From Editor Michael Tomasky’s “Yes, the Inflation Reduction Act Is a Big Effing Deal” at The New Republic: ”

So Kyrsten Sinema didn’t back out (although of course she threatened to),no other Democratic senator got Covid-19, and the Inflation Reduction Act passed the Senate Sunday afternoon. Passage is assured, we think, in the House, so it should soon become law….The bill is only a portion of what should have been, true. But here’s the big picture on why even this whittled-down bill is, as Joe Biden once said of another historic but compromised piece of legislation, “a big fuckin’ deal.” In a nutshell: It begins to turn 40 years of bad economic conventional wisdom on its head by asserting that the government has a role in structuring markets, promoting growth, and guiding industrial policy.

Tomasky, author of the forthcoming “The Middle Out: The Rise of Progressive Economics and a Return to Shared Prosperity,” reviews the history of Democratic economic policy in the post WW II period, and writes that “today, the Democratic Party is a different animal than it was a decade ago. It’s very frustrating that Build Back Better Act, or BBB, didn’t pass, but I sometimes look at it this way: Of the 271 elected Democratic legislators in Congress, all but two or three either did vote for a $2.2 trillion version of BBB (in the House) or were prepared to vote for it (in the Senate). That would not have been remotely true just five years ago. The Democratic Party has embraced an economic populism from which there is no turning back.” Further,

So that brings us back to the Inflation Reduction Act, IRA. Yes, I wish it were bigger and contained some of the key elements of BBB like subsidized childcare and Medicare expansion and housing. Yes, that sop to Joe Manchin on fossil fuels is very unfortunate. And Republicans stripping out the insulin provision for non-seniors is monstrous, except that between killing abortion rights and keeping insulin prices high, they sure seem intent on handing Democrats opportunities to hold their majorities.

But whatever it doesn’t do, the IRA does this important thing: It establishes the principle that the government has a role to play in setting industrial policy and creating growth, and in determining what kind of growth we want. That’s why the climate investments in the bill are so important. Over the weekend, I read a National Bureau of Economic Research paper that I’m told has been making the rounds in the Biden administration that lays out a case for attacking climate change through direct subsidy of clean-electricity generation (as opposed to putting a price on emissions, like a carbon tax, which the paper also finds would be productive but for which there aren’t the votes in Congress). The IRA invests in decarbonization in every sector of the economy, with $10 billion directed toward the building of clean technology manufacturing centers and $20 billion toward construction of clean vehicle manufacturing facilities.

If you want to dive deeper into all this, read the important speech that Brian Deese, the director of the National Economic Council and the person really driving Biden administration economic policy, delivered in June to the Atlantic Council on the administration’s industrial strategy. He talked about how inequality is slowing growth. This is a key point. Conservatives have spent the past four decades arguing that growth is all that matters, and inequality is a byproduct of growth and is thus inevitable. They have that, and basically everything, backwards.

Dees also lays out the five-point strategy for promoting equitable growth: supply-chain resilience, targeted public investment, public procurement, climate resilience, and equity (“equity” is government lingo for making sure historically underserved groups share in the bounty this time). It’s a strategy that can both modernize the economy and invest in the middle class.

This is exactly what the United States needs. It’s a tragedy that Sara Gideon and Cal Cunningham raised and spent all those millions and failed to win their Senate seats. If they’d won, Biden would have had the votes for $2 trillion or so, it would have passed a year ago, and most Americans still wouldn’t even know who Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are. They lost, and we are where we are. But let’s not allow what might have been to make us too cynical about what is. The IRA is historic.

Tomasky concludes, “The right wing doesn’t believe there is such a thing as the common good. I do. Joe Biden does. Society is not just the sum of 330 million individuals pursuing their self-interest. Someone has to steer the ship. We can’t do it as individuals any more than people who live along a certain roadway can pool their resources to repave it. Private enterprise, which puts profit first, won’t fill these needs, as has been shown repeatedly over the decades. Only government can. The climate investments in the IRA fulfill this important social principle. Let’s hope they’re the first of many such investments over the next several years.”

Some Lessons and Questions After the Kansas Abortion Referendum

From “Senate Democrats strike a blow against cynicism — and hopelessness” by WaPo columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr.: “On a straight partisan vote, Democrats approved the largest investment in history to fight climate change married to first steps toward controlling prescription drug costs and helping Americans buy health insurance….The bill also raised corporate taxes and increased tax enforcement to begin what should be a sustained effort to reform the tax code by way of bringing revenue closer to long-term alignment with spending…..If Congress had done nothing, the United States would have squandered any claim of global leadership on one of the central challenges of our time. It also would have been a signal that our political system is so dysfunctional that it could not even enact comparatively painless, positive incentives for moving toward cleaner energy….We were very close to this policy cliff until Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) negotiated an agreement with the two holdout members of his caucus, first Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and then Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), leading to Sunday’s victory….The realist view accepts that voters don’t tote around lists of bills passed by Congress but insists that most of them do notice when the system seems to be working — or failing….Democrats have promised to contain drug costs for years. They finally did something. (And 43 Republican senators did themselves no political good by casting procedural votes on Sunday to block a cap on the cost of insulin for people who are not on Medicare.) Younger Americans especially were angry when Congress seemed ready to leave town without doing anything about climate change. Frustration gave way to something close to elation when a climate deal was finally reached….Nothing feeds cynicism about democracy and collective action more than abject institutional failure. That’s why what happened on Sunday matters. Despite partisan obstruction, arcane rules and dilatory habits, the Senate struck a blow against hopelessness.”

