#midterm voting

Over the summer, amid the ongoing fallout of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision and a successful legislative stretch for Joe Biden and his party, a sense of midterm optimism took hold among Democrats: Perhaps November wouldn’t be as ugly as some had forecasted? But as the election has neared, their previous doom and gloom has begun to seep in once more. The latest bad omen? A New York Times/Siena poll out Monday that has suggested Republicans are entering the final weeks of the race with an edge over Democrats, as economic fears surge to the top of voters’ minds. Most concerning for Democrats in the poll is the huge swing over the past month among women who identify as independents. The same poll in September found them favoring Democrats by 14 points; in Monday’s poll, though, they preferred Republicans by 18 points, even though the GOP remains out of step with most Americans on abortion rights.

“That doesn’t really have a lot to do with my decision,” one voter, who opposed the overturn of Roe but nevertheless may vote Republican this fall, told the Times. “I’m more worried about other things.”

The numbers are concerning for the Democrats, who are trying to hang onto the narrowest of majorities on Capitol Hill in a climate with some of the highest possible stakes. If they lose the House, the Senate, or both, they’re not only looking at two years of legislative obstruction. They’re facing the unprecedented danger of an election denier majority. “Nothing less than freedom and democracy are on the ballot,” as Hakeem Jeffries, chair of the House Democratic caucus, wrote Monday. Concerns about the future of democracy, about Americans’ longstanding rights — these should be election-defining issues this cycle. But Republicans have capitalized on more bad news about inflation, among other things, to stay on the offensive, wielding a bleak national mood to their electoral ends. “Everybody’s hurting right now,” as one GOP voter put it to the Times.

Republicans, of course, have had little to offer in the way of actual solutions, but midterm trends tend to favor the party not currently in power. Earlier in the cycle, those historical headwinds had some prognosticators warning of a red wave. The latest polling in the Times and elsewhere doesn’t suggest the kind of 2010-like bloodbath the most aggressive predictions had floated — the Times poll shows Republicans holding a just four-point advantage over Democratic congressional candidates, 49 to 45 — but the numbers should give cause for alarm. In addition to the GOP edge, the poll suggests that top Democratic issues, including abortion and gun control, have been superseded by economic worries, and that Biden’s improved, but still low approval ratings may be hurting his party down the ballot.

But if the poll should elicit concern among Democrats, it shouldn’t inspire dread. As polling expert Natalie Jackson pointed out, some of the results of the Times poll — particularly the shocking shift among independent women — could be a function of its limited sample size; a survey of 792 voters, an even smaller number of whom are independent-identifying women, could see some sizable swings.

When Roe v Wade was overruled yesterday on the heels of a major 2nd amendment decision, the message was sent loud and clear:

Your child/children must come into this world regardless of the circumstances, but no matter the circumstances, they will not demand these children are afforded the right to exist without worrying about being shot.

The right to carry guns with liberal, unbridled freedom, it seems, is more important than the basic tenants of ensuring a woman’s reproductive rights. School shootings will not stop anytime soon, but something that will is the ability to have safe and affordable opportunities, especially within minority and/or under-served communities. This is going to have a devastating effect on women who aren’t in the position to have a child but do not have any feasible or safe options to terminate.

This outcome is sadly not something that sprung out of nowhere, and not due to the ‘accidental’ leak a few weeks ago. With Trump’s election in 2016, the roots of this wretched plant began to grow and festered over the half-decade. It was often said that Roe v Wade was never in danger, that the risk level was impossible, that many of us were simply overreacting. And yet, here we are in 2022, facing something no citizens of any country frankly should be subjected to:

Your circumstances only matter if we legally demand it so. Because when vocal minorities, and in this case those who are anti-choice, are given the circumstances to allow their hateful and frankly myopic demands to become validated, thus the rights of those they seek to disenfranchise can be struck down, one vote at a time.

It’s certainly going to an uneasy path going forward, especially given that other important rulings are at risk due to a court of conservative, hypocritical old white men who prefer the ‘good old days,’ a vile woman who probably wishes the Handmaiden’s Tales was actually real, and one judge (Thomas) who has no qualms about his wife’s role in the insurrection. This includes contraception access and same-sex marriage and forthcoming rights, and perhaps interracial marriage, but Clarence Thomas would never allow the last one because that personally impacts him unlike ‘correcting the error’ of legal gay marriage.

Where the US goes from here is not certain, but one thing is - to counter those votes we lost, we must continue to punch our own and make our voices heard. Now more than ever, it is vital to vote in the midterms this fall to ensure we can continue the fight. Grassroots donations, volunteering, and protesting are all great actions we can take, but voting out those who wish to take our votes away will ensure we demand that those bigots no longer have the circumstances to take away our rights.