Althouse: "How much is abortion still motivating votes?/How much of a drag is President JOE BIDEN?/Do Democrats have a Black and suburban turnout problem?/Does any of it matter for 2024?"

November 7, 2023

"How much is abortion still motivating votes?/How much of a drag is President JOE BIDEN?/Do Democrats have a Black and suburban turnout problem?/Does any of it matter for 2024?"

It's Election Day, and those are — according to Politico — "Four big Election Day questions."

53 comments:

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: That blurb was interesting enough to make me click over to The Politico.; 11/7/23, 8:03 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: The left will make sure abortion is front and center.

Killing the small child growing in the womb is top priority with these people.
Because RAPE! and Handmaids Tale! and stuff.; 11/7/23, 8:03 AM
RideSpaceMountain said...: I remember listening to pro-life speaker growing up who said regarding abortion, "There are no atheists in temples dedicated to practicing human sacrifice."

Of course it still motivates votes. Abortion is the leftist's archaic hair-shirt of old. They never take it off. There are no atheists in the temples dedicated to the practice of human sacrifice.; 11/7/23, 8:09 AM
Kevin said...: Jan Brady (dejectedly): Abortion, abortion, abortion!; 11/7/23, 8:11 AM
mikee said...: Abortion as an issue has the power to turn Texas blue for the first time in a generation. Joe Biden can exit from his presidency without being despised only if he exits in a horizontal position. Turnout is unimportant with unauditable mail-in voting. So no, the Dems have a lock on 2024 national elections.

This can change if abortion takes a back burner to the economy, wars, or another crisis. This can change if Joe remains in office. This can change if Republicans grow a spine.; 11/7/23, 8:17 AM
rhhardin said...: Abortion will cost Republicans elections until they lose their heartbeat abortion law brand. Young white women are angry.; 11/7/23, 8:18 AM
gilbar said...: abortion? i thought they solved that? Didn't they return the issue back to the state voters?
If people WANT children aborted, it should be EASIER now to pass a law (like NY did) that said:
"murder is FINE! at ALL TIMES!!" ???; 11/7/23, 8:21 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: the left will flush our nation down the toilet over BS.

Open southern border? Unsustainable debt? Inflation? Crime? War? Democrat Party Grifting?

so what?!? .... ABORTION!; 11/7/23, 8:23 AM
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: Now I remember why I don’t visit Politico much. The site is a confusing jumble as if designed by or for people with ADD. As a former editor I would have reworked that layout with fewer bolded extraneous statements so that the four main points in italics stood out more. Its format emphasizes the minor elements over the main themes. Even digital layout can learn from the classic elements that worked in print.

That being said there was little wheat within and between the bold print chaff. One thing stood out. It seems to be a rule that every time the name Andy Beshear is mentioned in any media it must be followed by the phrase “one of the most popular governors in America” yet that phrase is almost inevitably followed by a statement about him trailing the black Republican candidate challenger. I guess we’ll find out who really is more popular after today’s vote.

Politico is still the most conventional of the bland political news sites and a reliable deliverer of that sort of conventional news.; 11/7/23, 8:25 AM
Gusty Winds said...: I'd imagine a lot of women and men with vaginas who have never had abortions, still support abortions up to the moment of birth if Democrats tell them that's the fight. Stupid sheep.

But when you have a hard time feeding the kids you didn't abort, you might rethink the timeline and all of a sudden 15 weeks seems reasonable.

Problem is, conservative groups like the WI GOP Legislature won't pass 15 weeks and put this to rest. You can't have zero abortions, and you can't have infanticide either.

But this is the problem in America. There is no more negotiating on anything.; 11/7/23, 8:28 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: This should be the end of Crook Joe.

Instead - our corrupt Maddow Hack-D press will ignore it.

McCarthy: It Turns Out Joe Biden Was the Clandestine Agent of a Hostile Foreign Power; 11/7/23, 8:30 AM
Gusty Winds said...: Perhaps the Democrats might a Black turnout problem because the black population has been suppressed by Margaret Sanger's implemented abortion eugenics. Evil stuff.

Round of applause for the feminists.; 11/7/23, 8:30 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: McCarthy: It Turns Out Joe Biden Was the Clandestine Agent of a Hostile Foreign Power; 11/7/23, 8:30 AM
donald said...: All abortion all the time,Trump (!), and we hate half of America and want them dead IS the democrat party entire campaign; 11/7/23, 8:37 AM
donald said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 11/7/23, 8:37 AM
cassandra lite said...: If RDS is the R nominee, he'll win in a near landslide.

