John Stoehr has an interesting analysis.
I have been skeptical of those claiming, after the US Supreme Court struck down Roe, that a backlash is brewing. It’s not that I believe people aren’t mad about losing legal protection of their right to privacy.
It’s that I believe in the wowzer power of the human mind to convince itself that terrible things aren’t so terrible.
I still think I’m right about polling. It can’t accurately capture public opinion in the middle of regime change – as one political order disintegrates and reintegrates to become a new political order.That’s why last night’s referendum in Kansas is so important.
Suddenly, lost faith in democracy feels premature, even silly.
More than two-thirds of voters in Kansas said no to a proposal to change the state constitution in order to let state legislators pass laws severely restricting or even outright banning abortion.
A vote is so much better than a poll. It is concrete. It is indisputable. It is conclusive. It’s an expression of the will of a democratic people. In this case, it was the will of the residents of a conservative state in which Republican voters outnumber Dem voters two to one.
A look in the weeds offers more reason for hope.
First, Kansas referendums don’t usually turn out votes as general elections do. But according to the AP, turnout last night was “within reach” of 50 percent. Fifty-two percent is normal for state generals.
Second, voter registration “surged” after the Supreme Court’s ruling, according to Scott Schwab, the Kansas secretary of state. That surge was, moreover, “heavily Democratic,” according to USA Today. A stunning 70 percent of new voter registration was among women.
Third, these Democratic women powered the no-vote in the state’s suburbs even though these same suburbs went to Donald Trump in 2020.
For those of us worried about the future of democracy, especially the will of a democratic people to take their destinies into their own hands, last night’s results are about as good as any of us can expect.
White women, conservative or liberal, seem to be mad as hell. They’re not going to take it anymore. Plus, they know which party is going to protect them and their rights.
Above all, they know democracy is how to get what they want.
Even though these women are registering as Democrats, and even though they know which party is going to protect them and their rights, last night’s referendum offered a curious, ironic feature.
On the one hand, abortion may be emerging as a true wedge issue that Dems can use to pry GOP voters away from their party just enough to support Dem midterm candidates who will in turn vote to codify Roe into federal statute.
On the other hand, abortion may be emerging as a truly reasonable issue released from the burdens of partisanship – an uncontroversial issue on account of a majority wanting it to be settled – such that it drags the Democratic Party into that sweet, sweet middle of politics.
Abortion could be to our political order what civil rights (Black rights) was to the previous political order – a catalyst for change.
But now that rightwing politics has achieved what it set out to – now that it is advancing toward the criminalization of other individual freedoms that had been settled, like when you can have kids, who you can marry and even which books you can read such moderate voters (ie, white women) seem to be rethinking their commitments.
I hope they continue rethinking.
I don’t want to get ahead of myself. It could be that Kansans voted against this referendum because it was easy to. It wasn’t attached to a candidate, thus freeing voters from having to explain their votes.
But even so, last night was important.
It reminded us to keep the faith – democratic faith.
We the people have the power. We the people have the power, no matter how dark things seem. (The GOP knows this, by the way. That’s why they work so hard to rig the rules of democracy without seeming to have worked so hard to rig the rules of democracy.)
Polling that shows that Americans have lost faith in democracy. And so on.
When we do, we forget why we’re fighting.
We fight not so much to stop the authoritarian collectivism that’s creeping across the republic, though there’s no choice but to fight.
We fight out of love. Democracy is love – if we love, too.
The news from Kansas suggests we are relearning how.
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