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More evidence that a pink wave is coming in November?

torbee

HR King
Gold Member
I honestly didn't think the Dobbs decision would be much of a factor in the midterms. I am starting to think I was wrong.

POLITICS

The Men Just Keep Talking​

There is something happening with angry women voting on abortion. Male politicians don’t seem to have noticed.​

BY DAHLIA LITHWICK
AUG 28, 20227:00 PM
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) arrives on stage during the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit. There are a lot of streams of smoke around him.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) arrives on stage during the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit. Joe Raedle/Getty Images


Long after the time had passed for male GOP officials to stop, to just stop, pretending they know or understand anything about female anatomy, reproductive organs, medical emergencies and basic preventative health care, they have continued to talk. They have continued to talk and talk and talk even when the massive blowback after the Dobbs decision proved it was an error; Kansas proved it was an error; and after the surprise election of Pat Ryan in a New York special election proved it was an error. Every time a Republican man opens his mouth to talk about women’s bodies, ten new female voters get their wings. Yet somehow, they cannot seem to stop themselves!

It is surely the very textbook definition of “privilege” to find yourself unbothered by protests, polling numbers, and voter registration data. Justice Samuel Alito actually laughed in the face of outraged females who called out the bad history, bad economics, and bad medicine in his leaked draft opinion—their complaints were numerous and well-founded, yet he didn’t change a thing. Instead, he smugly told women that if they didn’t like the outcome in Dobbs, they could just “seek to affect the legislative process by influencing public opinion, lobbying legislators, voting, and running for office” and that “women

Because, Happy Women’s Equality Day, women are taking him up on the offer. One analysis of the Kansas’ voter registration list showed that in the week after Dobbs, more than 70 percent of newly registered voters in that state were women. Those numbers, according to an Upshot analysis of 10 states with available voter registration data, show consistently higher registration for women after the Dobbs leak in May. As Jennifer Rubin recently noted, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that, “62 percent of women registering since Dobbs registered as Democrats, 15 percent as Republicans and that 54 percent were younger than 25.” And a Pew Research Center poll indicates that “a majority of registered voters (56 percent) say the issue of abortion will be very important in their midterm vote, up from 43 percent in March.” Tom Bonier, CEO Of TargetSmart recently posted on Twitter: “We are seeing early signs of what could lead to a huge increase in women voting in November. …This surge is young and female.” Both Mitch McConnell and RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel are panicking about the GOP’s odds in Congress, directly connected to fundraising around abortion.

I have a lot of theories about why nobody should be surprised that women are friggin’ furious right now, which include, as Mark Joseph Stern has been arguing all summer, the increasingly horrifying tales of women, disproportionately on teenagers and victims of violence, left to suffer from sepsis, refused prescriptions and denied treatment for ectopic pregnancies, and ever more horrors. And yet, the forced birth Republicans continue to insist that none of this is happening, or that journalists and physicians are making it all up.

If you’ve ever suffered a miscarriage, sought emergency contraception, needed cancer drugs that were available to you in May and unavailable today, or lost a much-wanted pregnancy and then had to litigate the repercussions with hospital attorneys and wild-eyed state prosecutors, you are afraid and anxious right now. That is happening. There are a lot of us. And as President Biden warned this week, Democrats losing Congress will mean that abortion is in peril everywhere.

Yet the men, they just keep on talking. Some examples:

· In June Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio told CNN’s Pamela Brown, in response to a question about his state law that contains no rape exceptions: “You don’t know you were raped for two months? … It’s hard to conceive of somebody who doesn’t know they were raped for two months.”
· In July Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., asked a gathering of like-minded misogynists “Have you watched these pro-abortion, pro-murder rallies?… The people are just disgusting. But why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions? Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.”
· Last month during debate over a near-total abortion ban in West Virginia, Republican Del. Chris Pritt said on the floor of the legislature that that child support requirements bad because if a man gets a woman pregnant, he would force her to have an abortion to avoid paying child support. And abortion is bad.
· When Indiana lawmakers approved a near-total ban on abortion earlier this month, Rep. John Jacob (R) announced that he voted in support because “the body inside of the mom’s body is not her body. Let me repeat that: The body inside of the mom’s body is not her body. Not her body, not her choice.”
 
It actually never ends. And the harder these guys try to seem sensitive and caring, the worse it goes for them.
Case in point: Viral video last week showed South Carolina state Rep. Neal Collins (R) describing the excruciating hurdles faced by a 19-year-old thanks to anti-abortion legislation he himself had supported. But Collins, fighting back tears while telling that story, didn’t actually change his vote: He just abstained, while his colleagues advanced one of the most restrictive bans in the nation. (His statement also bizarrely focused on his own sleepless suffering rather than that of the victim). These guys sure do like to keep on talking.

