As the GOP dumpster fire lurches haplessly down the midterm gulch, House Democrats are nearly all rowing in the same direction with one issue dominating their closing argument to voters: Abortion.
By September's end, Democratic candidates and their affiliated committees and super PACs had plowed almost $18 million into airing abortion-related ads in roughly four dozen battleground districts, according to Politico.
After decades of treading lightly on the hot-button social issue, it's a good bet for Democrats. Not only is abortion a deeply resonant issue that has entirely upended the midterm landscape, but it also serves as a larger reminder of how extreme and out of touch the entire Republican Party has grown. Republicans are waging a war on freedom, on anyone who doesn't agree with their radicalized base voters, and indeed on democracy itself. The GOP-packed Supreme Court made that perfectly clear in June for anyone who wasn't certain of it when the right-wing majority overturned 50 years of abortion law. For Republicans, freedom does not mean freedom for everyone—minority rule is the order of the day. Reminding voters of that is the best closing argument Democrats have because it allows them to play sheer offense on a deeply personal matter where Republicans are flailing.
“The suburban voters who Republicans thought were just anti-Trump are now kind of coming to realize they’re anti-Republican,” observed Chris Walsh, campaign manager for Democrat Pat Ryan's successful special election bid in New York's 19th Congressional District. “With the Dobbs decision, it really fired them up that this is still an existential fight for their lives.”
This is how Democrats’ abortion spending stacks up:
- Democrats have spent three times more this cycle on abortion ads than in 2018
- At least seven Democratic super PACs, plus the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), have featured abortion messaging over other issues
- Abortion was issue No. 1 for outside Democratic groups as they dropped more than 40% of their total TV ad spending on the issue. Abortion spending eclipsed the groups' No. 2 issue, health care, which harnessed just 17% of their total spending on broadcast ads.
The TV spots feature mothers, doctors, and rape victims talking to constituents in a variety of urban and rural districts, some of which Biden won handily, some narrowly, and even some that went for Trump by small margins.
Rep. Dan Kildee of Michigan, one of more than a dozen Democratic incumbents defending toss-up seats, is running an ad in which a rape survivor who needed a life-saving abortion says she was "personally disgusted" when GOP candidate Paul Junge called abortion "made up rights" for women.
“It is a defining issue,” Kildee noted. “My position and my opponent’s couldn’t be more stark. People should know this is a guy who thinks he has the right to tell a woman what to do after she’s raped.”
Abby Curran Horrell, the executive director of Democrats' House Majority PAC, said the issue also animates a multitude of different voters.
“It crosses demographics, it crosses geographies. It’s an issue that resonates with voters across the political spectrum,” Horrell explained. House Majority PAC is, for instance, airing abortion rights ads in two rural districts with a strong Latino presence: Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez’s South Texas seat and GOP Rep. David Valadao’s California Central Valley district.
Some Democrats have lodged muted criticism of the party’s laser-like focus, particularly since gas prices have started to rebound and inflation has proven to be particularly stubborn. But by and large, Democrats are lockstep, and candidates are free to vary their campaigns accordingly.
“We feel very confident in the strategic messaging decisions that we’re making to win races,” Horrell told Politico.
Meanwhile, Republicans are mostly trying to ignore the topic in their alternate universe where reducing roughly half of Americans to second-class citizens is a non-issue.
“This election is about kitchen table issues,” said House GOP campaign chief Tom Emmer. “Those are the issues that we need to address and we need to stay focused on.”
Because apparently kids are a topic that never comes up at tens of millions of kitchen tables across the country.
Just say “no” to Republicans’ national abortion ban. Give $3 right now to keep the House in Democratic hands.
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