1). “Abortion, Every Day (4.9.24): Arizona, Florida & 2024”, Apr 09, 2024, Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day, at < https://jessica.substack.com/
2). “Breaking: Arizona to Enforce 1864 Ban: The state Supreme Court ruled in favor of a total abortion ban”, Apr 09, 2024, Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day, at <https://jessica.substack.com/p/breaking-arizona-to-enforce-1864 >.
3). “How Florida and Arizona Supreme Court rulings change the abortion access map”, Apr 11, 2024, Selena Simmons-Duffin & Hilary Fung, Morning Edition (NPR), at < https://www.npr.org/sections/
5). “Hit 'Em Where It Hurts - How to Save Democracy by Beating Republicans at Their Own Game: Political strategist Rachel Bitecofer offered her thoughts on how the Democrats can win over American voters and beat Republicans in 2024”, Feb 16, 2024, Alyssa Martinez interviews Rachel Bitecofer, C-Span Book TV, at < https://www.c-span.org/video/?
6). “Arizona’s ban spotlights the fraudulence of Trump’s “moderation” on abortion:To see what a second Trump administration would mean for reproductive rights, look to Arizona’s abortion ban, not Trump’s cheap words”, originally published on April 8, 2024 updated April 9, 2024, Eric Levitz, Vox, at < https://www.vox.com/politics/
7). “Are young voters really embracing Donald Trump?: Plenty of data suggests Trump is making surprising gains with young Americans. The debate, explained”, April 10, 2024, Christian Paz, Vox, at < https://www.vox.com/2024-
8). STOP THE COUP 2025! STOP PROJECT 2025!: A public education and mobilization campaign to counter Project 2025, the conservative movement’s blueprint attack on our democracy. January 6 was just their rehearsal, Includes numerous links to material about the Project 2025 initiatives emanating from the far-right at < https://www.stopthecoup2025.
9). How Project 2025 Will Ruin YOUR Life, Current website, Andra Watkins, Includes numerous links to material about the Project 2025, at < https://
Introduction by dmorista: In the past week there have been some significant developments in the ongoing struggle over Reproductive Healthcare and Abortion Rights. The outstanding advocate for Women's Healthcare Rights, Jessica Valenti, posted articles about the recent state supreme court rulings, made by reactionary majorities on the two State Supreme Courts, in Florida and Arizona. In Item 1)., “Abortion, Every Day (4.9.24): ….”, she takes on the situation in those two states along with other issues from around the U.S. In Item 2)., “Breaking: Arizona to Enforce ….”, She focuses on the most recent decision from Arizona that will impose the most draconian ban in the entire nation, based on an 1864 state law. The other major development was the 4 minute video released by Trump in which he tries to distance himself from the horrors of harsh absolutist abortion bans and their negative political consequences. Valenti discussses her take on this situation in “Trump's Abortion Announcement: It doesn't mean shit”, Apr 08, 2024, Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day, at < https://jessica.substack.com/
The effects of the latest changes in abortion access are due to rulings by extremist far-right controlled State Supreme Courts in Florida and Arizona. Both Courts have reactionary ruling majorities of their justices, who were appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida and Governor Doug Ducey in Arizona, both right-wing Republican Governors. In both states the Governor appoints the State Supreme Court Justices from a list, compiled by commissions composed entirely (in Florida) or largely (in Arizona) of members appointed by the Governor Him(Her)self. The Justices are appointed by the Governor, then after an initial term on the Supreme Court Bench (at least 1 year in Florida and 2 years in Arizona) the Justices must win a yes-no election (without any opponent just up or down) to serve a 6 year term. At least some of these reactionary members of these two State Supreme Courts will appear in yes-no elections in the November 5, 2024 general election. (For a complete discussion of the complicated details of these two State Supreme Court situations: See, “Judicial selection in Florida”, Ballotopedia, at < https://ballotpedia.org/
“ …. Caitlin Myers, an economics professor at Middlebury College in Vermont, (who) has been tracking abortion facilities and travel distances since 2009. She analyzed how these latest rulings will affect the access map.
" 'Because of these bans, it's about 6 million women of reproductive age who are experiencing an increase in distance of more than 200 miles,' she says.”
We should note that the actual travel distances women living in the South and in Arizona will now face are actually far in excess of the 200+ miles shown on the legend in Maps 1 – 3 here below.
Myers: “ …. points out that Floridians who are seeking abortions after six weeks will have to travel nearly 600 miles to North Carolina, which has a 72-hour waiting period. 'So we're talking about a day's drive to a state that requires you to engage in this multi-day process,' Myers says. 'A lot of people might end up going several hundred miles further to Virginia.'
“For people in Arizona, after the 1864 law takes effect, 'their nearest destinations are pretty long drives. They're going to be facing hundreds of miles to reach southern California, New Mexico, Colorado,' Myers says. 'I think Arizona spillover is likely to affect California in a way that California hasn't yet been affected by bans.' "
Florida is nearly 500 miles long, so women from far South Florida would need to drive 1,100 miles to North Carolina, and “several hundred miles further to Virginia.”
As Myers noted that California will likely affect California in a way that it has not yet been affected by Abortion Bans in Republican controlled states, Florida clinics have been providing about 80,000 abortions per year. There is no place, nor any combination of places, in the Eastern U.S. that has medical facilities that are remotely close to the ability to provide 80,000 more abortions per year.
The somewhat surprising weakness of Biden and the Democratic Party's candidates in general is taken in the transcript of an interview of Rachel Bitecofer in Item 4)., “Rachel Bitecofer's tough-love lesson ….”, as well as in a youtube from C-Span in Item 5)., “Hit 'Em Where It Hurts ….”, the same basic material is covered in both items. In Item 5). Bitecofer states that 90% of the U.S. Electorate are both totally ignorant about the issues and where the two parties stand. They are not particularly interested and they do not listen to policy arguments. Their political allegiances are formed by simplistic, direct, and frequently repeated memes on whatever media platforms they visit. The Republican have been much better at filling all types of media with just that sort of material. Her argument is that the Democrats need to learn from the Republican success at this sort of political propaganda and publicity operations. The Progressive forces have an inbuilt advantage as they are at least marginally more interested in improving the lives of the common people. So far in elections where the Democratic Party's candidates have used Abortion rights to mobilize and motivate their voting base those candidates have enjoyed an 8 percentage point advantage in the number of ballots cast for them, as opposed to forced-birth Republican Candidates. This is not automatic, but using Bitecofer's proposed methods is readilty obtainable in many places, including in Red States. An 8 point swing in total ballots cast is huge and would be the margin of victory in many races, of course, that is only true if the votes are counted honestly.