In their FiveThirtyEight article, “The Supreme Court Is Unpopular. But Do Americans Want Change?,” Amelia Thomson Deveaux, Michael Tabb and Anna Rothschild address the politics of high court expansion, and write: “Many Americans are dissatisfied with the Supreme Court, but there are very few ways to rein in the justices. The easiest option — expanding the court — has been unpopular for years, but in the wake of the court’s controversial decisions on guns and abortion, have Americans changed their minds?….Over just a week at the end of June, the Republican-appointed justices overturned the constitutional right to abortion, dramatically expanded gun rights, dealt a big blow to church-state separation, made it easier for religious schools to get public funding and limited the EPA’s ability to issue broad regulations to fight climate change….The Supreme Court’s approval fell after a draft version of the opinion overturning abortion rights leaked in May. That hasn’t changed since the Supreme Court’s term ended — in fact, recent polls tracked by FiveThirtyEight show that over half of Americans disapprove of what the court is doing….The Constitution doesn’t say anything about how big the Supreme Court should be, and Congress has added or taken away justices in the past. Term limits, on the other hand, might actually be unconstitutional….The problem for court-reform advocates is that while term limits are popular, adding justices to the court? Not so much. A poll conducted just after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade found that 54 percent of Americans do not want more justices added to the court, while 34 percent are in favor. Though, of course, there is a pretty big partisan split.” The authors conclude, “Even though Americans may be increasingly upset with the Supreme Court, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be expanded anytime soon.” I’ve noticed that too many otherwise intelligent people, including liberals, scowl and parrot the GOP’s “packing the court” lingo, and then express genuine surprise when they are informed that the size of the Supreme Court has been changed 7 times, and no, it doesn’t take a constitutional amendment to do so. I usually ask them, “Besides, what is so good about the number 9?” That often elicits a shrug, mumble or blank stare response. I doubt there is a good answer. The way it is now, each justice has too much power. The court is too small to be trusted to make fair decisions for 330 million people — and that was true even before the Dobbs ruling.

For a nuanced update on the Democrats prospects for increasing their senate majority in the midterms, read “Reassessing the Race for the Senate” by Kyle Kondik at Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Kondik comments on the particulars of several close senate races as of this writing, and explains, “The abortion issue continues to be a significant wild card, and conservatives were dealt a stinging blow in Republican-leaning Kansas on Tuesday night when voters solidly picked the pro-abortion rights side in a statewide ballot issue….We typically do not think candidate debates make that much of a difference, but the combination of the low experience level of the GOP candidates and the unpopularity of their stridently anti-abortion positioning could lead to some legitimately important moments on the road to November. Back in 2012, Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock arguably destroyed his chances when, during a debate with Democrat Joe Donnelly, Mourdock said when a woman is impregnated during a rape, “it’s something God intended.” Republicans who have already made it clear they support hardly any exceptions to banning abortion are probably going to say similar things, if they haven’t already….We also seriously doubt Biden’s numbers are really going to improve. For too many Americans, he just does not seem up to the economic challenges that worry them (namely, inflation)….So then it’s just a question as to whether the Republicans can capitalize — and that is a big question. So much so that we think the battle for the Senate is now basically a Toss-up.” However, Kondik concludes, “the GOP’s move toward less experienced candidates makes this a harder race to handicap than it otherwise might be.” The wild card here may be the ability of Democratic campaigns to pin the extremist label on GOP candidates who have praised the Dobbs decision.

