Prime

From TPM Reader JS …

As a native Kansan, my astonishment began with the media reaction day after KS primary where the mostly ladies in KS “surprised” many and even “shocked” others. Really? No polls but we knew registrations by mostly younger women spiked day after Dobbs and continued upward until the election. In one KS county, Douglas, home of KU and fondly labeled “one of the most liberal counties in the US”, the vote was roughly 80% no to 20% yes. My native county, rural, strongly Republican, Catholic, the vote was far closer than recent elections.

TPM Reader GX (not her initials) on the current Dobbs moment

I’ve listened with interest to your discussion of Dobbs and the political fallout, and I wanted to add my perspective. I’m a middle-aged lady, late Gen X, professional, no kids. 

One of the biggest generational difference I’ve noticed – comparing my group of female friends and women in their late teens/early twenties is how younger women don’t have the internalized shame around sex and female bodies that many in my generation carry. This really came into focus for me with this: Women allege sexual misconduct by Burger Records musicians – Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)

Kate Riga and I spent most of today’s episode of the podcast marveling at what on earth Lindsey Graham was thinking or smoking when he decided to push abortion even further to the center of the national campaign dialog. Nicole Lafond discusses the issue below, with Mike Pence getting on board with Graham’s proposal. What really surprises me though is Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Ted Bud who’s running for a Senate seat in North Carolina.

With the morning we have a bit more clarity on the national abortion ban Lindsey Graham announced last night and says he will be introducing today in the Senate. It appears to be a national ban on abortions past 15 weeks, with as yet unspecified exceptions. It’s still possible that the number will be 20 weeks. We’ll have to see that detail. This NBC News piece explains the strategy, which is more or less what we thought: an updated version of the GOP playbook over the last couple decades which is to move the debate from absolute bans, where their position is overwhelmingly unpopular, to “late term” abortions where a broad swathe of the public gets more squeamish and uncertain.

I’m still trying to understand the precise details of this. But Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) just announced that he will introduce a national abortion ban bill in the Senate tomorrow. The news just surfaced a short time ago. And I’m still seeing conflicting reports as to whether his bill is a ban at 15 weeks or 20 weeks. The first report was from TPM alum Alice Ollstein.

Over the last couple weeks we’ve seen write-ups pointing to the possibility or probability that polls in 2022 will underestimate Republican strength just as they did in 2020. Now Nate Cohn has one in The New York Times. Cohn’s analysis is particularly interesting to me since he’s been a fairly consistent skeptic of polls in recent cycles in terms of their ability to accurately gauge the strength of the Trump coalition. G. Elliott Morris had a similar write-up in The Economist last week. Philip Bump kicked the tires on Morris’s claims in the Post. While they break down the numbers, the gist is pretty straight-forward: If you take the polling error from 2016 and 2020 and plug it into our current polls you go from Dems being in a strong position for holding and even expanding their senate majority to more like a 50-50 odds of holding the chamber at all. On the House, a GOP majority and maybe a significant one is basically a given.

A friend of mine pointed out to me this tweet from the head of Leonard Leo’s new “Honest Elections” outfit, the one that was recently given more than a billion dollars. He’s referring to the “independent legislature theory” the right is now trying to push in a case before the Supreme Court.

I have noted a number of times over the last 18 months that we are in the midst of a vast contest and drama which includes not only multiple events unfolding in the United States but abroad as well. I’m usually talking about a broad struggle between civic democracies and nationalist authoritarianism. There’s another dimension of this unfolding now in Ukraine, where there has been a series of rapid battlefield advances by the Ukrainian army, of which you’ve no doubt seen news.

I’m still trying to understand whether we’re likely to see new fronts stabilize after Ukraine reconquered land over the last week, or whether the Ukrainian army has built up such momentum that it can continue this run of battlefield victories, reclaiming large amounts of territory. Regardless, we’re now heading toward winter, which will not only change the nature of the conflict on the ground but bring the energy part of the equation to the fore.

The Michigan Supreme Court has ruled 5-2 that the proposed abortion rights measure will appear on the state’s ballot in November. This is good news for all Democratic candidates in the state, since it will literally put robust abortion rights protections on the ballot in the state. That will almost certainly mean robust protections in the state going forward. It will likely also bring marginal Democratic candidates to victory with the tide of voters who turn out to vote for the amendment.

But it’s a very important development in a more general way.

There’s so much news today besides the impending news out of the United Kingdom that I just wanted to hit big points briefly because there’s no way to delve into all of it at once.