Item 6)., “Arizona’s ban spotlights ….”, discusses the totally dishonest and fraudulent nature of Trump's recent public statement of his position on abortion rights. The author Eric Levitz, contrasts the empty statements Trump recently uttered with the actual policies his Supreme Court Appointees unleased on the U.S. with the Dobbs Decision. The Arizona State Legislature, that is under the control of Republicans (Senate 16R & 14D, House 31R & 28D), on Wednesday April 11th, 2024, turned back an attempt by Democratic Party members to stop the 1864 total Abortion Ban Law from taking effect. Arizona has Democratic Party members in the Governorship, the Attorney General's office, the Secretary of State, and as Mayor of Phoenix. The Arizona State Attorney General announced months ago that she would not prosecute anybody for providing or obtaining abortions. This change in the state-level laws will allow local District Attorneys (some of whom are in fact Republican Reactionaries) to prosecute abortions, an ability they did not have before this latest Arizona State Supreme Court ruling. Item 7)., “Are young voters really ….”, looks at the rise in support for Trump, according to recent polling. We would have to assume that many young people who are moving towards supporting Trump are mostly from Bitecofer's 90% who are very much low-information voters.
Finally Item 8)., “STOP THE COUP 2025! ….” and Item 9)., “How Project 2025 Will ….” both are both websites that provide large numbers of links to articles and other types of posts that discuss the danger and agenda of the Project 2025 initiative. This sort of information needs to be distributed widely among young computer literate potential voters. The generally short articles and twitter type posts directly address issues pertinent to young Americans.
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Abortion, Every Day (4.9.24)
2024
If you missed Donald Trump’s abortion ‘announcement’ yesterday, the short version is that he’s trying to wash his hands of the issue by saying abortion should be up to the states. He knows abortion is a loser for the GOP—and if there’s anything Trump hates, it’s losing.
Conservative Language Watch
As Florida voters get closer to weighing in on a pro-choice ballot measure, a new talking point is making the rounds: talking about the definition of ‘healthcare provider’ in the proposed amendment.
Now, this is something several justices on the Florida Supreme Court flagged in their ruling last week. They wrote, “‘health’ and ‘healthcare provider’ have obviously broad and undefined boundaries which are seemingly unlimited without the benefit of a technical, legal analysis.”
Anti-abortion lawmakers and activists clearly got the memo, and are running with it. House Speaker Paul Renner, for example, said in an interview that ‘healthcare provider’ isn’t properly defined in the ballot measure:
“Is that a receptionist at the abortion clinic? Is that a tattoo artist? It doesn't say. It's certainly not a physician, as other amendments in other states have provided. So you're not even talking to a doctor to make that determination on what could be something that's risky to the mother at a late stage in pregnancy.”
Mat Staver, founder of the conservative legal organization/hate group Liberty Counsel, said something virtually identical this week:
“What the amendment’s ballot summary doesn’t say is that the term ‘health care provider,’ the person who could prescribe a post-viability abortion for ‘health’ reasons, includes nearly 60 professions, including tattoo artists and massage therapists.”
So I guess we know what anti-choice campaign ads are going to look like in Florida: Images of a huge, scary tattoo artist and a voice over that says, “This is who will be able to give your child an abortion under Amendment 4.” I’m calling it right now.
In the Nation
Senate Republican campaign chief Steve Daines spoke to the conservative publication the National Review about Trump’s abortion announcement, and how he wants to convince GOP candidates to “follow Trump’s lead” in stating their abortion positions outright. “It’s important that voters know where the candidates stand, and to not run away from the issue,” Daines said. (I’d argue that Trump’s announcement was actually very much running away from the issue, but sure.)
The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) has had their work cut out for them recently, as candidates struggle to come with an abortion message that resonates with voters—many of whom are furious over abortion bans.
Daines says that Republican candidates have to “paint the contrast between placing reasonable limits on late-term abortions with exceptions for rape, incest, and life and the mother” and Democrats’ supposedly-extremist ‘abortion til birth’ position. That advice isn’t a surprise, but it also hasn’t worked. American’st aren’t buying it.
Vox has a good explainer up today about the new abortion case headed to the Supreme Court. Moyle v. the United States has to do with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires hospitals to give life-saving and stabilizing emergency care, including abortions. The short version is that Republicans don’t want the federal government forcing them to save women’s lives with abortions, the longer legal version is a bit more complicated.
Finally, SBA president Marjorie Dannenfelser is doing the rounds on conservative media talking about why she’s disappointed with Trump’s abortion stance. She told Fox News this week, “where you live shouldn’t determine whether you live,” which really could be a pro-choice mantra considering the nightmare stories coming out of states with abortion bans.
Quick hits:
Ms. magazine looks at the Republican AGs attacking abortion rights;
ELLE magazine asks whether abortion is a national security issue;
The Grio on abortion criminalization;
And The Conversation on how fetal personhood laws could could nullify a pregnant patient’s wishes for end-of-life care.
Abortion, Every Day can’t publish without the support of readers like you! If you appreciate all the work that goes into these daily reports, please consider upgrading your subscription today:
Ballot Measure Updates
It looks like Montana’s Secretary of State finally adhered to the state Supreme Court’s order to allow a pro-choice measure to move forward. That means abortion rights advocates in the state will be able to start collecting signatures for their proposed amendment.
The coalition behind the amendment, Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights, says, “Montana voters deserve to make their voices heard on this critical issue, and today marks an important step in moving forward.”
As has been the case pretty much anywhere there’s been a pro-choice measure, Republicans in Montana have been trying to delay or stop the amendment from getting anywhere near voters. And while abortion is legal in Montana—and protected in the state constitution—Republicans in the state have been working overtime to strip away access any way they can. So pro-choice activists are hoping an extra lawyer of protection will help stave off any substantive restrictions.
