshear spent his first term and his re-election campaign hyperfocused on local issues like teacher salaries, new road projects, guiding the state through the pandemic and natural disasters and, since last summer’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, opposing his state’s total ban on abortion.Gov. Andy Beshear focused on local issues in Kentucky, and avoided mentioning President Biden by name.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesThat made him politically bulletproof when his Republican challenger, Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who was endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump, sought to nationalize the campaign and juice G.O.P. turnout by tying Mr. Beshear to Mr. Biden and attacking him on crime and L.G.B.T.Q. issues. (Mr. Beshear vetoed new restrictions aimed at transgender young people, though G.O.P. lawmakers voted to override him.)It’s not as if Republican voters stayed home; all the other Republicans running for statewide office won with at least 57 percent of the vote. Mr. Beshear just got enough of them to back him for governor. A Democrat who can win Republican voters without making compromises on issues important to liberal voters is someone the rest of the party will want to emulate in red states and districts across the country.Attacks on transgender rights didn’t work.As abortion access has become the top issue motivating Democrats, and with same-sex marriage broadly accepted in America, Republicans casting about for an issue to motivate social conservatives landed on restricting rights for transgender people. On Tuesday, that didn’t work.In Kentucky, Mr. Cameron and his Republican allies spent more than $5 million on television ads attacking L.G.B.T.Q. rights and Mr. Beshear for his defense of them, according to AdImpact, a firm that tracks political advertising. Gov. Tate Reeves in Mississippi spent $1.2 million on anti-L.G.B.T.Q. ads, while Republicans running for legislative seats in Virginia spent $527,000 worth of TV time on the issue.Daniel Cameron and his Republican allies spent more than $5 million on television ads attacking L.G.B.T.Q. rights — a strategy that did not pay off in Tuesday’s election.Michael Swensen/Getty ImagesIndeed, in Virginia, Danica Roem, a member of the House of Delegates, will become the South’s first transgender state senator after defeating a former Fairfax County police detective who supported barring transgender athletes from competing in high school sports.In Ohio, voters back both abortion and weed.Ohioans once again showed the popularity of abortion rights, even in reliably Republican states, when they easily approved a constitutional amendment establishing the right to an abortion.The vote in Ohio could be a harbinger for the coming presidential election season, when proponents and opponents of abortion rights are trying to put the issue before voters in the critical battleground states of Florida, Nevada, Arizona and Pennsylvania.Abortion rights groups entered Tuesday on a winning streak with such ballot measures since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. And ultimately, Ohio voters did as voters before them had done — electing to preserve the right to an abortion in their state.Voters at a high school in Columbus, Ohio. Ohioans legalized recreational marijuana.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesAnd with a margin that was almost identical to the abortion vote, Ohioans also legalized recreational marijuana use. That will make Ohio the 24th state to do so.Where abortion wasn’t an issue, a Republican won easily.Mississippi’s governor’s race was the exception to this off-year election’s rule on abortion: The incumbent governor, Mr. Reeves, and his Democratic challenger, Mr. Presley, ran as staunch opponents of abortion rights.And in that race, the Democrat lost.Mr. Presley hoped to make the Mississippi race close by tying the incumbent to a public corruption scandal that saw the misspending of $94 million in federal funds intended for Mississippi’s poor on projects like a college volleyball facility pushed by the retired superstar quarterback Brett Favre. He also pressed for the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act to save Mississippi’s collapsing rural hospitals.Gov. Tate Reeves won his re-election campaign easily Tuesday night in Mississippi.Emily Kask for The New York TimesBut in Mississippi, Mr. Reeves had three advantages that proved impenetrable: incumbency, the “R” next to his name on the ballot, and the endorsement of Mr. Trump, who won the state in 2020 by nearly 17 percentage points.In Kentucky races beneath the marquee governor’s contest, Democrats also did not run on abortion, and they, like Mr. Presley, lost.Rhode Island sends a Biden aide to the House.Rhode Island is hardly a swing state, but still, the heavily Democratic enclave’s election of Gabe Amo to one of its two House seats most likely brought a smile to Mr. Biden’s face. Mr. Amo was a deputy director of the White House office of intergovernmental affairs and as such, becomes the first Biden White House aide to rise to Congress.The son of African immigrants, Mr. Amo will also be the first Black representative from the Ocean State.Gabe Amo became the first Black person to represent Rhode Island in the U.S. Congress, according to The Associated Press.Kris Craig/Providence Journal, via Associated PressWhite House officials said the president congratulated his former aide on his victory. The special election fills the seat vacated by David Cicilline, a Democrat who left the seat to run a nonprofit. More