“If democrats avoid the worst outcome in November’s midterm elections, the principal reason will likely be the GOP’s failure to reverse its decline in white-collar suburbs during the Donald Trump era,” Ronald Brownstein writes at The Atlantic. “That’s a clear message from yesterday’s crowded primary calendar, which showed the GOP mostly continuing to nominate Trump-style culture-war candidates around the country. And yet, the resounding defeat of an anti-abortion ballot initiative in Kansas showed how many voters in larger population centers are recoiling from that Trumpist vision….The more realistic route for Democrats in key races may be to defend, as much as possible, the inroads they made into the white-collar suburbs of virtually every major metropolitan area during the past three elections. Although, compared with 2020, the party will likely lose ground with all groups….A Monmouth University pollreleased today showed that white voters without a college degree preferred Republicans for Congress by a 25-percentage-point margin, but white voters with at least a four-year degree backed Democrats by 18 points….A recent Fox News Poll in Pennsylvania showed the Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman crushing Republican Mehmet Oz among college-educated white voters, while the two closely split those without degrees. Another recent Fox News poll in Georgia found Senator Raphael Warnock trailing his opponent Herschel Walker among noncollege white voters by more than 40 percentage points but running essentially even among those with degrees (which would likely be enough to win, given his preponderant support in the Black community). The most recent public surveys in New Hampshire and Wisconsin likewise found Republicans leading comfortably among voters without advanced education, but Democrats holding solid advantages among those with four-year or graduate degrees. A poll this week by Siena College, in New York, found Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul splitting noncollege voters evenly with Republican Lee Zeldin, but beating him by more than two-to-one among those with a degree….This strength among college-educated voters may be worth slightly more for Democrats in the midterms than in a general election. Voters without a degree cast a majority of ballots in both types of contests. But calculations by Catalist, a Democratic-voter-targeting firm, and Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political scientist who specializes in voter turnout, have found that voters with a college degree consistently make up about three to four percentage points more of the electorate in a midterm than in a presidential election. “When we see lower turnout elections,” like a midterm, “the gap between high-education and low-education voters increases,” McDonald told me. In close races, that gap could place a thumb on the scale for Democrats, partially offsetting the tendency of decreased turnout from younger and nonwhite voters in midterm elections….Kansas result showed, abortion rights may be an especially powerful weapon for Democrats in white-collar areas. Polls, such as a recent survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, have generally found that about two-thirds or more of voters with at least a four-year college degree believe abortion should remain legal in all or most circumstances. That support is evident even in states that generally lean toward the GOP: Recent public surveys found that strong majorities of voters with college degrees supported legal abortion in Georgia and Texas, and another survey showed majority backing among more affluent voters in Arizona….Republicans have responded to their suburban erosion by betting even more heavily on the policies and rhetoric that triggered their decline in the first place. In November, white-collar suburbs may be the deciding factor between a Republican rout and a split decision that leaves Democrats still standing to fight another day.”

Always on the lookout for a new wrinkle on ancient battles, I drew attention to a recent legal development at New York:

Though the constitutional law of “religious liberty” is a murky field, we are all accustomed to hearing anguished claims from conservative Christians that laws requiring them to provide or pay for reproductive-health services or treat LGBTQ employees and customers equally are an unacceptable violation of their beliefs. Now that the Supreme Court has struck down the federal right to an abortion, it’s clearer than ever that the Christian right and its Republican allies are aiming to construct a system where they are free to live their values as they wish, regardless of the impact on others.

But as a new lawsuit in Florida shows, what’s good for the conservative goose may also be good for the progressive gander. A group of religious officials are arguing in state court that the new anti-abortion law enacted this year by Florida Republicans violates their right to religious expression. The Washington Post reports:

“Seven Florida clergy members — two Christians, three Jews, one Unitarian Universalist and a Buddhist … argue in separate lawsuits filed Monday that their ability to live and practice their religious faith is being violated by the state’s new, post-Roe abortion law. The law, which is one of the strictest in the country, making no exceptions for rape or incest, was signed in April by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), in a Pentecostal church alongside antiabortion lawmakers such as the House speaker, who called life ‘a gift from God.’”

The plaintiffs in these suits most definitely want to rebut the idea that forced birth is the only authentically “religious” perspective on abortion services. After all, as United Church of Christ minister Laurie Hafner explains, the anti-abortion cause has little biblical sanction:

“Jesus says nothing about abortion. He talks about loving your neighbor and living abundantly and fully. He says: ‘I come that you might have full life.’ Does that mean for a 10-year-old to bear the child of her molester? That you cut your life short because you aren’t able to rid your body of a fetus?”

The legal theory in the lawsuits focuses specifically on the counseling of pregnant people and their families that clergy engage in routinely, and that under the new Florida law may be treated as the illegal aiding and abetting of criminal acts. Hafner’s suit alleges that this violates both federal and state constitutional rights, along with Florida’s version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (a 1993 federal “religious liberty” law):

“The dramatic change in abortion rights in Florida has caused confusion and fear among clergy and pregnant girls and women particularly in light of the criminal penalties attached. Given her general duties and work as a Pastor, Plaintiff intends to engage in counseling regarding abortion beyond the narrow limits of HB 5 and, therefore, risks incarceration and financial penalties.”

It’s unclear how this argument will fare in the courts. Conservative judges may stipulate that anti-abortion laws impinge on religious-liberty rights that are nonetheless outweighed by the state’s “compelling interest” in fetal life. But at least, for once, the judiciary and the public will have to come to grips with the fact that many millions of pro-choice religious Americans passionately oppose what is happening to our country in the name of “life.” During the run-up to this week’s resounding “no” vote on a constitutional amendment removing any hint of abortion rights in the state’s constitution, a Presbyterian Church in Kansas displayed a sign that read, “Jesus trusted women. So do we.” This was likely an allusion to the “Trust Women” motto of the famous Kansas abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, who in 2009 was assassinated in the foyer of the church in which he was serving as an usher. His legacy lives on in houses of worship and now in the courts.