I don’t understand what some of these legislators are thinking. Do they forget that women have the vote? (Happy Women’s Equality Day.) Do they think women don’t have ears? Or cannot read words? Or that women are just kidding when they take to the streets, register to vote, and flip elections?

Even the politicians who are changing their tune are doing so in a matter that is frankly confusing: Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters quietly scrubbed his website’s abortion policy restrictions this week, rewriting or erasing five of his six previous hardline positions, including earlier support for a “a federal personhood law.” He then released a gaslight-hued new ad posted to Twitter recasting his abortion views as “commonsense.” And then there are those who have simply stopped talking altogether. Pennsylvania’s Gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, for example, has gone from a position in which he had championed a six-week ban, opposed exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the mother, and favored criminal penalties for doctors and nurses who perform abortions to essentially being a mime. OK, this one I actually do get: It’s cowardice, but at least it’s strategic.

The notion that your words have no impact, change nothing, and reveal no truth has been so baked into public political life these past years that it’s no wonder a good many elected officials seem to really believe it. But it a non-trivial number of voters do listen carefully to their elected officials and candidates for high office when they speak. They do absorb the gist of the sentiments offered and the cruelty that underlies it. And they also vote. It says so much about where we are just now that this simple connection must be explained as if it were string theory.

It’s not mere coincidence that new polling shows that “threats to democracy” is suddenly ranked as the number one issue for registered voters. It rolled in at 21 percent, this week, overtaking the economy, crime, and abortion. When you are repeatedly being told by those in power that your preferences don’t matter and when those in power believe that saying the quiet parts out loud is electorally costless, they aren’t just saying that women don’t matter. They’re saying democracy doesn’t matter either. But it turns out they don’t get to decide that. You do.
 
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It actually never ends. And the harder these guys try to seem sensitive and caring, the worse it goes for them.
Case in point: Viral video last week showed South Carolina state Rep. Neal Collins (R) describing the excruciating hurdles faced by a 19-year-old thanks to anti-abortion legislation he himself had supported. But Collins, fighting back tears while telling that story, didn’t actually change his vote: He just abstained, while his colleagues advanced one of the most restrictive bans in the nation. (His statement also bizarrely focused on his own sleepless suffering rather than that of the victim). These guys sure do like to keep on talking.

I don’t understand what some of these legislators are thinking. Do they forget that women have the vote? (Happy Women’s Equality Day.) Do they think women don’t have ears? Or cannot read words? Or that women are just kidding when they take to the streets, register to vote, and flip elections?

Even the politicians who are changing their tune are doing so in a matter that is frankly confusing: Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters quietly scrubbed his website’s abortion policy restrictions this week, rewriting or erasing five of his six previous hardline positions, including earlier support for a “a federal personhood law.” He then released a gaslight-hued new ad posted to Twitter recasting his abortion views as “commonsense.” And then there are those who have simply stopped talking altogether. Pennsylvania’s Gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, for example, has gone from a position in which he had championed a six-week ban, opposed exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the mother, and favored criminal penalties for doctors and nurses who perform abortions to essentially being a mime. OK, this one I actually do get: It’s cowardice, but at least it’s strategic.

The notion that your words have no impact, change nothing, and reveal no truth has been so baked into public political life these past years that it’s no wonder a good many elected officials seem to really believe it. But it a non-trivial number of voters do listen carefully to their elected officials and candidates for high office when they speak. They do absorb the gist of the sentiments offered and the cruelty that underlies it. And they also vote. It says so much about where we are just now that this simple connection must be explained as if it were string theory.

It’s not mere coincidence that new polling shows that “threats to democracy” is suddenly ranked as the number one issue for registered voters. It rolled in at 21 percent, this week, overtaking the economy, crime, and abortion. When you are repeatedly being told by those in power that your preferences don’t matter and when those in power believe that saying the quiet parts out loud is electorally costless, they aren’t just saying that women don’t matter. They’re saying democracy doesn’t matter either. But it turns out they don’t get to decide that. You do.
I said a while back the GOP would shoot them selves in the foot, and they certainly did. When the ruling came down, I had a feeling this would be the one that did them in. Followed by red states passing very restrictive abortion laws.
 
Republicans are about to get steamrolled by a strategy championed by Karl Rove which helped win elections for hundreds and hundreds of GOP candidates for at least two decades beginning in the late 1980s.

