The SCOTUS Decision To Overturn Roe Is Expected To Help The Dems In November-- But Not By Too Much

That Could Be A Big Deal In The Senate, Not SO Much In The House

Most likely Republican Senator to lose in November

There are states, primarily socially backward ones, where a Republican candidate can win without any independent voters. This cycle, for example, anger over the Supreme Court overturning Roe may be close to 60% nationally, but it certainly isn’t going to threaten the Republicans’ chances to hold onto Senate seats in Alabama (R+15) or Oklahoma (R+20), even though the seats are open due to retirements. Oklahoma has a tragically horrible Blue Dog running who won’t even be able to consolidate the Democratic vote and Alabama’s Democratic candidate is a sacrificial lamb. On the other hand, rage over the Supreme Court decision should help elect excellent Democratic candidates in Missouri (R+11) and Pennsylvania (R+2), respectively Lucas Kunce and John Fetterman, and may even help mediocre candidates Tim Ryan and Cheri Beasley in Ohio (R+6) and North Carolina (R+3).

The decision will help protect mediocre Democratic incumbents Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada (even partisan lean), Mark Kelly in Arizona (R+3), Michael Bennet in Colorado (D+3), and Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire (even partisan lean) and will also help Raphael Warnock in Georgia (R+3). It may also help Lisa Murkowski in her primary against an extremist anti-Choice crazy person Kelly Tshibaka.

Where could it give Republican incumbents a problem? Not North Dakota (R+20), not Arkanas (R+16), not Idaho (R+19), not South Dakota (R+16), not Indiana (R+11), not Utah (R+), not Kansas (R+11), not Louisiana (R+12), not the other Oklahoma seat (still R+20), not Kentucky (R+16) and not South Carolina (R+16).

So that leaves 3 Republican incumbents in states that actually do require independents to win statewide: Rubio in Florida (R+3), Grassley in Iowa (R+6) and Johnson in Wisconsin (R+2). Rubio could be beaten— but not by as ridiculous and useless a candidate as Val Demings. The other two look more interesting. Mike Franken is a good candidate and he’s got a decent shot of using the Roe decision to beat Grassley. Wisconsin hasn’t had its primary yet but a recent poll showed that as long as the Democrats don’t nominate pathetic hereditary billionaire Alex Lasry, they have a good shot at retiring Ron Johnson. My guess is that the Democrat who would beat Johnson is Tom Nelson, but not Mandela Barnes.

Yesterday, David Siders wrote that Republican elected officials up for reelection are surreptitiously freaking out over the decision, although none will ever say that to the media. Siders interviewed over a dozen GOP operatives who told him the time— right before the midterms— is terrible for them. John Thomas, a GOP strategist who works on House campaigns told him taking away women’s choice “is not a conversation we want to have. We want to have a conversation about the economy. We want to have a conversation about Joe Biden, about pretty much anything else besides Roe … This is a losing issue for Republicans.”

It’s a victory that will almost certainly come at a cost. In Republican circles, a consensus has been forming for weeks that the court’s overturning of a significant— and highly popular— precedent on a deeply felt issue will be a liability for the party in the midterms and beyond, undercutting Republicans to at least some degree with moderates and suburban women.

Before Roe came down, said a former Republican congressman familiar with the party’s campaign operation, “Everything was going our way. Gas is above $5. Inflation is a giant problem.”

“The only thing [Democrats] have got going for them is the Roe thing, which is what, 40 years of settled law that will be changed that will cause some societal consternation,” said the former congressman, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “And can they turn that into some turnout? I think the answer is probably ‘Yes.’”

“Maybe instead of losing 45 seats, they lose 30,” he said, while at a minimum, “there will be a few seats that Republicans would have won without [the abortion rights decision], and they may not win them now.”

…The problem for Republicans with the Roe decision is that it’s giving Democrats something to grasp onto in an otherwise bleak year — the kind of issue that may animate some lower-propensity voters, including young Democrats, to turn out in November, and blunt the GOP’s appeals to independent voters, a majority of whom also support Roe, according to Gallup.

Republicans, said Sarah Longwell, a moderate Republican strategist who became a vocal supporter of Joe Biden in 2020, are now “the dog that caught the car.”

“Then what? The motivation moves to the left in terms of who feels they’re the ones who have to be on offense,” she said. “People will fight harder for a thing that they want rather than reward people for a thing they already have.”

One Republican operative familiar with polling in federal and state races and spoke on condition of anonymity said the most important impact may be on swing voters who lean Republican. “It takes a sizeable bloc of voters who were leaning [Republican], and it gives them reason to vote Democrat,” he said. “And they haven’t had any reason to vote Democrat in quite a while.”

…But even if Roe alone is not sufficient to remake the midterms in Democrats’ favor, it could fit into what Longwell called an “overall case the Democratic Party should be prosecuting against Republicans”— wedding Roe with the court’s decision the previous day on gun control, among other issues, to depict the post-Donald Trump GOP as one still animated by extremes.

On Friday, the court provided fodder for that line of attack, when Justice Clarence Thomas, in a concurring opinion, argued the court “should reconsider” protections for contraception access and same-sex marriage. And the post-Roe fallout itself will reverberate in states for months, focusing attention on state-level campaigns as red-leaning states prepare to enact restrictions.

Already, Republicans are wincing at the consequences. In the swing state of Pennsylvania, Democrats have been pummeling the Republican gubernatorial nominee, Doug Mastriano, for a position opposing abortion rights that includes no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother. In Georgia, another swing state, the Republican U.S. Senate nominee, Herschel Walker, is facing similar criticism. In a message that Democrats will likely repeat for months, incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock issued a fundraising appeal on Friday afternoon with the subject line: “Our opponent says he wants a total ban on abortion.”

Jason Roe, the former executive director of the state Republican Party in Michigan, described himself as “nervous about it” because “the opportunities we should have with suburban women become more complicated when that issue is on the table, and I think it puts us on defense.”

…“This is the Democrats’ Hail Mary pass,” said Bob Heckman, a Republican strategist who has worked on nine presidential campaigns. “They can’t win on the economy, they can’t win on foreign policy, they can’t win on cultural issues, and they are going to want to have this discussion, and I don’t think we can deflect.”

One of the original QAnon Republicans in Congress, Mary Miller (R-IL), celebrated the end of Roe v Wade at a rally with Trump in Mendon, Illinois 4 days before her primary on Tuesday. Addressing a crowd filled with their Nazi supporters, she blurted out “President Trump, on behalf of all the MAGA patriots in America, I want to thank you for the historic victory for white life in the supreme court yesterday.”