Michael Tesler explains “Why Abortion May Be A Winning Issue For Democrats” at FiveThirtyEight:

On the one hand, public opinion on whether abortions should generally be legal or illegal hasn’t changed much since the Supreme Court decided in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to end the constitutional right to abortion earlier this summer. In fact, daily tracking polls from Civiqs show that the share of registered voters who think abortion should be legal has held steady at 57-58 percent throughout the past year — even though there have been mounting restrictions on reproductive rights.

But the relative stability of the topline numbers masks significant changes in the scenarios under which Democrats, independents and Republicans now think that abortion should be permitted or banned — shifts that speak in part to why abortion is becoming such a powerful wedge issue for the Democratic Party.

But Tesler also notes a significant uptick in the percentages of poll respondents who believe abortion should always be legal with no restrictions

For starters, there is evidence that Democrats are gravitating toward supporting unfettered abortion rights….Democrats who think abortion should always be legal now outnumber their counterparts who say it should be mostly legal by a nearly two-to-one margin (59 percent to 32 percent)….The same uptick appears in a slightly different question from weekly tracking surveys by YouGov/The Economist. Shortly before a draft of the Dobbs decision was leaked and obtained by Politico in early May, only 42 percent of voters who cast their ballots for President Biden in 2020 agreed with the following statement: “Abortion should always be legal. There should be no restrictions on abortion.”¹ But that share has now grown to between 49 percent and 54 percent in all six of the surveys YouGov/The Economist conducted since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

It’s not just Democrats either. Independents are also moving toward supporting unrestricted abortion access. The share of unaffiliated voters who think abortion should be legal in all cases has increased by 5 percentage points over the past year in Civiqs’s daily tracking poll, while the data from YouGov/The Economist reveals an even sharper surge. Just 17 percent of independents thought there should be no restrictions on abortion in the April 9-12 YouGov/The Economist poll, but in the six weekly surveys they conducted since Dobbs became the law of the land, that number among independents has climbed to an average of 29 percent.

Meanwhile, there isn’t a huge shift in the share of Republicans saying abortion should be legal in all circumstances, but they are increasingly likely to say that abortion should be legal in most circumstances. What’s more, the share of Republicans who said abortion should be illegal in all cases has decreased from 24 percent in February to a record low of 18 percent in Civiqs’s daily tracking poll. That said, a majority of Republicans, 59 percent, still think abortion should be illegal in most cases.

“Overall, though,” Tesler writes, “the shift in attitudes on abortion post-Dobbs increasingly favors Democrats. Indeed, one reason abortion is becoming such a potent wedge issue for the party is that it increasingly unites its base, and independents are also closer to Democrats on this issue than Republicans…Even in a dark-red state like Kansas, far more registered voters support abortion always being legal than support it always being illegal (by 25 percent to 11 percent, respectively, in Civiqs’s state polling data).” Tesler notes further,

These results are consistent with a long line of political science research that shows how threats and anger are often more motivating when it comes to people taking political action. They also dovetail nicely with more recent research on how the public reacts negatively to changes to the status quo. In fact, negative reactions to unpopular policy changes may have even affected two of the past three midterm-election outcomes, as threats to the health care status quo helped Democrats in 2018 and hurt them back in 2010.

Abortion has all the elements, then, of a particularly potent wedge issue for the Democratic Party. Democrats are increasingly unified and motivated to return to the status quo of legal abortions under Roe — a constitutional right that most Americans had long taken for granted. Republicans, meanwhile, are more divided and demobilized by an issue that has historically rallied its base. And independents are closer to Democrats on abortion, especially in states where Republican lawmakers have passed overwhelmingly unpopular abortion bans without exceptions for rape and incest.

The way the Kansas ballot initiative was framed as a radical, forced pregnancy/human rights take-away made it easier for the pro-choice movement. Harold Meyerson puts the Kansas vote into this historical/ideological perspective at The American Prospect:

What the Republicans failed to realize, what the Supreme Court’s partisan theocrats failed to grasp, was that their own cultural values increasingly were at odds with the basic tenets of modernity, democracy, classical liberalism, and the Enlightenment. Living in the surround-sound world of Fox News, talk radio, and far-right social media, they failed to gauge how repulsive the world they wish to create is to a majority of Americans, and to a supermajority of young Americans….it may be that their racism, sexism, homophobia, assault-weapon infatuation, and primitive religiosity targets so wide a spectrum of Americans that no campaign of voter suppression can encompass all the Americans they’ve threatened, or deter all the enemies they’ve made. It was the good Republican middle-class suburbs of Kansas City that doomed their anti-choice amendment last night. Does the GOP have to keep them away from the polls, too?

You take away Americans’ established rights at your own peril, as Kansans made very clear last night.