Lawsuits continue on in Ohio to repeal the state’s abortion ban and restrictions. In the wake of Issue 1, which enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution, pro-choice groups are working to make sure that Ohio’s legislation adheres to the new amendment.
That hasn’t stopped Republicans from trying to pass restrictions regardless—like this bill that would punish local governments that support abortion directly or indirectly, “including travel and donations to entities that support, promote, or provide abortion.” (They’re always trying to find ways to target abortion funds!) Any money that’s diverted from local governments would go to crisis pregnancy centers.
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NB note - apologies but I was unable to format the following article to fit into the Blogger template.
Breaking: Arizona to Enforce 1864 Ban
The state Supreme Court ruled in favor of a total abortion ban
I was really, really hoping it wouldn’t go down this way.
The Arizona Supreme Court ruled today that a 160-year-old total abortion ban is enforceable. Justice John R. Lopez IV wrote in the ruling, “in light of this Opinion, physicians are now on notice that all abortions, except those necessary to save a woman’s life, are illegal.” The law will go into effect in 45 days.
That means you can still access abortion in Arizona up to 15 weeks until that date. To donate to abortion funds in Arizona, click here.
Gov. Katie Hobbs responded to the ruling by calling it a “dark day for Arizona.” Arizona’s Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes called the decision an “unconscionable and an affront to freedom,” and said that she would not prosecute any doctors or women under the ban:
“Today’s decision to reimpose a law from a time when Arizona wasn’t a state, the civil war was raging, and women couldn’t even vote will go down in history as a stain on our state.”
You may remember that last year, Gov. Hobbs granted Mayes with the authority to prosecute abortion cases, taking that ability away from district attorneys. It was essentially a way to ensure that no one was prosecuted for abortion ‘crimes’. When furious Republicans called on Gov. Hobbs to rescind the order, she refused, saying, “I will continue to use my legal authority to protect Arizonans from extremists who want to prosecute women and doctors for their healthcare decisions.”
Now that the total abortion ban will go into effect, however, that order—and Mayes’ ability to handle all abortion cases—may be challenged by a local prosecutor. So I’ll be curious to see what happens when the ban is enacted: will doctors adhere to the law, or will they keep providing care, knowing that the AG has promised to protect them legally?
The ruling in Arizona also mirrors what’s happening in Florida—where a state Supreme Court decision allowing a 6-week ban to take effect could be repealed by a pro-choice ballot measure heading to voters. An abortion rights amendment might be in front of Arizona voters this November, as well.
Arizona for Abortion Access, a coalition of reproductive rights groups, says they’ve collected enough signatures to get their measure on the ballot. (They’ve gathered more than 500,000 signatures—over 120k more signatures than they need, with months to go before their July 3 deadline.) The proposed amendment would protect abortion rights in the state constitution up until fetal ‘viability’, after which someone could end a pregnancy if their life, physical or mental health was endangered.
You can be sure that the Arizona ruling will have an impact on 2024—from the presidential race to the U.S. Senate race, where failed Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is running. Lake supported the 1864 ban during that run, calling it a “great law.” Now—after seeing the pro-choice writing on the wall—she says that she opposes the ban.
The ruling will also hurt Donald Trump, who is trying to wash his hands of the abortion issue by claiming he believes it should be left to the states. President Joe Bide has already released a statement, calling the ruling “a result of the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom.” You can be sure that as they did with Florida, the Biden-Harris re-election campaign will tie this decision to Trump’s role in overturning Roe.
As I noted when news of the Florida ruling broke, though, as ‘good’ as this is for 2024 races, it’s vital that the political angle not overtake the real human cost of the ban. People are going to suffer badly because of this ruling—and not just in Arizona. Providers have been helping abortion patients from anti-choice states like Texas; that means this decision will be incredibly damaging to millions.
Related: The Guardian points out something interesting/distressing about the language of the 1864 ban: it says that it’s illegal to help “procure the miscarriage” of a pregnant woman. We know that zealous anti-abortion activists and prosecutors want to target those who ‘aid and abet’ abortions, so I’m worried about what that language could mean.
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How Florida and Arizona Supreme Court rulings change the abortion access map
In a few weeks, Florida and Arizona are set to join most states in the southern U.S. in banning abortion. It's a significant shake up to the abortion legal landscape, and data shared exclusively with NPR maps and quantifies what the changes will mean for millions of Americans.
On Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court cleared the way for an 1864 law to be enforced. That law completely bans abortion except when someone's life is in danger. Last week, the Florida Supreme Court made its decision to allow a ban on abortions after six weeks gestation to take effect on May 1.
Caitlin Myers, an economics professor at Middlebury College in Vermont, has been tracking abortion facilities and travel distances since 2009. She analyzed how these latest rulings will affect the access map.
"Because of these bans, it's about 6 million women of reproductive age who are experiencing an increase in distance of more than 200 miles," she says.
She points out that Floridians who are seeking abortions after six weeks will have to travel nearly 600 miles to North Carolina, which has a 72-hour waiting period. "So we're talking about a day's drive to a state that requires you to engage in this multi-day process," Myers says. "A lot of people might end up going several hundred miles further to Virginia."
For people in Arizona, after the 1864 law takes effect, "their nearest destinations are pretty long drives. They're going to be facing hundreds of miles to reach southern California, New Mexico, Colorado," Myers says. "I think Arizona spillover is likely to affect California in a way that California hasn't yet been affected by bans."
Myers helms the Myers Abortion Facility Database. She has gathered data about facilities – including clinics, doctors, and hospitals that publicly indicated that they provide abortions – going back more than a decade, using data licensure databases, directories, and Wayback Machine captures of websites from years past. She uses a team of undergraduate research assistants to periodically call facilities and make sure the information is up to date.
Numbers of abortions rise in Florida, decline in Arizona
Although Florida and Arizona have historically both been politically purple states and both have had 15-week abortion bans since 2022, the states have been on different trajectories when it comes to abortion and play very different roles in their regions.
There were about 12,000 abortions in Arizona in 2023, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights. Out-of-state travel accounted for 3% of abortions in the state, and the overall number of abortions has been declining there in recent years, Guttmacher finds.