Rove's strategy was to organize the grassroot activists to place hot button initiatives up for vote on the election ballot in swing states and/or disricts with closely contested races. He specialized in divisive cultural iissues such as gay marriage, school vouchers, affirmative action, unions, etc. Once the iniiative was certified, he and special interest PACs would coordinate to advertise the living shit ot of it in order to drive conservatives to the poll.. I worked spectacularly well.

Starting with Kansas and going forward for the foreseeble future, at least several election cycles, Democrats will be bringing forth popular pro-choice and reproductive rights intitiatives and referendums. Election participation is about to go through the roof on issues which Americans have favored by a 2:1 margin for 50 years ...rights stripped by the Supreme Court.
 
I honestly didn't think the Dobbs decision would be much of a factor in the midterms. I am starting to think I was wrong.

POLITICS

The Men Just Keep Talking​

There is something happening with angry women voting on abortion. Male politicians don’t seem to have noticed.​

BY DAHLIA LITHWICK
AUG 28, 20227:00 PM
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) arrives on stage during the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit. There are a lot of streams of smoke around him.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) arrives on stage during the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit. Joe Raedle/Getty Images


Long after the time had passed for male GOP officials to stop, to just stop, pretending they know or understand anything about female anatomy, reproductive organs, medical emergencies and basic preventative health care, they have continued to talk. They have continued to talk and talk and talk even when the massive blowback after the Dobbs decision proved it was an error; Kansas proved it was an error; and after the surprise election of Pat Ryan in a New York special election proved it was an error. Every time a Republican man opens his mouth to talk about women’s bodies, ten new female voters get their wings. Yet somehow, they cannot seem to stop themselves!

It is surely the very textbook definition of “privilege” to find yourself unbothered by protests, polling numbers, and voter registration data. Justice Samuel Alito actually laughed in the face of outraged females who called out the bad history, bad economics, and bad medicine in his leaked draft opinion—their complaints were numerous and well-founded, yet he didn’t change a thing. Instead, he smugly told women that if they didn’t like the outcome in Dobbs, they could just “seek to affect the legislative process by influencing public opinion, lobbying legislators, voting, and running for office” and that “women

Because, Happy Women’s Equality Day, women are taking him up on the offer. One analysis of the Kansas’ voter registration list showed that in the week after Dobbs, more than 70 percent of newly registered voters in that state were women. Those numbers, according to an Upshot analysis of 10 states with available voter registration data, show consistently higher registration for women after the Dobbs leak in May. As Jennifer Rubin recently noted, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that, “62 percent of women registering since Dobbs registered as Democrats, 15 percent as Republicans and that 54 percent were younger than 25.” And a Pew Research Center poll indicates that “a majority of registered voters (56 percent) say the issue of abortion will be very important in their midterm vote, up from 43 percent in March.” Tom Bonier, CEO Of TargetSmart recently posted on Twitter: “We are seeing early signs of what could lead to a huge increase in women voting in November. …This surge is young and female.” Both Mitch McConnell and RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel are panicking about the GOP’s odds in Congress, directly connected to fundraising around abortion.

I have a lot of theories about why nobody should be surprised that women are friggin’ furious right now, which include, as Mark Joseph Stern has been arguing all summer, the increasingly horrifying tales of women, disproportionately on teenagers and victims of violence, left to suffer from sepsis, refused prescriptions and denied treatment for ectopic pregnancies, and ever more horrors. And yet, the forced birth Republicans continue to insist that none of this is happening, or that journalists and physicians are making it all up.

If you’ve ever suffered a miscarriage, sought emergency contraception, needed cancer drugs that were available to you in May and unavailable today, or lost a much-wanted pregnancy and then had to litigate the repercussions with hospital attorneys and wild-eyed state prosecutors, you are afraid and anxious right now. That is happening. There are a lot of us. And as President Biden warned this week, Democrats losing Congress will mean that abortion is in peril everywhere.

Yet the men, they just keep on talking. Some examples:

· In June Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio told CNN’s Pamela Brown, in response to a question about his state law that contains no rape exceptions: “You don’t know you were raped for two months? … It’s hard to conceive of somebody who doesn’t know they were raped for two months.”
· In July Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., asked a gathering of like-minded misogynists “Have you watched these pro-abortion, pro-murder rallies?… The people are just disgusting. But why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions? Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.”
· Last month during debate over a near-total abortion ban in West Virginia, Republican Del. Chris Pritt said on the floor of the legislature that that child support requirements bad because if a man gets a woman pregnant, he would force her to have an abortion to avoid paying child support. And abortion is bad.
· When Indiana lawmakers approved a near-total ban on abortion earlier this month, Rep. John Jacob (R) announced that he voted in support because “the body inside of the mom’s body is not her body. Let me repeat that: The body inside of the mom’s body is not her body. Not her body, not her choice.”

