Members-Only Article
Republicans are falling over each other to tell us as clearly as they can that the reversal of Roe is a massive electoral liability. You have longtime “pro-life” diehards running towards TV cameras insisting the whole thing is totally no big deal. In fact, you’ll barely notice anything happened. Lots of states will still have abortion. Abortions will be so easy to get you’ll be getting abortions right and left. Or at least that seems to be what virtually every Republican senator is saying.
When there’s a strong current running through a wire, you really need to plug it into something. And fast. For the first time in 15 or 20 years I thought about pitching an opinion piece to one of the big papers to try to get the point in front of an even larger audience. Democrats really, really, really need to make this as concrete as possible — in electoral and policy terms — as quickly as possible.
Yesterday Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) lamented that the Roe bill didn’t pass but assured voters that “tomorrow we get up and we fight again. And in November, we take that fight to the ballot box.” But this illustrates the problem. You cannot “take the fight right to the ballot box” without stating an outcome that can be won at the ballot box. To do that you need 50 senators not only to pass the bill but to change the filibuster rules to allow the vote to happen. Without that — not just the votes but clarity that that is the plan — it’s just chatter and, frankly, wasting everybody’s time. It amounts to, “You support Roe. We support Roe. Vote for us. It’s bound to lead to something good.”
It’s absurd. And it’s good not to be absurd.
In this political environment the challenge of expanding the Senate majority is immense but the strategy is straightforward. Find out the number of current votes for the Roe bill and the filibuster. Is it 49? 48? 47? That tells you how many pick ups you need. And then you run on that number and that commitment. The number is probably two to get to 50. But you need to find out. Even that difference — that ambiguity about the difference — between two and three is toxic and enervating.
A concrete number is clear and it makes the stakes clear in every race in the country. Give us the House and two more Senate seats and we will pass the Roe bill in January 2023. Not a test vote. Not a symbolic vote. We’ll actually pass the bill in the first week. The President will sign it right away. Saying we won’t stop fighting, ballot box, yada yada. That’s all talk. Numbers talk and bullshit walks. If you’re not getting your ducks in a row in advance about bringing majority rule back to the Senate people won’t think you’re serious. Because you’re probably not.