If Trump is the R nominee, every Dem who ever lived (and many dead ones), plus a not-small subset of people who'd otherwise vote R, will make Biden president again--or whoever is on the ballot instead of him...unless it's Kamala, which it won't be.; 11/7/23, 8:43 AM
Gusty Winds said...: These are the wrong 2024 election day questions.

1) What time does does the counting stop in GA, PA, MI, and AZ.
2) What time will Milwaukee dump 30K absentee ballots? Before or after sunrise?
3) Will same day voting machines be functional in red areas of Maricopa County.
4) How long will it take to "count" the absentee votes behind closed doors in Atlanta, Philly, Detroit, and Maricopa.
5) How many truckloads of absentee votes for Democrats will be driven from NY to PA and dropped off at a US Post office for distribution?
6) How many of our courts will cower and teach us once again there is no recourse or relief when it comes to targeted voter fraud.
7) How early will Fox News call AZ for the Democrats? Over/under is set with 11% of the votes in, like they did in 2020.
8) While the fraud is going on right in front of our eyes, how many times will you have to hear liberals chant "this is what democracy looks like".
9) How many post election court cases that are refused to be heard on a cowardly procedural basis will be touted as court losses?

10) How many Americans, not willing to rock their Ivory Tower, will simply say it's time to "move on"?

Pretending 2024 is going to be on the up and up, just like 2020 is a fantasy. Only three types of people don't know this. 1) The ignorant. 2) The stupid. 3) The brainwashed.; 11/7/23, 8:49 AM
narciso said...: Mccarthy is slow on the ball it only took him three years,; 11/7/23, 8:50 AM
Big Mike said...: Fox channel 5 (Washington, DC) just interviewed a woman on her way to her car after voting. Her primary motivation to turn out to vote was “the craziness in the schools.” Most (all?) of Virginia’s jurisdictions are voting for school boards today, and that may be even bigger than the issues Politico is pointing out.

The woman that Fox 5 was interviewing looked to be in her fifties, so probably not with her own kids still in elementary, middle, or even high school. Her name seemed Hispanic, which might be a bad sign for Dumbocrats. Most importantly, she was in one of the towns in Loudoun County, which some may remember as the jurisdiction where the school superintendent and school board tried to cover up the case where a boy who claimed to be trans raped a girl in a girls’ rest room, and then did it again when he was moved to a different high school. More recently — and I doubt this made the New York Times, the Washington Post, or any other lefty scandal rag — Loudoun County high school students staged a one day strike over girls in the boys’ locker rooms and boys in the girls’ locker rooms. Apparently some girls had been waltzing into boys’ locker rooms to watch biological male athletes shower and get dressed after practice. Not being exhibitionists, the boys objected. And the biological females were already uncomfortable about boys entering their locker rooms and even showering with them after a blithe “I’m trans.”; 11/7/23, 8:52 AM
Rusty said...: cassandra lite said...
"If RDS is the R nominee, he'll win in a near landslide.

If Trump is the R nominee, every Dem who ever lived (and many dead ones), plus a not-small subset of people who'd otherwise vote R, will make Biden president again--or whoever is on the ballot instead of him...unless it's Kamala, which it won't be."
Not even close.; 11/7/23, 8:54 AM
Mr Wibble said...: If RDS is the R nominee, he'll win in a near landslide.

No, he won't. He'll lose, especially to a replacement like Newsome. DeSantis has no charisma, no connection with the electorate. His entire campaign is "I'm competent" which is like making a dating profile that says, "I've got white-collar job and I go to church"- in theory it should be fine, but in reality it doesn't work.

Trump may piss a lot of people off, but he also has a huge base of support. This is the guy who, despite losing in 2020, still managed to outperform every GOP presidential candidate in the past 30 years in the Rust Belt. He lost independents in AZ by nine points and still came within 11k votes of winning the state.; 11/7/23, 8:57 AM
Mr Wibble said...: Abortion will cost Republicans elections until they lose their heartbeat abortion law brand. Young white women are angry.

Young white women are angry because they were sold a bill of goods by progressive culture. If the GOP abandoned abortion opposition today, by tomorrow there would be some other reason for single women to rally against Republicans, because it's not about the actual issues. It's about being part of The Cause, mostly for social cachet.; 11/7/23, 8:59 AM
narciso said...: will we be at war in a years time, in the middle east, how many terrorist attack will we have endured by then will our electrical grid and infrastructure hold out,; 11/7/23, 9:00 AM
wendybar said...: cassandra lite said...
If RDS is the R nominee, he'll win in a near landslide.