It's more than "just abortion"

Women needing medications that *could* be used for abortions, but are being prescribed for entirely different things, are being denied their basic medical care. Women who do not even want abortions, but miscarry and need a D&C or D&E cannot get one; and med students/residents/doctors are recognizing that they cannot even get Standard of Care medical training for required procecures (yes, forms of abortions) when they are needed for their educations. The LAST thing you want when your "life is at risk" is a doctor who's never performed the procedure you need, because the only doctors qualified live 5 states over.

Employers are likewise realizing the risks this poses to their female employees - who might need to quit or take many weeks off because they've miscarried and aren't "critically ill" but are too sick to otherwise work.

The shortsightedness of the God Squad GOPers is impacting a LOT more than just "young women who want to terminate an unwanted pregnancy".
 
For the first time in my professional career, I sit within an executive leadership team that is majority female - 70% women. I'm convinced it's time we hand over the highest levels of leadership to them.

I am hopeful women find/assume their voice in politics.
 
As every day passes, the probability that the Dems actually INCREASE their majority gets more likely.

Trump and his antics are a git to Dems that keeps on giving.

Those cons appointed to SCOTUS will be the tipping point for Republican looses in November. At this point, the GOP likely loses incumbent Senate seats in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as not flipping the Georgia seat that was considered a slam dunk a year ago.

This will be awesome.
 
Dobbs will probably be a bigger deal in 2024. You have to give some time for all of the various state legislatures to enact extremist laws, and for the SCOTUS to bungle up when they have to rule on some of them. It's going to take a little time for moderate women to realize how messed up Dobbs was.
 
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Long after the time had passed for male GOP officials to stop, to just stop, pretending they know or understand anything about female anatomy, reproductive organs,

well, we're not biologists. but we do know women have vaginas, which is more than you can say about democrats.
 
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Long after the time had passed for male GOP officials to stop, to just stop, pretending they know or understand anything about female anatomy, reproductive organs, medical emergencies and basic preventative health care, they have continued to talk. They have continued to talk and talk and talk even when the massive blowback after the Dobbs decision proved it was an error; Kansas proved it was an error; and after the surprise election of Pat Ryan in a New York special election proved it was an error. Every time a Republican man opens his mouth to talk about women’s bodies, ten new female voters get their wings. Yet somehow, they cannot seem to stop themselves!

Admitting a mistake is antithetical to their existence as a politician. And, hilariously enough, most of them don't really know or care too much about the issue personally -- but no matter, they've got libs to own. Of course they might be owned ultimately... but at least they're doing the right thing. (double entendre alert)
 
you better hope so, because if its gas prices, the economy, inflation, billions to Ukraine... OOF.
I agree with this. Problem is the economy keeps adding jobs, inflation is shrinking, and gas prices are dropping. This could change. But between Trump and abortion, two items which won't change by November, Rs badly need everything to crash economically in just two months.
 
Long after the time had passed for male GOP officials to stop, to just stop, pretending they know or understand anything about female anatomy, reproductive organs,

well, we're not biologists. but we do know women have vaginas, which is more than you can say about democrats.
Keep it up, keep it up. I hope you say stuff like this to every voting-age woman you know.
 
I agree with this. Problem is the economy keeps adding jobs, inflation is shrinking, and gas prices are dropping. This could change. But between Trump and abortion, two items which won't change by November, Rs badly need everything to crash economically in just two months.
They’re fooked on that front because they tried to convince people the issues — caused primarily by pent-up, post-Covid demand exacerbated by supply chain disruptions and a land war in Ukraine were due to Biden policy decisions.

Only someone who is a complete moron, and to be fair - that is about 40% of the GOP base - could still believe that today.

They overplayed their hand on the economy blame game AND pissed off women voters heading into the midterms. The only thing stopping this from being another electoral rout is a favorable electoral map and gerrymandering, and even that is highly unlikely now to win them the Senate.
 
Republicans are about to get steamrolled by a strategy championed by Karl Rove which helped win elections for hundreds and hundreds of GOP candidates for at least two decades beginning in the late 1980s.

Rove's strategy was to organize the grassroot activists to place hot button initiatives up for vote on the election ballot in swing states and/or disricts with closely contested races. He specialized in divisive cultural iissues such as gay marriage, school vouchers, affirmative action, unions, etc. Once the iniiative was certified, he and special interest PACs would coordinate to advertise the living shit ot of it in order to drive conservatives to the poll.. I worked spectacularly well.