By contrast, there were nearly 85,000 abortions in Florida in 2023, according to state data, just a few thousand fewer than Illinois, which has positioned itself as a haven for people seeking abortions in the post-Roe era. And the number of abortions happening in the state has been on the rise. "The majority of the increase has been driven by out-of-state travel into Florida because of bans in surrounding states," explains Isaac Maddow-Zimet, a Guttmacher data scientist. "That really speaks to the role that Florida has played in the region where there really aren't many other options."
The Alliance Defending Freedom, which brought the case in Arizona, frames those affected by the new laws in a different way. "We celebrate the Arizona Supreme Court's decision that allows the state's pro-life law to again protect the lives of countless, innocent unborn children," the organization wrote in a statement this week.
Even with new bans in place, there are a few ways residents of Florida and Arizona will be able to access abortion without driving hundreds of miles. People with means will be able to fly to states where abortion access is protected. Others will be able to use telehealth to connect with providers in those states and receive abortion medication in the mail – a practice that has been growing in popularity in recent months. Telehealth medication abortions, though, could be curtailed by a pending case before the U.S. Supreme Court. (A decision in that case is expected this summer.)
In Florida, some will be able to get abortions before the six-week gestational limit, which is about two weeks after a missed period. "Folks have a really narrow window in order to meet that gestational duration limit if they even know about their pregnancy in time," Maddow-Zimet of Guttmacher explains. "And that's something that's particularly difficult in Florida because Florida requires an in-person counseling visit 24 hours before the abortion."
'A substantial barrier'
Many thousands of people in Florida and Arizona will be unable to navigate those options and will carry their pregnancies instead, Myers says.
"It's easy to think – if an abortion is so important to somebody, they will find a way, they will figure it out," she says, but research on people seeking abortions illustrates why that's not always possible. "[Many] are low income. They're in very difficult life circumstances. They're experiencing disruptive life events like the loss of a job or breaking up with a partner or threatened eviction. Many of them are parenting and have difficulty obtaining child care." One large study showed about 80% of people seeking abortions had subprime credit scores.
"If you think about all that, it is perhaps not so surprising that the results of my research and other people's research shows very strongly and unequivocally that distance is a substantial barrier to people who are seeking abortions," Myers says.
Mary Ziegler, a law professor and historian of reproductive rights at the University of California - Davis, says it's worth noting how these states both came to have new bans. "The common denominator is conservative state supreme courts reaching decisions contrary to what voters would want, interestingly, in an election year when those judges are facing retention elections," she says.
Voters in Florida will have a chance to weigh in on abortion access in November, when an amendment to their state constitution will be on the ballot. An effort to put an abortion amendment on the ballot in Arizona is also underway. Abortions rights opponents in both states have pledged to fight the measures.
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Rachel Bitecofer's tough-love lesson for Democrats: Time to fight dirty
America’s future — as a multiracial democracy or an ethno-nationalist authoritarian state — is very much on the ballot this year, as a wide range of observers have noted. But you’d be hard-pressed to see that reality reflected in the mainstream media, much less from the mouths of the randomly-selected potential voters interviewed on the ground, the folks who will supposedly determine the outcome in November. It’s a dire situation that political scientist turned election strategist Rachel Bitecofer tackles head-on in her new book, "Hit 'Em Where It Hurts: How to Save Democracy by Beating Republicans at Their Own Game." She describes it as “a battle-tested self-help book for America’s fragile democracy.”
Back in 2019 I first noted Bitecofer’s acumen for election predictions, shown in her forecast of Democrats' big 2017 gains in the Virginia legislature and then her spot-on prediction of the 2018 blue wave, based on fundamental voter demographics and her perception of partisan polarization and negative partisanship, rather than following the polls. In 2021, I interviewed Bitecofer about her evolution from academic into brand messenger, as she put those methods to work in fighting to counter the expected "red tsunami" of 2022. The Supreme Court's Dobbs decision and its aftermath helped shift a substantial number of campaigns along the lines she predicted, as she lays out in the book, drawing on insights from decades of political science research.
Bitecofer's most basic point is simple: Democrats as a whole — despite their “reality-based” self-image — have been unable or unwilling “to accept that the American voter is, at best, rough clay,” and to work with it accordingly. On the other hand, she writes, “Republicans have long understood this and have built an electioneering system that shapes the electorate and meets voters where they actually are.” The point of "Hit 'Em Where It Hurts" is to convince Democrats to change their strategic approach while there’s still time to rescue democracy, and to focus relentlessly on the threat posed by Republicans in terms that hit voters where they are.
The good news is that some Democrats have already made that shift, while others are groping their way towards it. But to be effective, this needs to be comprehensive, bottom-to-top systemic change, Bitecofer believes, and that hasn't happened yet. She also discusses the effects of the right-wing media ecosystem, and the think-tank and donor infrastructures that underlie it, to paint a fuller picture of America's perilous political situation. But in fact, she argues, Democrats and their allies can turn the tide by focusing on low-hanging fruit — the things that are easiest to change. Salon interviewed her with a particular focus on those most immediate concerns and the 2024 election. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
In your introduction, you write about the 2022 midterms, how the Democrats beat the midterm effect and how they need to keep doing that to save democracy. But while Democrats won big in places like Michigan, they also lost key Senate races in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere. What's your explanation — first, for what worked?
In the book I lay out where the negative partisanship strategy was so effective in helping to thwart the Republican Party's red wave in 2022, and I walk through the places — Arizona and Michigan — where Democrats leaned heavily into negative partisanship, and defined their opponents as extremists. In the Arizona secretary of state race, in particular, Adrian Fontes ran on a "protect democracy from insurrectionists" theme — his opponent was an actual insurrectionist. In Michigan, it was about the repeal of Roe v. Wade. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, from day one, went into her election with the strategy of ‘Let’s make sure voters know Tudor Dixon is an extremist, especially on the issue of abortion." Being able to define the opponents was so critical.
And what didn't work?
We ran the old strategy in a lot of House races, and in the Senate races in Ohio, North Carolina and Florida. What is the old strategy? Persuasion on policy — find things people like, tell them you're going to give them that — and then appeal on your character, your biography, your qualifications for office.
Why do you call that "the old strategy"?
In the beginning of the book I lay that out. In 2004, Republicans did a pivot. That was the first time Republicans said, "Let's do persuasion differently." They realized they had an advantage on gay marriage. That may sound weird to your readers now, but when Republicans put up same-sex marriage bans to help re-elect George W. Bush, they passed in all 11 states. That even passed in Oregon.