Because he is doing so well now??? Keep dreaming. It AIN'T happening.; 11/7/23, 9:12 AM
Big Mike said...: All of the campaign ads I’ve seen on TV that are by Democrats running for House of Delegates or State Senate are 100% about painting their Republican opponents as anti-abortion extremists. Republican candidates are stressing crime, jobs, and violent lefty extremism. There are polls that supposedly show Republicans to be on the right side of the abortion issue among women, but my perception is that the single-issue abortion voters are, by a vast majority, on the side of “abortion right up to the point where the baby is crowning, and even beyond”. So we shall see.; 11/7/23, 9:17 AM
Big Mike said...: @cassandra lite (8:43), what are the economic policies of Ron DeSantis? Do you know? Does he even know how he will fix what Biden has broken?

I think your second paragraph is woefully naive — the Democrats will do all that regardless of whomever the GOP nominee is.; 11/7/23, 9:22 AM
Wa St Blogger said...: Gusty winds says:
But this is the problem in America. There is no more negotiating on anything.

IKR. If only we could use the model from back around the 1860's Those compromises were pretty good. Of course they didn't do quite enough. Should have settled for the 15 year compromise. You know, a person can only be enslaved for 15 years and then you have to let them go. A win-win. We would have limited slavery to a reasonable amount so that people still get their slaves but the anti-slavery people would be mollified because eventually the slaves get their freedom. I am sure that compromise would have averted war. And if we do the same with 15 weeks for abortion both sides will quietly go home and the issue will we resolved.; 11/7/23, 9:29 AM
Oso Negro said...: The Democrats may have a problem garnering black votes. They will never have a problem with black votes being counted for Democrats.; 11/7/23, 9:32 AM
gilbar said...: i'm NOT suggesting that Trump could win..
i AM STATING that IF Trump can't win, there isn't a republican on earth that COULD; 11/7/23, 9:33 AM
MadTownGuy said...: In PA, the Supreme Court election is advertised as being all about abortion. The (R) candidate is running to fill Max Baer's spot on the Court which is currently 5-2 Democrat. A (D) win would make it 6-1, and only 2 Justices are up for reelection in 2025.

I was voter #8 this morning.; 11/7/23, 9:39 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: gilbar 9:33 - we heard you.
That's your opinion.; 11/7/23, 10:11 AM
n.n said...: Human rites, diversity, political congruence,
Dreams of Herr Levine, progressive prices, liberal corruption, world Spring, and conflation of logical domains... are [catastrophic] anthropogenic pseudo-evolutionary processes.; 11/7/23, 10:12 AM
Gusty Winds said...: WA St Blogger said...

Should have settled for the 15 year compromise. You know, a person can only be enslaved for 15 years and then you have to let them go. A win-win. We would have limited slavery to a reasonable amount so that people still get their slaves but the anti-slavery people would be mollified because eventually the slaves get their freedom. I am sure that compromise would have averted war. And if we do the same with 15 weeks for abortion both sides will quietly go home and the issue will we resolved.

I see the attempt at a relevant analogy, but this completely missed the dart board. 15 years of slavery and 15 weeks of abortion are not analogous. They're not even in the same galaxy. "A" for effort though. Purple ribbon.; 11/7/23, 10:15 AM
n.n said...: Abortion will cost Republicans elections until they lose their heartbeat abortion law brand. Young white women are angry.

Human rites. There is mystery in sex and conception. #HateLovesAbortion; 11/7/23, 10:16 AM
n.n said...: Keep women and girls barefoot, available, and taxable, and their [carbon] "burden" of evidence sequestered.; 11/7/23, 10:23 AM
fairmarketvalue said...: rhhardin said: "Abortion will cost Republicans elections until they lose their heartbeat abortion law brand. Young white women are angry."

I disagree with your premise. It's a given that young white women will always vote Dem. It doesn't matter if it's abortion restrictions they are angry about or something else. The only real question is the level of voting participation (and, of course, Dem voter fraud) that can be mustered by said young angry white females, and whether that level is significant enough, by itself, to affect electoral results. With the national dumpster fire we are experiencing from Biden administration policies, I would hope many would simply sit on their hands and not even bother to vote.; 11/7/23, 10:23 AM
Original Mike said...: Joe Biden is an awful President. Surprisingly/unfortunately, that doesn't mean he won't be reelected.; 11/7/23, 10:26 AM
n.n said...: Aborting slavery, diversity, world Spring(s), fascism, democratic gerrymandering, CAIR, and progressive prices will cost Republicans elections.; 11/7/23, 10:32 AM
Hassayamper said...: The Democrats may have a problem garnering black votes. They will never have a problem with black votes being counted for Democrats.

