Sahil Kapur/NBC News:
Abortion setback in Ohio alarms GOP, as Democrats see a 'roadmap for 2024'
Trump's former campaign manager warns abortion could provide "rocket fuel" to Biden's re-election bid. A Democratic pollster says it will motivate voters "as long as sex is salient."
"The Ohio result tonight, coming on the heels of the shellacking in Michigan and the unexpected loss in Kentucky, needs to be a five-alarm fire for the pro-life movement," Patrick Brown, a conservative scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, tweeted late Tuesday.
But Republican strategists face a no-win conundrum. Retreating on abortion would infuriate the majority of their base that wants to ban the procedure, while their current strategy is alienating a formidable slice of swing voters who favor some GOP positions but oppose the party’s stance on reproductive rights.
Also important from that NBC piece: Democratic pollster Celinda Lake compares 2016 and now
“I was doing focus groups in Michigan with women, and I said: ‘Donald Trump is going to defund Planned Parenthood.’ And the women said, ‘No he’s not, that’s ridiculous.’ And I said I can show you the clip on TV, and I played the news for them,” Lake said. “And they said, ‘Are you kidding me? I don’t care what he says.’”
“So in 2016, it was very hard to make him anti-choice. After Dobbs, it’s not,” she said. “And the linkage to his court — the Trump judges and the MAGA judges is very, very clear to voters.”
Daniel McGraw/The Bulwark:
Why the Ohio Special Election Backfired for the GOP
And what it means for 2024.
But back to that art teacher. She acknowledged she was concerned about the abortion factor in all this, but made it quite clear that abortion wasn’t the major reason she was voting no. Rather, she was mad about what she called Republicans “overstepping their bounds,” about their having “no respect for anything or anybody” and being willing to stomp on the rights of others “to get what they want.”
“It’s not that I expect them to act all nice and friendly while they are attempting to stab people in the back,” she told me. “But in this case, the feeling I am getting is that they thought most people were too dumb to figure out anything and that they could just walk all over all of us as if that is just how this world of politics works.”
I heard similar messages from the thirty-odd people I had conversations with at polling places in conservative outer-ring suburb Strongsville and liberal inner-ring suburb Shaker Heights, and at the rec center/polling place in inner-city Cleveland where 12-year-old Tamir Rice got killed in 2014 for holding a toy gun.
Hardly anyone said they were mainly there to vote because of abortion rights or being anti-Trump. Almost all indicated they felt that Issue 1 was an overreach of the highest order. One guy told me that “this is one of the lowest below-the-belt actions I’ve seen in politics ever.”
Dan Pfeiffer/”The Message Box” on Substack:
A Huge Win in Ohio Offers a Blueprint for 2024
The Ohio election is a warning sign for Republicans and a call to arms for Democrats
Like in every significant election since the Dobbs decision last summer, the side fighting for abortion rights won handily.
Here’s what it all means.
1. Abortion Remains the Republicans’ Achilles Heel
The Dobbs decision fundamentally changed American politics. Perhaps more than anything else, this chart from Gallup demonstrates how dramatic the shift has been:
Internal poll, but I like it. [Trouble with internal polls is you don’t know if this is down from 16, e.g., because they only show you the good ones]:
POLITICO:
Staggering Ohio loss ignites an identity crisis within the anti-abortion movement
This soul-searching on the right shows how fractured the anti-abortion movement remains on both tactics and messaging more than a year after they achieved their decades-long goal of toppling Roe v. Wade.
“We’re going to have to live with messier compromises going forward or risk this happening again and again,” said Patrick Brown, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center who called Tuesday’s result a “five-alarm fire for the pro-life movement.”
“Some think that only a total ban is acceptable. But we see, over and over again, that such an uncompromising position doesn’t have support. There’s no political appetite for that,” he said.
Rolling Stone:
Trump’s Allies Prepare for Indictments in Georgia Probe: ‘They’re Coming for Everyone’
It's not just Donald. Sources say Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis is likely to indict a number of his associates involved in attempting to overturn the 2020 election
Three sources who have spoken with prosecutors tell Rolling Stone that they believe that Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis is likely to indict not just Trump, but a number of his associates involved in attempting to overturn the election, as well.
“It really seems like they’re coming for everyone,” says one lawyer who has repeatedly dealt with the prosecutors in this criminal probe. “Based on what I know, Willis and her team do not seem to be stopping at Donald Trump. The scope for this [likely coming indictment] is probably going to be a hell of a lot wider than that…and round up a significant number of people.”
The Fulton County DA’s office has declined to comment on what will occur with an indictment, and only she knows for sure who ultimately will be hit with charges.
Indictments are widely expected next week, but only the Fulton County DA’s office knows when.
Kevin M Kruse/Xwitter, via Threadreader:
The House GOP has been riling up its base by repeatedly insisting it has the goods to get Joe Biden.
This works fine in the short term, but repeatedly overpromising and underdelivering is only going to make the base mad at them, more than anyone else.
You can see this with today's tweets from the Oversight Committee.
It's framed as a huge hit on Biden but once you read it, it's clear the "Biden FAMILY AND ASSOCIATES" framing is a load-bearing beam.
It's a showy announcement meant to suggest much more than is actually there.
But the base doesn't get that -- they're riled up and they expect action.
Action that Republican politicians can't *actually* deliver because they (or at least their very patient legal counsel) understand there's really no there there.
David French/The New York Times:
Let’s Have a Face-Off on Trump’s Indictment
Imagine two lawyers arguing their cases for you, a nonlawyer:
Prosecution: Look, I know the indictment is long — and the trial may well last for weeks — but the elevator pitch is simple. Donald Trump conspired with a number of other individuals to overturn an election that he knew he lost. That scheme included a number of elements, from deliberately lying to state legislators to defraud them into altering the results to orchestrating a fake elector scheme that cast sham Electoral College votes to threatening a state official to help Trump “find” the votes necessary to change the outcome in Georgia.
Defense: Sure, that all sounds compelling, but on closer examination, the case collapses. Let’s just start with the word “knew.” You’re going to present evidence that a number of administration officials and others rendered an opinion that the election was fair and that Joe Biden won. We’re going to present evidence that Trump received an avalanche of legal counsel to the contrary. He heard from lawyer after lawyer who told him that there may well have been decisive amounts of fraud in key swing states. Trump heard from two sets of lawyers who disagreed with each other, and he decided to follow the advice of one team of attorneys over the other. Following bad legal advice shouldn’t land anyone in jail.