So the heart of Bush's argument to swing voters wasn't, "Hey, vote for George Bush — he's a great guy, he's moderate, he's bipartisan!" It was, "Vote for George Bush — Democrats want to make marriage between gay people legal!" It was persuading swing voters not to vote for Democrats. They did the same thing with those John Kerry Swiftboat ads. They weren't about persuading voters about how great Bush was. They were about making sure they tarnished Kerry's brand, and persuaded swing voters away from him.
OK, that’s how it started. What then?
Over the years Republicans realized how valuable that was, but it really crystallized with [former RNC chair] Michael Steele's "Fire Pelosi" bus tour, and the entire 2010 congressional cycle on Obamacare. What I say in the book is that all politics is not local — that's quaint — it's national. And it became national with that "Fire Pelosi" strategy, where they defined the 2010 midterm as a referendum on Obama and Obamacare, aka, in their minds, government overreach. And it worked very well.
"The heart of George W. Bush's argument to swing voters wasn't, 'Hey, vote for George Bush — he's a great guy, he's moderate, he's bipartisan! It was, 'Vote for George Bush — Democrats want to make marriage between gay people legal!'"
The Republican Party in the decade previous had let 9/11 happen, invaded Iraq and gotten us in a total clusterf**k, and then blew up the economy in 2008. There was a fear within the Republican party in 2009 that they were going to be out in the wilderness electorally for maybe a couple of decades, like they were after they caused the Great Depression. Yet within a year, they were picking up 63 seats in the House of Representatives. That's the thing that started to make me think about election options. Because I remember thinking, "How could they blow up the economy, thinking they're out in the wilderness, and then suddenly start winning?" So I really started paying attention to voter behavior and strategy at that point.
So how does that relate to what happened in 2022?
Think about what happened in Ohio, North Carolina and Florida. Democrats ran the same strategy they've been running since 1990, where they tried to sell [Ohio candidate] Tim Ryan as a moderate: He's bipartisan! He's not one of those Democrats! I talk in the book about how absolutely devastating a frame that is, to go into a swing race. Because the opponent's argument is, "Don't vote for Tim Ryan. Tim Ryan is a Democrat and all Democrats are bad." And Tim Ryan's argument ends up affirming that allegation by saying, "Well, yeah, but I'm not one of those Democrats."
But political scientists like myself will tell you elections are almost completely determined by partisan preference, including for most independents. If you're not riding for the brand, if you're not selling your brand — Democrats good! — and pushing voters away from the other brand — Republicans bad! — you're going to lose. And that's why we see, in races where [Republican] extremists went up against bipartisan moderate Dems, they always win the swing vote. How can that be, if they're extremists? J.D. Vance is an extremist. There is no kinder word I could use — I could actually call him a fascist — and the Ohio electorate never, ever heard about it. Where people did not define the Republican Party as an extremist threat to people's health, wealth, freedom and safety, they all lost.
You write that "with democracy on its deathbed" one thing we can do is "start by picking the lowest-hanging fruit, which is improving Democratic messaging." You lay out seven steps, which I'd like to go through. Step 1 is "Ride for the brand," which you just referenced. What does that mean, and what do Democrats need to learn about doing it?
I don't have to know a damn thing about a voter — I don't know if it's a man, it's a woman, I don't know if they live in the South, the North, is old or young, is college-educated or not, doesn't matter. The only thing I need to know, to be right nine out of 10 times about who they're going to vote for, is do they have a party preference? And that includes leaners. We see that election after election. The voters walking into the ballot box, they don't need to know anything else about the candidate other than that party heuristic, that D or that R on the ballot.
"I don't have to know a damn thing about a voter — if it's a man or a woman, if they live in the South or the North, if they're old or young, college-educated or not. The only thing I need to know, to be right nine out of 10 times, is do they have a party preference?"
So you can be Tim Ryan, you can pretend you're not a real Democrat, you can talk about all your bipartisanship. But unless you sell the brand D, people aren't voting for it, dude! At the end of the day, that D is going to be on the ballot. So when I talk about riding for the brand, it's recognizing, as Republicans did a decade ago, that we all go down or rise together. It's about saving that brand, defining the Democratic brand as good and defining the Republican brand as bad. And the campaigns themselves, which are the most important instruments of message distribution, have to be pounding that theme.
That leads us into step 2, "Rebrand both parties with F-words." What does that mean, and how should Democrats set about doing it?
So there are two F-words: freedom and fascism. We have to get people talking about fascism. And this idea that we shouldn't use the word "fascism" because people don't know what fascism is? Well, no one knows what socialism is. But when we poll people and ask them, what's the first word that pops into your mind when you hear the word "Democrat," guess what the plurality response is? "Socialist"! It's not a liability when people don't know what it is — it's an asset, because then they define whatever the scary thing is into a customized fear category.
So we've got the president saying the F-word, and we need all the swing House and swing Senate candidates also talking about what fascism is, the historical reality that, just like with the communist movement, we had a robust fascist movement in this country that only fell apart because of Pearl Harbor and World War II. We have never, ever told America: Hey, there's two ideologies. The left has communism and socialism as its evil-empire problem, and the right has one too, motherf***ers. It's called fascism, and it's percolating all across the world right now, and here in the U.S.
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There are many elements of the Republican Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's 1,000-page transition manual, that will take America from a democracy to a dictatorship under the next Republican administration. It is very, very important that every candidate that's getting a lot of paid media budget is talking about the threat of losing democracy, what it would be like to have a fascist in charge, and defining — all they have to do for voters is say, "Trump, fascism, bad!" They don't have to rely on voters to understand what that means. But they have to make sure voters associate Trump with fascism the way they associate Biden with socialism, which is definitely a much more ridiculous claim.
So your step 3 is "Less defense, more counter-offense." What's the difference between those things, and what's an example?
I'm in the special election district in New York right now, where [Democrat] Tom Suozzi is running. I walked into my hotel in New York and almost the first thing I saw was an ad, an attack on him about migrant violence, really dark and despotic shit, and then I saw his defense, right? "Well. here's my real record, da-da-da-da-da." That is not a counter-offense. [Suozzi won the special election on Feb. 13 to fill the seat left vacant after George Santos' expulsion from Congress.]
