So the Democrats did a whole lot better than OK in the midterm elections despite the cost of living crisis and despite the President’s low approval ratings. How come? In a word, “abortion” was the key mobilising issue. It inspired many women (and some men) to register to vote. In every state during the midterms where there was a ballot referendum on abortion, the pro-rights cause won. Clearly, the ant-abortion movement that culminated in the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v Wade does not speak for the majority of Americans.

In California, Michigan and Vermont, voters approved measures to establish abortion as a state constitutional right. Even in red states like Kansas and Kentucky, voters rejected ballot proposals that would have denied a state constitutional right to abortions and government funding for them. In Montana, another red state, voters rejected a measure called the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act.

Solid as the pro-abortion rights voter turnout was, it was also the vanguard of a pushback against related forms of anti-women and anti-LGBT extremism. As Mona Cohen, a 68 year old voter told the Associated Press, the Supreme Court’s decision in June to eliminate women’s constitutional protections for abortion was seen to be only the beginning of a broader attack on basic rights.

So [Cohen] backed Democrats in her state of Pennsylvania, where the party flipped a U.S. Senate seat and won the contest for governor against a pair of Donald Trump loyalists. A government dominated by Republicans, Cohen said, “would have gone on to impede contraception, to impede marriage equality, to impede any kind of civil rights that we as a society have fought for in the past 50 years…”

Also, this:

Among Black and Latina women across age groups, majorities of whom backed Democratic candidates, at least half said Roe played a major impact in their decision to vote. The Democrats also were buoyed by white women under 50 — about half said it had a major impact on their decision to turn out, compared with about a third of older white women…

This wave of electoral support had an impact on election results all over the country. Not uniformly, but significantly:

In North Carolina’s 13th District, the Trump-endorsed Republican Bo Hines, who said that victims of rape and incest who become pregnant should be subject to “a community-level review process” before being granted an abortion, lost a seat considered a tossup.

In Washington state, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, 34, an unheralded auto shop owner from a rural region of the state took a strong pro-abortion message into her Congressional district fight with Joe Kent, a well-funded Fox News media darling and Green Beret combat veteran who had lost his wife to a suicide bomber in Syria – and yet, she won.

This doesn’t mean the abortion issue caused the cost of living crisis to magically go away. Reportedly, about two-thirds of Republican women said inflation was their primary consideration, compared with about a third of Democratic women. As one Republican voting woman also told AP, she may need an abortion only once or twice in her life, but she has to feed her nine kids every day.

Even so, Republican candidates were well aware of the pre-election polls that were telling them the abortion issue had the power to upset their campaigns. Reportedly, some of them began to erase their past statements and current positions on abortion from their websites, in an attempt to keep the election focus upon crime, immigration and inflation.

Abortion is not likely to go away any time soon in the US as a galvanising issue, either. Abortion rights will have to be fought for on a state by state basis. The Trump-endorsed celebrity author J.D. Vance won a Senate seat in Ohio, and the Republicans won offices statewide. This matters because:

A ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy is currently blocked by a lower court in Ohio but is being appealed. Three conservative victories on Ohio’s Supreme Court, plus an upcoming appointment by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, mean that ban is likely to come before a court with a 4-3 GOP majority.

In other words, there are any number of anti-abortion measures still coming down the pike. Take a look for instance, at this list of anti-abortion proposals currently awaiting official certification over the period leading up to the next presidential election in 2024 :

2023

1. New York Equal Protection of Law Amendment (2023)
2. Pennsylvania No State Constitutional Right to Abortion Amendment (2023)
3. Washington 15-Week Abortion Ban Initiative (2023)
4. Washington Age of Consent to Receive Certain Health Services and Abortion Initiative (2023)

2024

1. Florida Right to Life of Preborn Individual Initiative (2024)
2. Iowa No Right to Abortion in Constitution Amendment (2024)
3. Nevada Parental Consent for Child's Healthcare Decisions and Medical Records Access Initiative (2024)
4. Nevada Parental Notification of Abortion Initiative (2024)
5. Oklahoma State Question 825, Reproductive Rights Initiative (2024)
6. South Dakota Right to Abortion Amendment (2024)

In sum, abortion will remain an issue in the contest of 2024, especially if a budding President Ron DeSantis throws his support behind a federal abortion ban on abortion at 15 weeks with no exceptions. Presumably, DeSantis will also be at the forefront of the Florida “Right to Life of Pre-born Individual Initiative” due to go on the ballot in 2024.

Footnote: In New Zealand, National Party leader Christopher Luxon has promised that a National government would not overturn the Abortion Legislation Act of 2020. That law change removed abortion from the Crimes Act and re-defined it as a health issue. It is less clear what a National government might do to the pro-abortion measures introduced by the Ardern government since 2020.

For an example of the measures potentially at risk…. Eight months after the 2020 de-criminalisation law was passed, a Ministry of Health survey found that serious social and geographical discrepancies still remained in women’s access to abortion:

….In some parts of New Zealand early medical abortions – where two pills are taken to induce a miscarriage within the first nine weeks of pregnancy – are not locally available at all. It also found significant differences in later gestation abortion services offered across DHBs, meaning it’s harder for some people to access the procedure because of where they live.

