The Midterms: A Fight for Abortion A Vote Against Biden?
Image courtesy of Politico
By John Maggio
In the past 70 years, there have only been two times where the party in the White House has been able to gain seats in the House of Representatives during the midterms: 1998 under Bill Clinton and 2002 under George W. Bush. Each had their historically significant reasons, with Clinton undergoing an impeachment trial and Bush dealing with the aftermath from the events of September 11th, 2001.
The midterms are often used as a referendum against the party in the White House, where the party out of power claims any and all issues facing the nation are the fault of the president’s administration. If history is to be repeated, one could predict that the Democrats are going to lose seats in the House. Some predict that they will lose their majority to the Republicans, a possibility that some see happening to the balanced Senate as well. If Congress were to be led by a Republican majority after the election on November 8, this would be the first midterm since 2014 where both the House and Senate have a majority. If this is the case historically, why are Democrats surprisingly optimistic?
For most of the Biden administration, the President has been at odds with his approval rating. FiveThirtyEight reports that the first time a plurality of Americans felt disapproved of Biden was on August 30th, 2021 – the last day of the American retreat out of Afghanistan. Since then, the United States has seen a 40 year high in inflation, increased gas and food prices, more COVID-19 deaths than in 2020, a rise in illegal immigration, a recession, and a war in Europe, just to name a few.
Certainly, one may say that all of these are not entirely the fault of the President, yet the GOP strategy this midterm is drawing a line in the sand: those who approve of what the Biden administration has done so far should vote Democrat and those opposed vote Republican. This is not a new trick or exclusively a right-wing tactic, it is commonplace during midterms by both parties over modern history.
There is a momentum shift that has given the Democrats some optimism and a chance to not only hold a majority in both congressional bodies, but to even gain seats in either the House, Senate, or both. This change in momentum even has a date: June 24th, 2022. This was the day that the Supreme Court ruled on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overruled the previous cases of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. This made abortion no longer federally protected and would be up to the individual states to decide on the legality and restrictions of abortion in their respective borders. When Gallup reports that over 80% of the American population supports abortion, some may see this overturn as minority and religious opinion onto the masses.
At a time in America where NBC finds a majority of Democrats do not want Biden to run in 2024, this is a major change to the status quo to what many see as a constitutional right. This change may be the rallying cry for many who typically wouldn’t have likely voted during the midterms, a vote the Democrats are hoping will be a blue wave with the promise of protecting abortion federally.
With Speaker Pelosi saying that the goal of the GOP is to have a federal abortion ban and that they “cannot be allowed to have [a] majority in the Congress to do that”, along many Democrat midterm ads being about abortion, it seems as if the DNC has turned this to a vote on abortion.
The GOP, who many experts thought would take control of Congress after the election, are losing momentum fast. Republicans are trying to pivot the public back onto less social issues and more attacks onto the Biden administration and their perceived failures. These range from rising costs for Americans in the grocery store and gas station, a fatal retreat out of Afghanistan, and sending billions of taxpayer dollars to Ukraine while facing a recession at home, just to name a few.
Whether the Democrats are successful in shifting the midterms onto a debate on one issue or if this election will be about the multitude of issues facing this country, we will see on November 8th.
There is another issue that the electorate considers of greatest importance, that is, the preservation of democracy, now believed to be imperiled by the growing fascistic impulses of maga republicans led by their erratic demagogue, who has helped position a bevy of unqualified sycophants to races that should have been easy wins for Republicans. Their extremist positions are setting up the Democratic momentum. With gas prices rapidly going down, Ukraine holding off Russian aggression, NATO Alliance holding firm, US facing global inflation at far less cost than other industrialized countries, covid under control despite volumes of anti vax disinformation, an impressive legislative record, and record breaking employment rates, Biden has an impressive two years of accomplishment. Nationally, the politicized SCOTUS is not trusted by the majority of Americans. That distrust can only be effectively activated at the ballot box.