Counter-offense doesn't even mean responding on the same topic. In 2021, for example, Republicans defined their entire theme by saying [the attack on critical race theory] was about protecting kids. How could we let them, with a straight face, spend three months talking about how they want to protect children in schools without attacking them for letting them get slaughtered on a daily basis with weapons of war? When I say, "Less defense, more counter-offense," that's what I mean.
We let them legitimize CRT, which is not real, by explaining for months: "It's not real, it's a legal theory, da-da-da-da." What we should have been doing is pounding the Republican brand on guns and making sure people are afraid to leave Republicans in charge of their children's lives.
Step 4 is "Take credit, give blame." Here you point out how Democrats have largely failed to do that with their major accomplishments. What's an example of what they should have been doing, and why don't we see them doing it?
They're starting to get better at this, some of them. But there was a senator who tweeted out, after the insulin package, how Congress had passed $35 insulin and it was going to save seniors all this money. And every f***ing Republican voted against it, dude! So why is this person not saying in the tweet, 'Democrats'? It's got to be Democrats. Assign credit. And the contrast has to be: Republicans take away, Republicans block, Republicans refuse, whatever it is.
"Democrats have to make sure voters associate Trump with fascism the way they associate Biden with socialism, which is definitely a much more ridiculous claim."
They're getting away with this obstruction strategy that's been working since 2010 and it's the key — it's what killed the border reform bill. I watched voters on the stump last night. They interviewed a swing voter who said, "Oh well, Biden had all these promises on immigration and he's just utterly failed to deliver them." Why hasn't Biden passed immigration reform? Because f***ing Republicans blocked the bill, dude! We have to understand that voters don't know that, will never know that and will blame Biden for the lack of progress unless we tell them, "Hey, Democrats are trying to do this and Republicans are blocking it!”
Step 5 is "Own our issues, then own theirs." Here you note that Republicans are seen as better on the economy — it's an issue they've owned for decades — even though Democrats are actually better for the economy across a broad range of metrics. So what should they do about it?
This comes from a political science area called "issue ownership." There are certain issues that are attached to the party brand. For Democrats, it's health care and education. Among low-information voters, who hardly follow politics aside from the presidential year and the last couple of weeks before the election, what is their broad, top-of-mind understanding of what the two parties stand for? In poll after poll you'll see this, and you'll see this in Trump versus Biden on the economy. When they think about Republicans, voters think: low taxes, good on the economy, good on national defense. Those are the three issues they own.
Yet as we both know, especially over the last 20 years — but I would argue, now that we're 50 years into Reaganomics, over the last 50 years — Democratic economic theory actually outperforms Reaganomics, starve-the-beast, trickle-down economics. So we need to start talking about that. We need to get the electorate to understand that the economy as they know it began after the Great Depression and World War II, and it was f**king humming, and the Republicans come in in 1980 and steal all our tax revenue to put us into a permanent cycle of deficit spending, and because of that divestment from our growth, our future, our infrastructure, our education systems, all these other things that in 1950 or 1960 we led the world on, we've been surpassed by the EU, by Canada. It's time for us to tell the story of what happened to the American economy, and to make sure people understand what happened to it was the Republican Party.
Step 6 is "Stick to a single villain." Here you note that after the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, President Biden said, “As a nation, we have to ask: When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” What's wrong with that? How is it typical? And what should Democrats say instead?
"It's time for us to tell the story of what happened to the American economy, and to make sure people understand what happened to it was the Republican Party."
Because if it wasn't for Republicans we would have passed gun legislation after Columbine. The reason we don't have gun legislation isn't because people don't want to stand up or because Congress refuses to act or the NRA says we can't. It's because Republicans are blocking action in the Senate and the House. They will never side with our kids over their killers, until and unless we remove that obstacle electorally by electing Democrats to replace them. So if we want to solve guns, we have to make sure the voters know who the problem is. It's not the NRA. It's not Congress. The reason we can't have gun safety in this country is because the Republican Party tells us that we should just go die.
Finally, step 7 is "Say it again. And again. And again." That's pretty obvious, but why is it so important?
Because nobody pays attention to news and politics. It is very important for people to understand, out there in the world — especially because of the internet and all the divergent tech we have, which is completely different than the '80s and '90s — many people are hearing absolutely nothing, ever, about politics. So the only way for us to get through to them is to pick something like the Roe repeal and wedge the sh** out of it, over and over and over, so there's repetition throughout the system, from the state legislative level up to governors, Senate races, the presidential race, with all these candidates talking about it, making the media cover it, just like CRT, so they can put that into the mind of the voter.
But it definitely takes what I call a "sniper strategy," not a shotgun strategy. You cannot get a successful media narrative built if you're talking about three or four different things. You have to focus on one or two things and really pound the sand about them. :
In Chapter 9, "How to Land Punches," you talk about the power of mockery. Why is that important?
The most important thing about strategic mockery is this. In Republican world — Earth Two — there are some truths that they find to be self-evident. No. 1, the Democrats stole the election in 2020, and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. No. 2, there was no insurrection, Trump has never committed a crime of any type and he's just an innocent guy that we've been hounding. No. 3, the COVID vaccine is the biggest scandal ever. The COVID vaccine is far more deadly than COVID itself, and anyone who got it has tainted blood — I'm not making this up! This is Republican reality. Democrats are pedophiles, Democrats support the genital mutilation of children. This is the rhetoric that has now, after 10 years of radicalization, become the mainstream platform, the reality-anchoring world of MAGA and the majority of the Republican Party.
So it's very important for people to understand that's what we're running up against. What strategic mockery means is, don't legitimate their Earth Two reality. Make fun of it! Make them seem as absolutely ridiculous as these Earth Two claims are, because there is verifiable reality, and they're not living in it. As soon as we legitimize their reality, we're losing. So right out of the gate, I'm very pleased that the House Democrats have done such a great job in their committees. We have an Oversight Committee being run by an insurrectionist, with 11 insurrectionists on the committee, pretending that they're investigating the "weaponization of government" while they weaponize government, trying to interfere in criminal prosecutions they have nothing to do with, all their other things. So we must, at all times, be mocking the premise of Earth Two claims.
You go on to explain how mockery relates to the messaging formula Republicans have long used, which Democrats need to learn as well. What’s the lesson here?
