In the days and now weeks after the midterms, political pundits and mainstream media outlets have been looking to offer why it is that the Republicans performed less than hoped for or expected. There's hot takes on COVID-19 and the supposed threats to democracy, but a particularly complex issue and its effect on the midterm elections has been abortion.
Last Tuesday, Marianne Levine and Holly Otterbein put forth a piece boldly claiming "Dems won the midterms on Roe. Congress is another story."
The focus of their piece is Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), who, despite being consistently considered one of the most vulnerable incumbents, if not the most vulnerable, won reelection against Republican opponent Adam Laxalt. The race was called several days after the election, and along with Cortez Masto's projected win, it was also projected that Democrats would maintain control of the Senate.
As Levine and Otterbein begin their piece by writing:
While other Democrats second-guessed their abortion-focused message in the waning days of the midterms, Catherine Cortez Masto bet big on it and won. Whether that vindication energizes her party on the issue is another matter.
The Nevada senator’s victory over Adam Laxalt handed her party another critical two years in the majority, of course. And Democrats see it as proof that it was a winning strategy to turn the reversal of Roe v. Wade into a campaign-defining theme, seeking to paint Republicans as extreme while the GOP focused on inflation and crime.
With over 99 percent of the vote in, it appears that Masto will have won by 48.93 percent to Laxalt's 47.94 percent, less than 1 percent. Given such a narrow and disappointing loss, it's hard to pin it on one issue. There's also no mention of how close the race was in Levine and Otterbein's piece.
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That being said, Cortez Masto is particularly fierce in her pro-abortion views, perhaps most memorably and recently emphasized by a tweet in which she advocated for legislation that seeks to fine pro-life pregnancy centers out of existence.
Crisis pregnancy centers consistently mislead vulnerable women about the health care services they provide. I joined my colleagues in cosponsoring the Stop Anti-Abortion Disinformation Act to crack down on false advertising about abortion services by these fake clinics.
— Senator Cortez Masto (@SenCortezMasto) September 9, 2022
The senator is also cited in the article, as well as the importance of the issue to Nevada voters, or lack thereof, with added emphasis:
Cortez Masto sees victory on abortion access differently, though, describing herself and the majority she preserved as a firewall against further GOP attempts to chip away at abortion access: “By re-electing me, we’ve just now created a backstop in the Senate from the Republicans trying to put a federal abortion ban ... on the floor of the Senate,” she said in an interview.
It was hardly a given that the issue would be at the forefront in Nevada, where abortion access was already enshrined in state law. But Cortez Masto said voters in Nevada were “outraged” by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe, “concerned that it was one step away from a federal abortion ban being introduced by far-right Republicans that would supersede or preempt our state law.”
As emphasized above, Nevada already enshrines the so-called right to abortion in state law. Cortez Masto is not only rabidly pro-abortion, she engages in fear-mongering to gin up the base, unnecessarily so. Further, the "federal abortion ban" referenced that was introduced by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in September applies to abortions at 15-weeks or later, with exceptions, based on when unborn children can feel pain.
It's also worth mentioning that polls conducted before the election showed that it was a distant second to economic issues like inflation.
It's not until further down that the piece acknowledges that abortion was not the top issue in Nevada:
The Supreme Court’s Roe reversal proved to be perhaps the biggest wild card in the midterm elections, injecting an unpredictable dynamic into a national midterm environment that typically penalizes the party in power. According to the National Election Pool exit polls, conducted by Edison Research in key swing states, voters often ranked abortion below inflation.
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The GOP super PAC Senate Leadership Fund, which is closely aligned with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, found in its internal polling in Senate races that the court decision moved Democratic voters’ enthusiasm to the same level or above GOP enthusiasm. That same polling also showed that swing voters saw economic issues as a higher priority.
But Democrats working on Senate races also saw evidence that the end of the national right to an abortion motivated some swing voters to an extent that was comparable to their base.
When it comes to exit polls, though, it is worth pointing out that many show Democratic voters prioritizing abortion over inflation. In the particular race between Cortez Masto and Laxalt, a CNN exit poll found that the abortion issue was the most important issue for only 9 percent of Laxalt voters, but was the most important issue for those who voted for Cortez Masto, at 89 percent.
The piece joins in on the pro-abortion hysteria by not only quoting Cortez Masto, but Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who has introduced that legislation to fine pregnancy centers out of existence, as well as Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN). Retiring Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), who will be replaced by Democratic Senator-elect John Fetterman, is also quoted, when it comes to how "Republicans and conservative groups are now second-guessing their own party’s post-Roe strategy on abortion," as Levine and Otterbein describe it.
Marilyn Musgrave of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America is quoted as well, in that "Republicans were talking about inflation and crime and not really fighting back" when it comes to Democrats' fear-mongering and often hysterical points on abortion.
SBA Pro-Life America conducted a post-midterms press briefing call on the morning after the election, in which the group's president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, as well as political strategist Frank Cannon, went into great detail when it comes to how Republican leadership failed. That failure stems from not addressing abortion enough. Those who did, won big, including Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who won reelection by nearly 20 points and 17 points, respectively.
And, as Matt highlighted, Catherine Glenn Foster, the CEO of Americans United for Life, wrote an op-ed for the American Conservative, also making that point. Such a point is not given the time of day in Levine and Otterbein's piece for POLITICO, though.
POLITICO doubled down on the abortion issue even more so in an even more recent piece, this one for their magazine, with Seth Masket making the claim that "Republicans Paid a Price for Overturning Roe. It May Have Been Worth It."
It's not until the third to last paragraph that Masket acknowledges other factors could have been in play. And it's not until the last paragraph that he acknowledges that while the majority won't be as big as was hoped for or expected, Republicans will indeed still control the House come the next Congress.
Masket also fails to fully explain a point he makes earlier in his piece, when writing that the "idea that overturning Roe would fuel a backlash shouldn’t have been a surprise; polls had shown that to be an unpopular position for decades." It's worth pointing out that while polls did and do consistently show that overturning Roe was unpopular, it was also due to a lack of understanding about the issue and what overturning the decision would entail. Abortion is now an issue for state and federal legislatures to decide, which voters do agree with, rather than unelected judges.
On a final note, it's worth offering that where abortion did play a role, it was due to Democratic fear-mongering and hysteria. While Republicans overall could have better seized and responded to such dramatic claims from their opponents, it's not as if the mainstream media played and continues to play a role.