Black ballots, you mean. Those remarkable turnouts of 100% or more in black precincts can't be considered actual votes.; 11/7/23, 11:00 AM
wildswan said...: There are two elements to the abortion vote. First, the part of the electorate supporting a ban after fifteen weeks. This is a large majority. No one has to change or learn anything thing new for such laws to pass. They will not become an electoral issue. For this reason I support such laws at this time.
The second part of the abortion vote is the necessity for gaining support among the lectorate for the position that human life begins at conception and should be protected from then on.
I think that any other outlook over time degrades all human rights. I understand that at present people do not see this connection between the humanity of the young unborn child and their own human rights but history shows that principles work themselves out in cultures over time. Over time they reveal their masked consequences.
The Catholic belief, always maintained, is that each human being has an everlasting soul or nature formed by God at the moment of biological conception and this is a kind of soul that can be and is tied to the body predicted by the chromosomes such that two are one composite being. We are in the image of God but we learn this and what it means from sensations we share with other mammals. The everlastingness of the soul makes God the Father of each of us and guarantees the brotherhood of man and the human rights of all. And this became embedded in Western culture and in laws on abortion.
But not everyone in the USA is a Catholic or a Christian or even comes from a Biblical religion. And the question about laws regulating abortion before 15 weeks is: how can we (can we?) develop an understanding in our society that will protect the unborn as if people believed in the Fatherhood of God and the immortal soul as the basis of "human rights?" Is secular society as we know it or as it might develop capable of sustaining such a vision?

One such understanding might be founded on a developed understanding of "human rights."
What are "human rights" founded in except being human? And when we say that a developmental stage such as being unborn can affect "being human" we remove any reality from the concept "being human," as the foundation of human "rights." For the whole of any individual human life has a developmental aspect and includes a becoming in a particular society at a particular time over a particular time span. If society can allow killing based on developmental stage, then there is no limit to what is allowed, there's no human rights but merely various legal regulations based on various valuations by different societies of different human developmental stages. The Nazis through their eugenic laws have most recently shown the danger of this outlook. They categorized whole groups of people as evolutionarily, i.e., developmentally, retarded and they then killed Jews, Poles, Gypsies, the mentally retarded and the schizophrenic by the millions. But, besides eugenics with its alleged evolutionary lagging or underdevelopment in human groups, it is possible to regard whole groups as culturally undeveloped, as having perhaps a settler, a colonial or a barbaric culture and thereby becoming without human rights.
At any rate, from the pro-life point of view, the problem of abortion in the US at this time has two aspects - one which is the reasons for banning late term abortions which reasons are understood by a very large majority; the other which is the reasons for banning early abortions and which are not understood by majorities in many states and which therefore requires a development of our social understanding.; 11/7/23, 11:07 AM
Joe Bar said...: I have been restricted to the couch for the past few weeks, and I'm watching a lot more TV than normal. This is in central Virginia, and its "abortion, Abortion, ABORTION!" on every broadcast channel. The local news programs seem to take joy in finding fault with Republican candidates, while pumping up Democrats. This is despite one Democrat admitting to running a porn channel with her husband. For some reason, nobody is talking about THAT.

To be fair, the Republicans announced they want to roll back the state limit on abortions from 22 weeks to 15 weeks. I think this is probably a mistake, at least if they want to win. There are other, more important issues to me.

However, the voters in this state have conveniently forgotten that the Democrats attempted to pass a bill completely derestricting abortion a few cycles ago. That was when then governor North am talked about disposing of an infant inconveniently born alive, on live radio. That raised some eyebrows.; 11/7/23, 11:22 AM
rcocean said...: The election is one year away. I don't really think Politico's analysis will have much impact. The real elephant in the room is: What happens if Trump is convicted by Biden's Stalinist DOJ and leftwing judge. Do we have a Republican Nominee running from Jail? Will the Leftwing Judge put a gag on Trump and not allow him to campaign?

DeSantis was supposed to be the No.1 backup to Trump. But he's failed miserably. No fire in the belly. No desire to attack biden or his gestapo authoritarian tactics. People don't like Biden, but there's no way in hell Nikki Haley will get elected.; 11/7/23, 11:28 AM
Yancey Ward said...: Angle-Dyne in our Discord highlighted Joe Biden and the Democrats' problem- everyone shops for groceries, and you can't make them disbelieve their lying eyes about how much more expensive food is during Biden's inept reign. Worse is coming- healthcare plans are being renewed/changed as I write this. My present health plan is being discontinued and I have been offered the "equivalent" new plan that increased co-pays and deductibles by 100% while reducing my premium payments by 25%. Now, I am not a big user of healthcare services, so it will likely work out well for me over the next year- I will save almost $600 in premium payments while paying out, at most, an extra $100 in copays, but I am not a normal person in this regard- increases like this will hit a lot of American's pocketbooks hard- they will end up paying a lot more out of pocket over the next year.

