Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons, a novel and a memoir. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.
Protests across the country, throngs of activists at state capitals, and a Supreme Court cordoned off by high fencing have created a new political landscape that Democrats must carefully traverse. The historic leak of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s initial draft opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade has returned abortion rights to the front of the political landscape.
Despite narrow Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, President Joe Biden acknowledged that his party did not have enough votes to codify Roe v. Wade in law. On the campaign trail in 2019, Biden promised to turn Roe into law, and women's rights activists and Democratic voters have been calling on him to fulfill his promise.
Many Democratic voters have expressed disappointment with the Democratic Party and the Biden Administration’s difficulty in keeping the party line. Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have routinely held up Democratic legislation and said they will not change filibuster rules, a necessity if the Democrats were to try to pass legislation that would codify abortion rights on the federal level. Biden’s approval ratings have hovered around 42 percent, a level roughly equal to President Trump at the same time in his first term.
However, many Democrats view the anger in the streets as a potential boost for their party.
“Republicans are going to be in a very tough place right now. They have to defend something that Republicans said would never happen,” said Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico.
For midterm elections, the biggest worry for Democrats is voter turnout. A key demographic for Democratic success is younger voters, a group particularly keen to protect abortion rights. In recent weeks, Democratic strategists and pollsters have openly worried about President Biden’s and the party’s decreasing support among young voters.
According to the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist National poll, Biden’s approval rating among young people dropped by a dramatic 16 points down to 37 percent, the lowest of any age group. Contributing factors include economic conditions and slow movement on the President’s promise to forgive student loan debt.
At protests across the country, young people feature prominently in the fight to protect abortion rights. The general anger toward the Supreme Court and political system is broad, with the Democrats not escaping unscathed.
Without a drastic departure from the Biden Administration and Democratic leadership’s previous political strategy, the Democrats have limited options to counter the power of the Supreme. In part for that reason, many voters have expressed their anger at the Democratic Party’s lack of action.
The Democratic Party’s strategy seems to be doubling down on the 2020 electoral strategy, focusing on the danger posed by their right-wing opponents.
In response to the leaked Supreme Court opinion, President Biden said, “if the rationale of the decision as released were to be sustained, a whole range of rights are in question. And the idea that we're letting the states make those decisions would be a fundamental shift in what we've done.”
Alito’s draft opinion makes reference to other rights, including same-sex marriage, leading to worries that conservative judges would target such issues. Said Biden, "a lot more than abortion" is at stake in future elections.
But this could be a risky strategy considering that many young voters and activists are demanding action now.
For the Democrats, the midterms will come down to how well they turn out their voters. The most recent attack on abortion rights will either catalyze youth turnout or reinforce the opinion of more apathetic voters.
Joe Biden won the White House, we are reminded almost daily, on his third try, having run unsuccessfully in both 1988 and 2008.
It's funny; I can't recall, having covered the 1980 presidential race, much ever being made of the fact that that year's winner, Republican Ronald Reagan, also won on his third White House run.
The Gipper had mounted a doomed, too-late challenge to Richard M. Nixon in 1968 and then challenged fellow Republican President Gerald R. Ford in the 1976 primaries all the way to the Kansas City, Missouri, convention (where, when defeated, he made a gracious, off-the-cuff concession speech to the convention and undoubtedly helped himself for 1980).
Joe Biden, who will be 78, our oldest president ever elected, was elected by the nation's youngest voters. According to two national surveys of 1,600 actual voters conducted on Nov. 3 by the respected Republican polling firm, Public Opinion Strategies, Biden won voters between the ages of 18 and 29 (18 percent of the electorate) by 65 percent to 23 percent and voters between the ages of 30 and 44 (22 percent of the electorate) by 53 percent to 38 percent. But the older voters between the ages of 45 and 59 preferred the younger Donald Trump, 74, over Biden by 54 percent to 43 percent.
Peter D. Hart, the dean of public opinion and co-founder of the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, found that 9 percent of 2020 voters were going to the polls for the first time, and they voted for Joe Biden over Donald Trump by 57 percent to 40 percent. In such a close race, those newcomers made a difference, especially in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Political junkies (in whose ranks I can be found) are always looking for the bellwether county that, in every election, votes for the winning candidate. Going into Nov. 3, there were 19 counties in 11 states that have voted for the winning presidential candidate in every election since 1980. Now, according to Hart, there is only one that has voted for the winner in the last 10 presidential contests: Clallam County in Washington state, in the shadow of the Olympic Mountains. The other 18 "bellwether" counties all voted for Trump.
Former George W. Bush political adviser, Karl Rove, gets credit for reminding us of how highly unlikely it is that a recount overturns the Election Day results. He points out that there have been a grand total of three statewide contests in the last half-century when recounts changed the initial outcome. They were the 1974 U.S. Senate race in New Hampshire, the 2004 gubernatorial race in the state of Washington and the 2008 U.S. Senate race in Minnesota. Here's the kicker: The margins in those statewide races were, respectively, 355, 261 and 215 votes after Election Day.
I dislike repeating gossip, but what else are you going to do with it? A melancholy and plaintive Donald Trump, upset by the huge and spontaneous celebration outside the White House when Joe Biden's victory was announced, "reportedly" asked, "Why do people take such an instant dislike to me?" only to be answered candidly by a soon-to-be former White House staffer, "Because, Mr. President, it saves them time."
To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons and one novel. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.
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