Speaker 1: Can Democrats win in the fall by running on maintaining and restoring abortion
rights? We have an early signal that suggests the answer, at least in some districts, might be yes.
This is a super interesting story. Democrats just won a swing swing district by focusing
on abortion, and that should scare Republicans, writes Philip Elliot for Time magazine. This is a
very interesting situation. Now an unexpected echo to yesterday's column. Democrats may not be toast
in the House. It's a long shot, but there is a new data point from Tuesday evening that makes it
more plausible sending Republicans in Washington into a late night scramble. How had they gotten a
New York special election so wrong? The seat representing New York's 19th Congressional
District opened in May when Congressman Delgado was appointed lieutenant governor.
Obama twice won the Hudson River Valley District before it pivoted to Trump in 2016
and Biden in 2020. It's a swing district with more than 90% of ballots reported.
Democratic nominee Pat Ryan was ahead with 52% of the vote, enough to send him to D.C.
through the balance of Delgado's term. Maybe everything isn't entirely terrible for Democrats.
Maybe. Question. Both parties nominated mainstream candidates to fill Delgado's seat. They invested
in the race. Abortion rights was the primary topic for Democrats and the economy for Republicans.
In an almost perfect swing district, the small turnout election favored the Democrat,
a county executive from the establishment wing of the party. This comes on the heels of Kansas
voters rejecting an amendment to the Kansas Constitution that would have made it easier
to further restrict access to abortion. This is very interesting because the conventional wisdom
is it's the economy, stupid. If the perception is the economy is good, it's good for whoever
is in power. If the perception is the economy is bad, it's good for whoever is out of power. Now,
in a mixed administration, a mixed Congress, figuring out, well, who's in can have different
interpretations. But putting that aside for a moment. Typically, particularly for Democrats,
when they run on something like abortion or social issues, generally, it's not particularly
good. But we have a situation here in this. It's admittedly it's a special election, but it is
like the perfect swing district. The candidate who is a Democrat running on abortion rights.
One. Is this a sign that maybe November won't be as bad for Democrats as some are predicting
in the House? Well, it's a possibility, and we've seen it happen to some degree in Michigan. And at
this point in time with, what is it, about nine weeks until the midterm elections, incredibly,
the economy is good. And so you can walk and chew gum at the same time. The messaging should be
look at how great the economy is. And also, these are dangerous infringements on women's
rights coming from the Republican Party, coming from the right wing Supreme Court. And we need
to elect some Democrats in order to try to reverse that. And so the question becomes, was
the overturning of Roe v Wade potentially very bad for the Republican Party? We don't know the answer
yet. And there are many prognosticators saying it is bad or it's good or it doesn't matter.
Well, ultimately, these are just predictions. We won't know until we see the results in November.
The right has a playbook that they stick to, and they are confident that it will always work.
And the general population's views on a number of different issues, particularly social issues,
but some economic issues as well, like should taxes be used on the rich to help the general
population? The country has moved to the left on basically every single one of those issues.
And in a just and reasonable situation, you would think that at a certain point that public belief,
those public perceptions, those public opinions would be reflected in the way that the results
shake out now because of gerrymandering and campaign finance and all these different things,
voter suppression from from Republicans, all the techniques that we've talked about that they use.
It hasn't happened to the degree that it should have. Maybe we will actually see that happen
in November. So very good news there out of that New York district. We're going to watch
all districts closely and we're going to watch the polling in the House as we head into November.