It's trying to teach Democrats strategic comms. When you get an opportunity to go on "Meet the Press" or "Face the Nation," there's no better framing opportunity. Republicans get that. So if they're invited onto a Sunday show, they have a strategic narrative, and they're going to shape all their comments around achieving it. We go because we think, let's have a legitimate, substantive discussion about the merits of the border bill or whatever. So when a reporter asks, "What about the Democrats?' we end up explaining, da-da-da-da-da, and the Republicans are there spitting out their messaging talking points against us.
"What strategic mockery means is, don't legitimate their Earth Two reality. Make fun of it! Make them seem as absolutely ridiculous as their claims are, because there is verifiable reality, and they're not living in it."
So it's about getting Democrats to understand: Yes, we love policy, and we got into it because we love government, but we've got to stop. We've got to stop, especially in earned media appearances, and make sure we’re using those as the only opportunity to hit eyeballs and to create a narrative. Make sure that we are not taking what the moderator gives us and turning it into a real conversation. Instead, we're using it as a narrative-setting device, like Republicans have been doing for two decades.
Sometimes that involves the pivot and attack. So if you get asked a tough question about Biden and Gaza or whatever, you respond: "What's the Republican policy in Gaza? It'd be to napalm Gaza and erect a Trump Tower." Not saying that to the audience, not pivoting and attacking — yeah, Gaza's bad for Biden, but it's worse for Republicans — is unforgivable.
So, pivot and attack. Again, I talked about protecting kids. Republicans wanted to run, and did run, in 2021 and 2022 talking about protecting children. Well, if I'm on a show with a Republican and I get asked about gender mutilation or books in schools or whatever, if the words "protect children" come up, I'm going to stop and I'm going to say, "Oh, I think it's great you want to talk about protecting children in schools. Let's talk about Republicans blocking gun legislation for decades and letting our kids get slaughtered at school by weapons of war."
In Chapter 10, "How to Give Wedgies," you describe wedging as a messaging tactic, using a political issue to divide the opposition and the electorate, and to frame the opposition party as a threat. You describe the workings of "the GOP’s two most effective wedgies," abortion and gun ownership. What's your advice on how Democrats can do the same?
Obviously abortion is the main issue for this cycle. Abortion politics have long favored Republicans. They're better at messaging, so we defined abortion as a choice, like going through a drive-through and getting a cup of coffee, and they defined it as life and murder. You can see in that frame who's got the rhetorical advantage. Also, they have always benefited from the reality of legal abortion being in place.
So the abortion debate has always centered, in terms of morality, on the claim that these unborn, innocent children are being murdered by selfish women who got irresponsibly pregnant and then used abortion as a quick fix. Then, after Roe was repealed, the morality becomes not about hypothetical unborn babies. It becomes about real, live women being tortured and eventually someone's going to die.
"If we're dealing with an electorate that knows nothing, we have to make sure it learns one thing: The Republican Party is a fascist cult that's coming to steal your health, your wealth, your freedom and your safety."
We're almost two years out from Roe repeal now. We have the 2022 midterms, the 2023 Virginia cycle and all the special initiatives that have happened since then, and they all tell us the exact same thing. The Roe effect has basically bought the Democrats, on average, about eight points improved performance in all of the various contested partisan elections they've run in. That includes swing races and all races.
I was telling people to run on the threat of MAGA extremism, and the Roe repeal allowed them to take that abstract claim and put it into something very tangible. So it's very, very concrete in that regard. It proves that Republicans will lie to you about your freedom. They've been on record for decades, all these justices saying, "Oh, the precedent is all settled," right? And the second they got a chance it was, "You have no constitutional right." So getting people to run on that frame, defining the Republicans as an extremist threat, was helped incredibly by the Roe repeal.
I’ve only focused on a few key chapters in your book, so I know you’ll have an answer to my last question. I always ask, what's the most important question I didn't ask? And what’s the answer?
That is definitely the "why." Why does Republican messaging work better than ours? Why doesn't our wonky cerebral messaging, fact-checking and explaining the truth, being more accurate, seem to yield us dividends? And in the front half of the book is where I make the case as to why. The main lesson from that, folks, is this: Normal Americans, almost half of them did not vote in 2020. They're so tuned out of American politics that an election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the middle of an apocalypse didn't catch their interest.
And then, in the 60 percent who bothered to show up in the most consequential election in American history since the Civil War, they know a great deal about deflate-gate if they're football fans, or about NASCAR or Taylor Swift or all the sh** that people are interested in, but if you ask them about politics, they don't know.
So the book is designed to fix the foundation that we're built on. Our electioneering foundation has been built on a flawed assumption. The American people are plenty smart when it comes to IQ. That doesn't mean they're civically smart. The reason is disinterest. People don't follow politics because they don't care, and I show you guys in survey data: Not only do they not care, they're kind of proud about not caring. We have to meet the clay, the rough clay, where it is. If we're dealing with an electorate that knows nothing, then we have to make sure it at least learns one thing: The modern Republican Party is a fascist cult that's coming to steal your health, your wealth, your freedom and your safety.
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Link to CSPAN video https://www.c-span.org/video/?533636-1/hit-em-hurts-save-democracy-beating-republicans-game
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Arizona’s ban spotlights the fraudulence of Trump’s "moderation" on abortion
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Donald Trump has an abortion problem.
The presumptive GOP nominee boasts an advantage over President Joe Biden on most of today’s most salient issues. In a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll, voters said that they trusted Trump over the president on the economy, inflation, crime, and immigration. Biden, meanwhile, enjoyed a double-digit advantage on only one issue: by 47 points to 35 points, voters said they trusted the president over Trump to handle abortion policy.
It is not hard to see why.
Trump’s presidency left relatively few lasting marks on American public policy. But as he has repeatedly boasted since the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, it was his judicial appointments that enabled the overturning of Roe v. Wade — and thus, the avalanche of abortion bans that followed its demise.
The most recent of these bans might be the most politically significant. On Tuesday, Arizona’s Supreme Court ruled that a 160-year-old law banning virtually all abortions in the state is enforceable. That statute predates Arizona’s existence as a state and was rendered irrelevant by Roe in 1973. For these reasons, the state’s Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs had declined to enforce the ban following Dobbs.