Starting with Kansas and going forward for the foreseeble future, at least several election cycles, Democrats will be bringing forth popular pro-choice and reproductive rights intitiatives and referendums. Election participation is about to go through the roof on issues which Americans have favored by a 2:1 margin for 50 years ...rights stripped by the Supreme Court.
Right. And now the GOP is being ruined by the idiots -- losing elections too -- they helped create with this strategy. Oops. Oh well.
 
I agree with this. Problem is the economy keeps adding jobs, inflation is shrinking, and gas prices are dropping. This could change. But between Trump and abortion, two items which won't change by November, Rs badly need everything to crash economically in just two months.
I know the Biden team is spinning things, but since we know Joe doesn't control gas prices, is there any reason to believe they may not creep back up? There's a lot of differing opinions from economic experts on how the student loan relief could impact inflation. Who knows what other nonsense could arise over the next couple of months? If things stay on this track they're on now, I would say you're totally right, but Americans have short memories and it wouldn't take anything too too crazy on either side to change things in a major way for either party.
 
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They’re fooked on that front because they tried to convince people the issues — caused primarily by pent-up, post-Covid demand exacerbated by supply chain disruptions and a land war in Ukraine were due to Biden policy decisions.

Only someone who is a complete moron, and to be fair - that is about 40% of the GOP base - could still believe that today.

They overplayed their hand on the economy blame game AND pissed off women voters heading into the midterms. The only thing stopping this from being another electoral rout is a favorable electoral map and gerrymandering, and even that is highly unlikely now to win them the Senate.
I mean I don't blame the Rs for trying to exploit these issues. They're pretty potent attack points. But putting all these eggs in these baskets was a mistake. There was just no way gas was going to stay that high. And inflation was bound to cool.

Rs should have spent their time moving on from Trump and running sane candidates. They didn't do the work after 2020 and it is showing.
 
I mean I don't blame the Rs for trying to exploit these issues. They're pretty potent attack points. But putting all these eggs in these baskets was a mistake. There was just no way gas was going to stay that high. And inflation was bound to cool.

Rs should have spent their time moving on from Trump and running sane candidates. They didn't do the work after 2020 and it is showing.
The MAGA faction of the Party is the biggest share right now.

This has to be driving Mitch McConnell nuts. The GOP is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in November
 
The MAGA faction of the Party is the biggest share right now.

This has to be driving Mitch McConnell nuts. The GOP is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in November
Rs also counted on Biden being a lame duck until November. But he came back like Rocky. He got tons of massive bills passed this summer and is showing no signs of stopping. Dems have a guaranteed winner in abortion, made the Rs eat shit over vets, are making the Rs eat shit over student loans, and will make the Rs contend with Trump's likely treason.

The fundamentals just aren't there for the GOP
 
Rs should have spent their time moving on from Trump and running sane candidates. They didn't do the work after 2020 and it is showing.
The party has totally incentivized the wrong traits in politicians for so long now that they're fooked. They're comprised of way too many spineless sycophants like Lindsey Graham. Stupid, ideologically rudderless career politicians like Kim Reynolds. And so now they're effectively beholden to Trumpism with little effective leadership willing to dissent and disengage.

This is where the party is headed:
 
The majority of Mericans approve of aid to Ukraine. WTF you talking about.

The same reason the GOP will pay the price for the anti abortion decision. Majority are pro choice.

Republicans are simply out of touch with reality.
Majority of Americans have no clue what’s going on in Ukraine, they just know Putin bad, but apparently not bad enough for us to actually intervene. Maybe because Joey is more concerned with waging war on the ultra MAGA than he is stopping Vladdy
 
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Majority of Americans have no clue what’s going on in Ukraine, they just know Putin bad, but apparently not bad enough for us to actually intervene. Maybe because Joey is more concerned with waging war on the ultra MAGA than he is stopping Vladdy
I assume that's sarcasm?

Next time use ;););) so we realize you're just trolling.

Biden is kicking ass right now and we know it really pisses off the cons.
 
It was always labeled as the rare, outlying occasion or situation. Turns out they just like killing babies.
The issue is a woman's ability to decide for herself. Republicans scream about personal choice and rights.

The hypocrisy is astounding.

And as the GOP is, and will learn, the hard way... it's going to cost them elections.
 
The issue is a woman's ability to decide for herself. Republicans scream about personal choice and rights.

The hypocrisy is astounding.

And as the GOP is, and will learn, the hard way... it's going to cost them elections.
You overplayed the hand that had for 50 years. It is your parties own fault you lost.
 
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