If Democrats can keep these winning frames in mind in characterizing their opponents, it could serve them well in the midterm elections. Republican candidates can’t fix this by the midterms. They don’t have the understanding or the time to do a credible flip-flop, and they have already said too much. What they will do, is try to distract. “But…but…but, inflation.” It’s up to Democratic campaigns to make sure the public doesn’t forget which party is radically extreme on this fundamental issue of personal health rights.

So how might the Kansas choice-quake affect specific midterm races in November. Christopher Wilson shares some thoughts on the topic at Yahoo news: “Whether the fight over abortion can help Democrats retain control of Congress remains to be seen, but there are a number of high-profile races in swing states where the issue is already front and center. Among them:

• In Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor, has been hammering his opponent, Doug Mastriano, over the Republican’s proposal for a full abortion ban in the state. Lt. Gov John Fetterman, the Democrats’ candidate for Senate, has made his desire to codify abortion protections part of his regular stump speech. Polls indicate Fetterman and Shapiro are both leading their Republican opponents.
• In Arizona, the Republican candidates for Senate and governor are both stridently opposed to abortion.
• In Michigan, Democratic hopes to retain the governor’s mansion could be buoyed by the likely presence of a ballot initiative protecting abortion rights. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer supports the measure.
• In Georgia, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock is attempting to hold onto his seat as his opponent, Herschel Walker, calls for a full ban on abortion with no exceptions. Recent polling has shown Warnock with a consistent but slim advantage over Walker.

At The Nation, John Nichols explains, “It’s Not Just Kansas—Voters Nationwide Are Pro-Choice,” and notes, “When reproductive rights issues are on the ballot, even in Republican-leaning states, well-organized and unapologetic pro-choice campaigns have established a winning record. That’s what happened in South Dakota in 2006, when voters rejected a sweeping abortion ban by a 55-45 vote, and where they did the same thing two years later—in a presidential election year—by roughly the same margin. That’s what happened in Mississippi in 2011, when voters opposed a so-called “personhood” amendment to the state Constitution, which sought to eliminate reproductive rights, by a 58-42 vote. That’s what happened in Florida in 2012, when, by a 55-45 margin, voters rejected a constitutional amendment that would have prohibited the state from spending public funds for abortions or health insurance that covers abortions. That’s what happened in North Dakota in 2014, when voters rejected a so-called “right-to-life amendment” by an overwhelming 64-36 margin….The Kansas victory on Tuesday resulted from grassroots boots-on-the-ground organizing and honest engagement on the issue. Television ads urged Kansas voters to reject a “strict government mandate” that “puts a mother’s life at risk” and that could “ban any abortion with no exceptions.” But this wasn’t just a media campaign. Pro-choice activists mounted an energetic grassroots organizing drive that reached out to a wide range of communities, including those in historically Republican rural counties—a number of which voted “no” on Tuesday. In some western Kansas counties, support for the pro-choice position on the ballot question ran more than 25 points better than the 2020 vote for Joe Biden….As the 2022 election season unfolds, activists in other states can learn a good deal from the Kansas activists who spoke bluntly about how banning abortion will take away fundamental rights, criminalize health choices, and prevent doctors and nurses from providing necessary care….if party activists make the case that abortion is on the ballot in November, if they boost turnout from pro-choice voters, and if Democratic candidates can achieve even a small measure of the swing seen in Kansas, the 2022 political calculus could be dramatically improved for Biden and for his party.” And, as the second chart in the post below indicates, Democratic campaigns would be wise to avoid bashing the Republican party in their door-to-door canvassing and abortion-related ads, and emphasize instead that only the Democratic candidate strongly opposes government meddling in women’s health care choices.

Rani Molla shares “4 charts that show just how big abortion won in Kansas” at Vox, including these two:

At The Hill, Shirin Ali reports that “After Kansas, four more states set to vote on future of abortion.” Ali writes that “four other states will pose similar measures to voters that address the future of abortion:

1. California 

The state on its Nov. 8 ballot will feature Proposition 1, which aims to amend California’s constitution to include the right to an abortion. The measure provides that the state cannot “deny or interfere with an individual’s reproductive freedom in their most intimate decisions,” including decisions to have an abortion or to choose or refuse contraceptives.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has been doubling down on his efforts to make California an abortion sanctuary, including signing a law the shields California abortion providers and volunteers from lawsuits in other states. The state has also allotted more than $200 million in new spending to expand abortion in the state.

2. Kentucky

Also on Nov. 8, voters in Kentucky will be able to vote on whether their state’s constitution should be amended to lay out that nothing in the state constitution creates a right to abortion or requires government funding of abortions.

Kentucky hopes to join four other states that currently have constitutional amendments declaring that their constitutions do not secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding for the procedure.

The state has completely banned abortion, thanks to a trigger law that took effect quickly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. The law makes limited exceptions like to prevent death or serious injury of the mother.