Biden will not be the Democrats' nominee, but it might not matter who the nominee is because it is the Democrats' policies are Biden's main problems at winning reelection.; 11/7/23, 12:03 PM
Rabel said...: cassandra lite said...
"If RDS is the R nominee, he'll win in a near landslide."

No evidence of that in any polling. How do you flip the Trump voters?

As an initial supporter based on a handful of observations, I find now that I like the man less every time I see and hear him. For me the biggest problem with Ron DeSantis is Ron DeSantis.

An hold your head still when you talk, Governor. That bobblehead effect is increasingly annoying.; 11/7/23, 12:20 PM
Big Mike said...: @Joe Bar, I’m up in Frederick County. Is the school board as big an issue where you are as it is up here and next door in Loudoun?

The equations Normals = Republicans = sensible policies regarding school rest rooms and locker rooms seems as though it should be pretty potent.; 11/7/23, 12:36 PM
Mr Wibble said...: Do we have a Republican Nominee running from Jail? Will the Leftwing Judge put a gag on Trump and not allow him to campaign?

I fully expect them to put Trump in jail prior to the election, and I expect that it will backfire. Realistically, the smart move would be to push back any sentencing to after Nov 2024, or to sentence Trump to home confinement at Mar-A-Lago, thus sidestepping the need for accommodating Trump in a federal prison. In the case of GA, the board of pardons would likely issue an immediate parole since Trump is over 62.; 11/7/23, 1:39 PM
Yancey Ward said...: As for the other non-Trump candidates- I will again point out that the states Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are fairly deep blue states, and the latter three have been so since the late 1980s. Only Trump makes them competitive. As much as I like Ron DeSantis, I am forced to acknowledge that he will not win Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania even running against the corpse of Joe "Shit-for-Brains" Biden- Biden will win all three states and the Democrats won't even have to cheat to hold them. DeSantis might make Nevada competitive, but I doubt it- the Republicans who live there are increasingly outnumbered by very young California transplants- Republicans can sometimes still win the governorship or an occasional Senate seat, but the state looks like it leans blue by about 3-4%, which means a non-Trump Republican needs to win the national vote by 3-4% just to win the state- not gonna happen.

Trump is sui generis, and no candidate has stepped forward that can wear that exact mantle. Again, I point you to the 2012 election- that election is the model for any election that doesn't contain Donald Trump.; 11/7/23, 2:44 PM
Mark said...: Based on Ohio, abortion seems to be something people will visit the polls to protect.

Mike Johnson might be a gift for the Dems, between his views on abortion and gay people.; 11/7/23, 8:18 PM
Joe Bar said...: Looks like the "abortion, Abortion, ABORTION" argument has carried the day here in Virginia.

@BigMike: I live in New Kent county, and its still pretty sane when it comes to education.

My wife wants to move because of population increase. I won't move unless its to a saner state.; 11/7/23, 10:37 PM
Joe Bar said...: In the good news side. It appears that the city of Richmond has, for the second time in two years, rejected a plan to build a casino there. There was lots of money and influence peddling going on. There were even people using racial epithets on the radio. Pretty ugly.; 11/7/23, 11:06 PM
Bender said...: Once again, Trump has been dominating the news. Once again, the GOP crashes and burns in the latest elections. Elections they should have won overwhelmingly.; 11/7/23, 11:29 PM
JAORE said...: Sure, return abortion to the states. There will be reasoned discourse and some compromise (e.g. 20 weeks) will emerge. Details about exceptions will develop rationally.

Bhwahahahaha

Pure BS. Ohio is instructive, No calm debate. No carefully crafted middle ground. All or nothing! We got ALL with a side order of slippery slope that may have zero to do with Roe.

And I'd bet the "cons want to strip you of your rights" will still be an issue in Ohio next year.; 11/8/23, 9:31 AM
DINKY DAU 45 said...: thank goodness the last of the debates? from the republican side tonight.The former guy who is loser of last election down the street at McDonalds asking for at least a buck?Sorry I'll have to miss it and just watch the juicy parts on reruns.; 11/8/23, 10:32 AM