From TPM Reader AB …
Been reading these and thought I would throw in mine, even though in an ideal world we would mandate a cooldown period where everyone had to hold off a week for any takes. So many of them seem to be either people lashing out because they’re upset and terrified or score settling for their particular hobbyhorse that they would be advocating for regardless of what the outcome had been. It’s going to take another beat before we can find any constructive path forward.
As someone who has worked on abortion for a long time, I don’t think it’s fair to say that it doesn’t have electoral salience for Democrats. While abortion was on the ballot in a lot of states, it wasn’t actually a large part of many federal campaign’s messaging. There seems to have been an assumption that it would be self-evident, but that’s just not true, particularly because of the confusing way it happened through the courts and technically under Biden. And a lot of Republican candidates flat out lied or fundamentally misrepresented their position on abortion in ways the media didn’t pick up. I’m sure a lot of the people who voted for both abortion referenda and Trump genuinely thought they were picking a pro-choice candidate.
Biden also bears a lot of the blame for this. His preferred policy position clearly would be something like a 6 or 12 week ban, and he was never able to muster believable outrage about Dobbs. There was no national level effort to keep it in the news after the initial shock wore off and keep channelling the anger people were feeling. We could have had him visiting the families of women who died after being denied abortions, setting up federal clinics in states that are denying access to misoprostol. Instead we got some messaging bills in the senate that no one who didn’t watch c-span was going to hear about.
One of the biggest takes seems to be that “democrats have lost touch with the working class.” And to the extent that means wanting democrats to aggressively pursue an economic agenda that results in immediate, tangible gains for working people rather than focusing on national economic indicators like the stock market, I agree. But as a queer woman, I can’t escape the sinking sense that this is just code for affirmatively throwing women, queer, and trans people under the bus. You’ll never successfully out-bigot the republicans, and it hurts like hell when people who are supposed to be on the same side as me try to.
And lastly, I do agree with the people saying housing costs are a real underlying issue within the bucket of inflation. It’s one that you’re not going to feel unless (unlike most candidates and strategists) you have tried to move in the last four years, but as younger voters enter the pool, that group of people gets larger and larger. And the brake the fed is using to slow overall inflation, raising rates, just spikes the cost of buying a house further. We’re in our mid thirties and most of our friends don’t own a home. Of the ones that do, almost all had significant help from their parents. It’s not great!
I can’t even think of what the next four or even twenty years will hold. I spent an hour yesterday crying while googling estate attorneys, because I can no longer count on my marriage to my wife remaining legal. But I’m trying to hold on to what I hope we can get to in forty.