3. Montana

Voters in Montana will get to weigh in on a state statute known as the Medical Care Requirements for Born-Alive Infants Measure on Nov. 8. It states that infants born alive at any stage of development should be considered legal persons; require medical care to be provided to infants born alive after an induced labor, C-section, attempted abortion or another method; and establish a $50,000 fine and/or 20 years in prison as the maximum penalty for violating the law.

Currently, abortion is legal in Montana up until 20 weeks of pregnancy and as long as the state constitution is not amended. Though the state has tried to enact several restrictive abortion laws, including one that would have stopped advanced practice registered nurses from being able to perform early abortion services. A judge blocked the law from taking effect.

4. Vermont

Yes, it was one of the biggest developments of the midterm primary season, and I wrote about it at New York:

In the first election test on abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court abolished the right to choose at the federal level, voters in deep-red Kansas soundly rejected a state constitutional amendment that would have paved the way for a ban on abortion. The so-called “Value Them Both” amendment, backed heavily by Republican politicians and the Catholic Church, lost by 18 points with unusually heavy turnout for a midterm primary. That this happened in a state that Donald Trump carried by a 56-42 margin in 2020, and in a year when election dynamics have strongly favored Republicans, represents a big victory for the pro-choice cause and a hopeful sign for Democrats in November.

Voters in three conservative states (Tennessee in 2014, West Virginia in 2018, and Louisiana in 2020) have passed “no right to abortion” constitutional amendments, but that was at a time when Roe v. Wade was still in place and abortion rights were protected by the federal courts. That changed with the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, but anti-abortion advocates in Kansas faced an additional hurdle: In 2019, the Kansas Supreme Court had established a right to abortion based on a state constitutional provision protecting bodily autonomy. Republican legislators attached the ballot measure ratifying the “Value Them Both” amendment to the primary instead of the general election in the hope that a small and Republican-skewing electorate on August 2 would make victory a near-certainty. But instead the gambit aroused the pro-choice majority.

The first clear sign that the Kansas anti-abortion measure might fail came in the form of very heavy early in-person and by-mail voting:

Strong turnout continued on primary day. Suburban Johnson County, the state’s largest, is expected to hit 65 percent turnout when it’s all said and done — more than double the usual midterm vote. And there’s not much doubt about which side was driving the high turnout. Johnson County gave 53 percent of its 2020 vote to Joe Biden. But “no” on the abortion amendment took 68 percent. Perhaps even more impressively, the state’s second largest county, Sedgewick, which was carried by Trump by 11 points in 2020, gave “no” 59 percent of its vote with most precincts reporting. What was expected to be a very close vote with better-than-average midterm turnout became a real blowout:

The implications of the Kansas vote are twofold. It shows that if given a direct role in determining abortion policy, voters even in states as conservative as Kansas will defend abortion rights. It calls into doubt the expected anti-abortion victory in November in Kentucky, which will vote on a very similar constitutional amendment; and in Montana, where Republicans are trying to do the same. Indeed, the results may encourage abortion-rights advocates to seek state voter-approved pro-choice state constitutional amendments; they are already in the works in Vermont and California and could happen as early as November in Michigan. And this trend could also create incentives for judges to interpret state constitutions favorably to abortion rights, just like those in Kansas did, with the assurance that voters have their backs.

Beyond the immediate issue, though, both the outcome and the enthusiasm exhibited by those who turned out to vote “no” to abortion bans in Kansas suggest that if Democrats make this a signature issue for the 2022 midterms, their currently bleak prospects in November — much of it based on the assumption that discouraged Democrats won’t vote — could turn around quickly. It’s clear the anti-abortion movement and its wholly owned subsidiary, the Republican Party, may have miscalculated with an assault on a right deemed basic by a majority of Americans, who may sooner than expected wake up and fight back.

From “Kansas Voters Just Rewrote the Script for the Midterm Elections” by Daniel Strauss at The New Republic:

Political junkies were settling in for one of those super-long nights of see-sawing election results in Kansas. The main event was not the state’s tense gubernatorial race or the prospect of anti-immigration hardliner Kris Kobach making yet another play for electoral office. Rather, it was a ballot referendum. Kansans were the first group to vote on whether to keep or overturn abortion rights in the state since the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade.

The common refrain was that the outcome would be razor thin and come in the latest minutes of Tuesday night or the earliest hours of Wednesday morning. But at 9:26 p.m., Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report—the most authoritative voice on early election results in America, whose Twitter feed is monitored by many thousands on nights like this—announced he  had “seen enough,” his signature catchphrase for an election outcome. In record-level turnout for a primary that reached presidential-election levels, Kansans overwhelmingly voted down the effort to strip the state constitution of abortion rights, which would have cleared the way for the GOP-controlled state legislature to pass strict anti-choice legislation. It was, Wasserman tweeted, a “huge victory for the pro-choice side.”

What Kansas voters also just did was to dramatically reshape the midterm elections this November. It’s hard to interpret results this overpowering in this red a state any other way.

