You can gerrymander districts and stack courts.
You can use the word “limit” as opposed to “ban” when restricting a woman’s right to personal choices with draconian laws.
You can try, in at least one case, to change the ground rules of an election.
You can run but you can’t hide.
Sooner or later, one way or another, the voices of the people will be heard, and if you are a Republican, you may not like what they have to say.
At least not what they had to say last week.
What voters told us — and keep saying, loudly and plainly, even in red states — is that they don’t like the restrictions to abortions that have followed in the wake of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
So in Ohio on Nov. 7, as they’ve done before in Kansas, California and Michigan, they spoke with their ballots.
By a margin of 56%-44%, Ohioans solidly approved “Issue 1,” which enshrines the right to an abortion in the state constitution. This means that, in a state Donald Trump comfortably won in 2016 and 2020, the constitution will be amended to establish the right to “make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions” involving abortion, contraception and fertility treatment.
In August, Ohio voters also rejected a higher threshold for passage of the abortion amendment, with 57% saying no to a constitutional amendment that would have raised the bar in Tuesday’s referendum from a simple majority to 60%.
Significantly, a surprising number of Republicans sided with Democrats to vote yes for the abortion rights amendment, even in a third of the counties where Trump dominated in 2020, with between 60% and 70% of the vote.
If you’re wondering, incidentally, why they haven’t had such a vote in North Carolina, where the GOP recently passed an unpopular 12-week abortion ban, it’s because they can’t.
The state Constitution doesn’t allow it.
But polls consistently have made it clear that the GOP gave them a law most of them neither wanted nor asked for.
And, with the 2024 election fast approaching, the issue still provides ammunition for Democrats in North Carolina.
Meanwhile, in deep-red Kentucky, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear was re-elected, after campaigning on the state’s prosperity and against Kentucky’s abortion ban, which makes no exceptions for rape or incest.
And in Virginia, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin was rebuffed by voters in his attempt to push for GOP majorities in both chambers of the legislature. Republicans won neither. Youngkin had campaigned for a 15-week abortion limit with exceptions. And voters said no.
To be sure, last week’s results will not make Joe Biden any younger or more charismatic.
It won’t erase his anemic job rating or poor showing in polls that show him trailing Trump in key states.
It won’t address a new headache for Biden’s party now that Sen. Joe Manchin has announced that he will not seek reelection in West Virginia, all but ensuring that the seat will flip to the GOP.
It won’t address the party’s clumsy messaging and eroding appeal to working-class voters.
It won’t undo the damage they inflicted on themselves in recent elections, by writing off races in rural areas, surrendering before the fight began (note how Beshear has done precisely the opposite in Kentucky).
And it will not arrest a growing lack of enthusiasm among a critical ingredient to the Democratic base, Black voters.
But it does attest to the power of nuts-and-bolts issues that voters care about such as their individual rights (and not just to own a gun) and the GOP’s growing preoccupation with curtailing those rights.
It gives Democrats an opportunity, for example, to point out that the new Republican speaker of the House favors a national abortion ban.
In North Carolina, it underscores their argument that Raleigh Republicans are becoming the Party of Big Government.
For all of both parties’ preoccupation with cultural wars, last week’s election was a clear reminder that the best path to voters’ hearts is hearing their voices, meeting their needs and respecting their rights.