But her state’s high court has now abruptly placed all abortion providers at risk of imprisonment; the law mandates two to five years of incarceration for anyone who aids in an abortion, unless that procedure is necessary to save the life of the pregnant person. In practice, this will shutter clinics across the swing state. And since Republicans control Arizona’s state legislature, it is unlikely that lawmakers will do anything to reverse the law before November, despite its extraordinary unpopularity (in a 2022 poll, 91 percent of Arizonans said abortion should be legal in all or some circumstances).
A referendum on adding abortion rights to Arizona’s state constitution will likely appear on the ballot this November. The state supreme court’s decision is liable to increase both support and turnout for that ballot measure, while increasing the salience of abortion policy in the state — both developments that should aid President Biden’s campaign.
Trump’s abortion problem isn’t limited to Arizona. When Texas forces a woman pregnant with a fatally ill fetus to carry it to term — even at the risk of suffering uterine rupture and infertility — that is a consequence of the Trump presidency. When a 10-year-old rape victim in Ohio must travel across state lines to have an abortion, that is a testament to Trump’s legacy. When Alabama disrupts fertility services by declaring that embryos have the same rights as people, those frozen bunches of cells have Trump to thank.
Trump understands that all this is a major political liability. And on Monday, he tried to address it, releasing a video in which he details his vague — yet ostensibly moderate — new stance on abortion policy. If voters want to know what a second Trump administration would actually mean for abortion rights, however, they’d be better off looking to Trump’s past actions and current alliances, rather than his cheap words.
The mogul avoided taking a clear stance on abortion throughout the 2024 GOP primary. Behind closed doors, he told his advisers that he liked the idea of a 16-week national abortion ban with exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother. But in front of the cameras, he prevaricated, saying he could “live with” the procedure being banned nationwide or only in some states, while expressing opposition to Florida’s six-week abortion ban.
Now, with the Republican nomination firmly in his grip, Trump is finally spelling out his official position on abortion — or at least, the line he plans to take into the general election.
“My view is now that we have abortion where everyone wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation, or perhaps both,” Trump said Monday morning in a video post on his social media platform Truth Social. “And whatever they decide must be the law of the land. In this case, the law of the state.”
The Republican went on to say that “many states will be different” and some will be more conservative than others, but “at the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people.”
In other words, Trump suggested that he does not support a national abortion ban. He did not say precisely what abortion restrictions he would like to see his own home state of Florida implement. Trump did specify that he doesn’t think doctors should be allowed to kill newborn infants (although even in blue states, doctors are already legally prohibited from committing infanticide). And he evinced moral opposition to abortion in “the later months.” But exactly which months qualify as “later,” he didn’t say.
Trump did, however, make clear that he believes that victims of rape or incest — or women at risk of dying in childbirth — should be exempt from all abortion restrictions.
At the same time, the former president told viewers that he is “proudly the person responsible” for ending Roe v. Wade. Perhaps this was meant to remind his supporters on the Christian right that they owe him gratitude, his present complacency about the supposed mass murder of fetuses in blue states notwithstanding. But it was the one massively unpopular note in his carefully calibrated statement. The Biden campaign immediately clipped it.
This said, Trump’s argument against Roe v. Wade rested on the idea that it was legally suspect, not morally wrong. This is not how most conservatives view that decision.
Taken as a whole, Trump’s statement constitutes a sound political gambit. Given the constraints imposed by his coalition and record, “I think abortion policy should be left up to the states, although rape victims should always be able to get an abortion, and newborn babies shouldn’t be executed” is about the most expedient stance that Trump could take. It gestures at the median voter’s discomfort with late-term abortions without committing Trump to either a national ban or any specific state-level week limit.
Ideally, the press would not allow Trump to sustain this strategic ambiguity. The likely GOP nominee is registered to vote in Florida, which will hold a referendum this November on whether to enshrine a right to an abortion until fetal viability (generally, around the 24th week of a pregnancy). Trump has said that he considers his state’s six-week abortion ban too extreme. He should tell voters whether he considers 24 weeks even more radical.
Further, although Trump suggested that he doesn’t think abortion should be banned nationally, he did not say that he would veto a national abortion ban, if one made it to his desk. The media should keep asking what he would do in that circumstance.
Of course, Trump’s word is less trustworthy than an email from a Nigerian prince. Once in office, Trump will face no binding political constraints, as he will be ineligible to run for another term. In the event that Republicans find a way to get a federal abortion ban through Congress, there is every reason to believe Trump will reward the Christian right’s loyalty.
There is cause to doubt that the GOP will have the votes to pass such legislation (doing so would require the party to either abolish the legislative filibuster or assemble a 60-vote Senate majority). But a second Trump presidency would likely encroach on abortion rights nationwide through other means.
As the New York Times reported in February, anti-abortion activists with close ties to Trump’s campaign have developed a wide array of plans for restricting reproductive freedom through executive action.
Today, more than half of all abortions in the United States are induced by pills such as mifepristone. The existence of such drugs makes it more difficult for conservatives to fully stamp out abortion, even in red states. But Republicans believe that existing law gives the executive branch the authority to ban such pills nationwide.
Some aim to achieve this by directing the FDA to rescind its approval of abortion-inducing drugs. Others are eyeing a little-known 1873 law called the Comstock Act. Long rendered a dead-letter statute by Roe, Comstock bans the delivery of “every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion.” Conservative legal scholar Jonathan F. Mitchell — who represented Trump before the Supreme Court last year — has suggested that Comstock bans not only the delivery of abortion pills, but of all the equipment required to conduct an abortion procedure. “We don’t need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books,” Mitchell told the Times.
Mitchell went on to say that he hoped Trump “doesn’t know about the existence of Comstock, because I just don’t want him to shoot off his mouth. I think the pro-life groups should keep their mouths shut as much as possible until the election.”
Trump’s abortion messaging Monday is consistent with Mitchell’s advice. Voters should know that his administration’s policies would likely be the same.
Update, April 9, 3:02 pm ET: This piece was originally published on April 8 and was updated with information about the Arizona Supreme Court ruling on a law to ban nearly all abortions.
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Please refer to the following link for the next piece: https://www.stopthecoup2025.org/
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Here is the final link to a series of articles: https://project2025istheocracy.substack.com/
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