Strauss notes that Kansas state senator Cindy Holscher “described the Dobbs ruling as a “lighting rod” moment for voters in the state and the region.” Strauss adds that “The seriousness and immediacy of the Dobbs decision has been felt across the country. Over a dozen Republican-leaning states have taken steps to double down on abortion restrictions. In Kansas, the state has a Democratic governor and abortion is legal past 20 weeks of pregnancy, and it’s a state people have been traveling to from Oklahoma and other nearby states for abortion services as those states have passed restrictive laws.” Also,

….In Johnson County, Kansas at 10:48 p.m. ET, the tally was about 72 percent voting no on the referendum and 28 percent voting yes. Johnson County is the most populous one in the state. By comparison, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in Johnson County with about 53 percent of the vote to Trump’s 44 percent. That the referendum ran so much more strongly than Biden is a sign that there may well be a hidden army of voters out there who are going to make reproductive rights the issue of these midterms. As former Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill said on MSNBC Tuesday night: “This should be a big flashing signal to every Democratic candidate out there.”

“This is a straight up and down vote on reproductive health,” said Kathleen Sebelius, a former Kansas governor and former secretary of Health and Human Services during the Obama administration. “It is a pretty clean test on how strong voters feel about reproductive health and constitutional protections.”

On the national level, Sebelius said, “I think what it should do across the country is just make people more comfortable talking about this issue as a galvanizing issue in the way we have, as Democrats, talked about healthcare, talked about any number of things. It’s a big difference between Republicans and Democrats. We have had record turnouts.”

As Strauss concludes, “this result was an earthquake that has rewritten, for now, the conventional wisdom about what may happen this November.” MSNBC Political commentator Jonathan Alter termed it a “choice-quake.” And it is one that feminists have been waiting for for decades.

Looking way, way ahead, if Dems are able to leverage this choice-quake sentiment to add a couple of senators to their majority, then expanding the size of the Supreme Court to achieve some balance becomes a real possibility.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

The Latest Messaging Brainstorm from Progressive Democrats.

Probably not gonna work either. I explain at The Liberal Patriot:

“There is a new entrant in the Democratic messaging sweepstakes: “inclusive populism”. The idea here is that Democrats may indeed be bleeding working class voters—points for at least recognizing the problem!—but the solution does not lie in any way with moving to the center on culturally-inflected issues like crime, immigration, race, gender and schooling. That would apparently not be “inclusive”.

Instead, as recounted in Blake Hounshell’s Times article on their initial gathering, the inclusive populists argue for turning it up to 11 on economic populism since “[Democrats] don’t fight hard enough for working-class people, and…aren’t tough enough on big, greedy corporations.” As Hounshell notes:

“The unmistakable tone of the event was a rebuke of the Democrats who have failed to squeeze more progressive policy wins out of their congressional majority over the last 18 months — and essentially, in the left’s telling, let their most conservative member, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, dictate the terms of their governing agenda.”

There are two big problems with this approach.”

Read the whole thing at The Liberal Patriot!

Nate Silver explains why “The Political Environment Might Be Improving For Democrats” at FiveThirtyEight: “As was the case when we launched the forecast a month ago, the Deluxe version of FiveThirtyEight’s midterm model still rates the battle for control of the Senate as a “toss-up.” But within that category there’s been modest, but consistent movement toward Democrats. Their chances of winning the Senate now stand at 55 percent. That’s up from 47 percent from forecast launch on June 30. It’s also up from 40 percent in a retroactive forecast dated back to June 1….This is matched by Democrats’ improved position on the generic congressional ballot, which asks voters which party they would support in a congressional election. Democrats are now essentially tied with Republicans in our generic ballot polling average, after having trailed by 2 to 3 percentage points over most of the late spring and early summer.

At The Cook Political Report, Amy Walter observes, “Over the last couple of weeks, there’s been a shift in opinion among many political professionals about Democrats’ chances in the midterm campaign. They point in particular to improvement for Democrats in the generic ballot poll question (which party would you like to see control Congress?), as well as recent Senate polls which show incumbent Democrats significantly outpacing Biden’s job approval ratings in their respective states….The explanation for this seeming disconnect between the president’s weak approval ratings and stronger showings for Democratic House and Senate candidates seem to be driven by a few factors: a post-Dobbs energizing of the Democratic base, weak and/or flawed GOP senate candidates, and the January 6th hearings. In other words, the media focus has increasingly been centered on issues that are harmful for the GOP. …Yet, there’s nothing new about a late summer ‘reassessment’ of midterm assumptions. In fact, like clockwork, the out-party right about now starts to fret that their advantage is slipping, while the in-party sees green shoots springing from a barren landscape….But, have things really improved for Democrats? The most recent polls measuring the generic preference for Congress have shown a Democratic advantage of anywhere between 4 to 6 points. Overall, the generic ballot average in RealClearPolitics is a narrow R+2.2. So, suppose you compare Biden’s net job approval rating of -17 (39 percent approve minus 56 percent disapprove) to Republicans’ one to two-point advantage on the generic ballot? In that case, it looks as if Democrats are outpacing the president by 15 to 16 points. But, what if you looked at Biden’s overall job approval number (39 percent) and compared it with the vote share a Democrat is getting in the generic ballot (43 percent). Looking at it that way, a Democrat is outpacing Biden by a much smaller 5 points. And historically, that’s about the average margin that candidates of the in-party have been able to over-perform the president….Democratic candidates will also need a certain percentage of independent voters to support them. And, those independent voters not only deeply disapprove of Biden, but they are also more focused on the economy and inflation.”