In response, associate Health Minister Ayesha Verrall changed the regulations [in October 2021] so as to enable nurses and GPs to dispense abortion pills. To help ensure that the pills could be safely self-administered at home within the first ten weeks of pregnancy, Verrall also scrapped the need for a mandatory ultrasound check on gestational age.

The relevant questions for Luxon and Shane Reti on abortion are not about whether he would change the 2020 law. It is now more relevant to know whether Luxon will promise not to revoke the ability of nurses and GPs to dispense abortion pills. Will he also promise not to re-instate the mandatory ultrasound checks on gestational age? And just as crucially, does Luxon believe abortion to be an essential health service? If so, what steps would a future National government be taking to improve and expand the access to abortion by all women in this country, and especially by women living in rural areas? Until these positions are clarified by Luxon and/or Reti, there is still – potentially – daylight between National and Labour on abortion.

Da Doo Ron Ron

A few weeks ago, Werewolf made the point that it is the mainstream traditional media that shapes the structure of our political realities, while social media only comes along afterwards to excitedly debate them. Rupert Murdoch’s anointing of Ron DeSantis and his related trashing of Donald Trump has been a classic example of this process in action.

Murdoch jettisoned Trump quite some time ago. In her book about the 2020 election, the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman reported Murdoch as saying “We should throw this guy over.” Earlier this year NPR reported on how the Murdoch empire had been turning against Trump over the January 6 coup attempt. During the run-up to the midterms, Murdoch newspapers reported on how the “ascendant” De Santis wasn’t responding to Trump’s rhetorical baiting.

Only a couple of days after the midterms, Murdoch’s New York Post newspaper carried headlines trashing Trump (“Trumpty Dumpty..who tried to build a wall “etc)” while other headlines virtually canonised DeSantis ( “DeFuture”! Young GOP star romps to victory..”) In similar vein, the Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal ran a sharp op-ed headlined, “Trump is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser.” As the WSJ put it in an editorial “What will Democrats do when Donald Trump isn’t around to lose elections?”

As usual, almost everyone in the media has followed Murdoch’s lead. DeSantis is now widely touted as the 2024 frontrunner, and Trump is being urged to delay announcing his decision to run, and/or being implored to abandon the 2024 race altogether. Yet, as Ezra Klein has suggested, maybe the DeSantis Factor is being exaggerated.

Yes, DeSantis won the Florida governor’s race in a landslide within an increasingly red state – but only against a poor challenger in Charlie Crist, a former Republican governor turned Democrat who had lost all his recent attempts at winning high office in Florida. Meanwhile…in the Senate race in Florida, Marco Rubio won by a similar margin as DeSantis, but against a far more formidable challenger in Val Demings. There have been no Murdoch-driven raves for little Marco, though.

Moreover, in the governor’s race in Ohio, a Republican hack called Mike DeWine won by a similarly large margin as DeSantis did in Florida. Yet as Klein indicated, no-one is talking about DeWine as being DeFuture. Meaning: instead of worrying ourselves sick about the alleged threat to democracy posed by social media, maybe we should be more worried about how the Murdoch empire (and the rest of the mainstream media) keeps on orchestrating the political responses.

Basically, the extent of DeSantis Fever seems to be yet another case of how we continue to fixate on social media - Mark Zuckerberg ! Eion Musk ! - while Rupert Murdoch goes about his normal business of picking the next standard bearer for the neo-liberal project, all but unnoticed in plain sight.

Footnote. Murdoch’ anointing of DeSantis and his related dumping on Trump has created something of an existential dilemma for Murdoch-owned Fox News, for so long a Trump megaphone. But Fox is finally coming around. “Ron DeSantis is the new Republican Party leader,” Fox News said in an online editorial. “Republicans are ready to move on without Donald Trump.” As the old bluegrass song goes, they’re gathering flowers for the master’s bouquet.

Hating on it

Whenever Werewolf features a rap track, there tends to some level of “How can you possibly like this stuff” backlash. Given some of the responses to the excellent RNZ interview with Bill Callahan on the weekend, boomer bemusement is not limited to rap, which – by the by - has been the dominant form of popular music for the past 50 years.

So here we go… Today, it's rap music via the new Channel Tres single plus some older school Bill Callahan. Channel Tres’ low key vocals have already proved to be surprisingly flexible on his chilled out early hits like “Jet Black” and “Black Moses.” In recent months, Tres has been broadening out via collaborations with the likes of Sadie Walker, Tyler the Creator, and JPEGMAFIA with a 1970s soul sample (or two) tossed into the mix from the late Teddy Pendergrass. The amusing video for Tres’ new cut “6am” features this sharply dressed dude on an upbeat, onwards march towards pop chart domination…

OK, Bill Callahan. For most of us, the Callahan thing started with this timeless ode to teenage desolation, recorded nearly 25 years ago :

There have been dozens of memorable cuts since… But partly because of a devotion to the early 1980s collaborations between Kath Bloom and Loren Connors, I’ve picked Callahan’s lovely rendition of her song “The Breeze/My Baby Cries..”

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