From “Do Senate Republicans have a candidate problem?” by Adam Wollner at CNN Politics: “More than half (55%) of registered voters in Pennsylvania view Oz, a celebrity doctor, unfavorably, while just 35% view him favorably, according to Fox’s polling. By comparison, Fetterman, currently the state’s lieutenant governor, is viewed favorably by 49% of voters and unfavorably by 34%. Perhaps the most alarming number for Oz: only 67% of Republicans hold a favorable view of him….Walker isn’t in quite as rough of shape, but his favorability rating is also under water: 43% of Georgia voters view him favorably, and 48% view him unfavorably. Warnock breaks about even at 48% favorable and 47% unfavorable. Broken down by party, 82% of Republicans hold a favorable view of Walker, while 93% of Democrats hold a favorable view of Warnock….In both states, the Democrats are managing to outpace their Republican opponents even as President Joe Biden’s favorability rating sits just north of 40%….These are far from the first warning signs that have come up for Oz and Walker. Oz has faced scrutiny about his residency from the start of his campaign. For Walker, there have been revelations he had three children with women he was not married to, questions over his past business ventures and repeated verbal gaffes. Plus, both are raising far less campaign cash than their Democratic counterparts….And these are far from the only Senate candidates Republicans are concerned about. In Ohio, a state Biden lost by 8 points in 2020, GOP nominee J.D. Vance was outraised by a 9-1 margin in the second quarter and has made a long string of controversial comments….The GOP’s Senate headache could get even worse after next Tuesday’s primaries. In Arizona, which will host one of the country’s marquee Senate races this fall, Blake Masters has embraced former President Donald Trump’s unfounded election fraud claims. Republicans also fear that scandal-plagued former Gov. Eric Greitens would put deep-red Missouri’s Senate seat in play if he emerges as the party’s nominee.”

In “The Democrats’ Rural Problem” Kaleidoscope Munis and Robert Saldin write at The Washington Monthly: “Over the past two decades, Democrats have hemorrhaged support in the countryside. As recently as 1996, President Bill Clinton carried more than 1,100 rural counties in his reelection bid—about half the nation’s total. In 2008, Barack Obama’s haul of rural counties plummeted to 455 while he cruised to an easy win nationally. By 2020, a Democratic pulse could barely be detected in rural America. Joe Biden only won 194 rural counties. The collapse continues. Last year, Glenn Youngkin carried Virginia’s 20 least populous counties by 27 points on average in his gubernatorial bid, a 12-point improvement for the GOP over 2017….A handful of Democratic strategists and politicians with roots in the heartland have been trying to ring the alarm. For instance, Senator Jon Tester’s memoir, Grounded: A Senator’s Lessons on Winning Back Rural America, details how he balances his day job in Washington with running a farm in rural Montana, and offers his party a series of “lessons on winning back rural America” that include showing up and actually campaigning hard in rural areas. Similarly, Illinois Representative Cheri Bustos and her political adviser, Robin Johnson, have written a series of reports concerning the “ground game” of Democrats who have been successful in rural and working-class districts that Trump carried….A handful of Democratic strategists and politicians with roots in the heartland have been trying to ring the alarm. For instance, Senator Jon Tester’s memoir, Grounded: A Senator’s Lessons on Winning Back Rural America, details how he balances his day job in Washington with running a farm in rural Montana, and offers his party a series of “lessons on winning back rural America” that include showing up and actually campaigning hard in rural areas. Similarly, Illinois Representative Cheri Bustos and her political adviser, Robin Johnson, have written a series of reports concerning the “ground game” of Democrats who have been successful in rural and working-class districts that Trump carried….The latest entry in this burgeoning genre comes from a Democratic state senator from Maine, Chloe Maxmin, and her campaign manager, Canyon Woodward. (Maxmin has decided not to run for a second term. She had previously served one term in the Maine House.)…In Dirt Road Revival, the authors offer what they consider a “tough-love letter” to their party. The book provides a good overview of how the Democratic abandonment of rural America has been bad for the party and the country. Maxmin and Woodward chronicle the decision by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, following the 2010 midterm disaster, to disband working groups dedicated to rural politics. They chart how Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign neglected rural voters and review Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer’s myopic attempt to rationalize the problem by proclaiming that “for every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”