WASHINGTON—While the mass media says Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s campaign flopped because of his personality or lack thereof, the evidence is that the DeSantis position against abortion rights and his and the Republican’s increasingly desperate campaign against so-called “woke” politics” is really what did in DeSantis. The anti-abortion rights and anti-woke campaigns threaten to do in all the rest of the Republicans.
DeSantis tried to stake out an extreme right position in favor of a six-week abortion ban, banning of “woke” books from libraries, and a host of other Trump-like and even worse-than-Trump positions. There are only so many people in the extreme right right-wing base and there are not enough of them for the diehard Trump supporters to share their support for anyone other than their master, Trump himself.
In all the contests so far DeSantis only garnered handfuls of votes which by many estimates means that he spent more than $6,000 per voter. Even Trump, who is touted as the “landslide” winner in Iowa, received only 20,000 votes, about half the total vote only from the most extreme right voters in that state. It was hardly an impressive showing for a person who held the office of president of the United States.
The Dems are not letting the remaining Trump “opponent,” Nikki Haley, off the hook either. Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar declared yesterday that Haley was “just as bad on abortion rights and many other issues as Trump and DeSantis,” pointing out that Haley has said she would back a six-week abortion ban.
Filling the obvious void left by the GOP candidates the Democrats, led by Vice President Kamala Harris, are joining today and helping lead a national uprising for a woman’s right to choose. The Biden-Harris campaign rolled out its first TV ad touting its support for abortion rights and sent Vice President Kamala Harris—a passionate advocate of that cause—on the road to key swing states, starting in Wisconsin.
The moves came as the two sides in the nation’s long war over reproductive rights engaged in a duel of marches on Jan. 20-21, keyed to what would have been the 51st anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade decision, declaring abortion is a constitutional right. The abortion rights crowds gathered across the country were much larger than the anti-abortion group that marches in D.C. every year on the anniversary of Roe.
The Trump-nominee-dominated U.S. Supreme Court revoked Roe two years ago, a point that Women’s March chief Rachel O’Leary Carmona emphasized at the pro-choice side’s lead march this year, in Phoenix.
“In 2024, we are in it to win, just like we do every time that abortion is on the ballot in the states,” said Carmona. “Two years after the gutting of Roe, the American people stand on the side of choice and reproductive freedom, and have moved vehemently away from extremist bans and restrictions.
“We all know what this fight is about. It’s bigger than Roe. This year, it’s about freedom, democracy, and fundamental human rights. And we have no doubt that the electorate’s rejection of radical anti-choice bans will unite a diversity of voices and people from across the country and turn them out to the polls in the 2024 election.”
AFL-CIO in the fight
The AFL-CIO is strongly pro-choice, pro-abortion, and pro-constitutional rights, which federation President Liz Shuler made clear in June 2022, a year after the justices outlawed the national constitutional right to abortion.
“The burden of this decision will continue to fall disproportionately on low-income women and gender-oppressed people. It will work to deepen racial and economic disparities and push working families already struggling to get by into further financial insecurity,” Shuler said then.
The court’s anti-abortion ruling “was a wake-up call for working people to take action, and as we continue to deal with the fallout from the court’s decision, we are lifting our voices to demand economic justice and equity.
“Now that the Supreme Court forced a fight over fundamental rights into statehouses…working people are speaking out in favor of legislation that would protect and expand the right to bodily autonomy and the confidential relationship between providers and patients.”
And the best guarantee of reproductive rights for woman workers is a union contract, Shuler added. It “gives working families the support and protection we need to make the decision that is best for us.”
The lead pro-abortion march was in Phoenix because abortion rights is likely to be on the ballot in swing state Arizona this fall—-and because that cause was a powerful vote-getter for progressive candidates, including pro-worker candidates, in the 2022 off-year elections.
Other marches were in Denver, Tampa, Fla., Nebraska, Nevada, San Francisco, and Missouri. A union-sponsored Teach-In on abortion rights is scheduled for Jan. 27 in New York City, the Women’s March said.
“In 2024, we are in it to win, just like we do every time that abortion is on the ballot in the states,” said Carmona. “Two years after the gutting of Roe, the American people stand on the side of choice and reproductive freedom, and have moved vehemently away from extremist bans and restrictions.
“We all know what this fight is about. It’s bigger than Roe. This year, it’s about freedom, democracy, and fundamental human rights. And we have no doubt the electorate’s rejection of radical anti-choice bans will unite a diversity of voices and people from across the country and turn them out to the polls in the 2024 election.”
That’s also what Biden’s ad and Harris are emphasizing. The ad directly ties Donald Trump’s three Supreme Court justices, who were the core of the 5-justice majority outlawing the national right to abortion, to the former Republican Oval Office occupant. He nominated them and he’s the likely GOP nominee against Biden this year.
The campaign ad, “Forced,” features Dr. Austin Dennard, a Texas OB-GYN and mother of three. She had to travel out of state to end her pregnancy after learning her fetus had a fatal condition, calling her situation “every woman’s worst nightmare.”
Dennard had to make the trek because deep-red Texas legislature and right-wing GOP Gov. Greg Abbott approved one of the nation’s strictest anti-abortion laws. It not only bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy but criminalizes the woman and anyone who tries to help her get an abortion, by offering $10,000 bounties to people who squeal on them.
Choice completely taken away
In Texas, Dennard said, her choice “was completely taken away and that’s because of Donald Trump overturning Roe v Wade.”
Harris started her latest tour in a key swing state, Wisconsin, on January 22, The Hill reported. She’s been a strong abortion rights advocate dating back to her service as California Attorney General and in the U.S. Senate.
“As a leader, she uniquely was able to meet the moment when Roe v. Wade was overturned, and she so galvanized the anger and fear people were feeling when the news came down that Roe was overturned,” Democratic strategist Karen Finney told The Hill.
“Reproductive rights connect to a number of different issues,” Finney added. “Having the Vice President be able to say, ‘We get it, we see you, we hear you and we’re fighting with you’ is critically important.”
One of those issues, though Finney didn’t say so, is the threat the right-wing justices won’t stop with taking one constitutional right away. Indeed, the most senior of them, Clarence Thomas, said his concurring opinion on the national abortion revocation that the court should revisit LGBTQ issues, including same-sex marriage, and other reproductive rights issues.
Trump wouldn’t stop either. He said, two years ago, he’d suspend parts of the Constitution he doesn’t like. More recently, Trump said he’d be a dictator just for Day 1 if elected this fall—a limit no commentator believes he’d keep.
“Donald Trump is the reason that more than one in three American women of reproductive age don’t have the freedom to make their own health care decisions. Now, he and MAGA Republicans are running to go even further if they retake the White House,” Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Biden-Harris 2024 campaign manager, said in a statement.
“In 2024, a vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is a vote to restore Roe, and a vote for Donald Trump is a vote to ban abortion across the country. These are the stakes in 2024 and we’re going to continue to make sure every single voter knows it.”
Arizona is one of nine states where abortion rights are projected to be on the ballot in some form—either pro or con—this fall. It’s also the one, along with Wisconsin, with the narrowest pro-Biden margin in 2020—which is why the Women’s March held its lead march there.
“We will be the next state to enshrine our rights to abortion through the ballot,” Ana Hernandez, a Phoenix abortion-rights activist, said, according to the Arizona Republic. “This fight is quite literally for our lives.”
The anti-abortionists gathered in D.C. to celebrate the High Court’s ruling and to extend it to all the states. Their keynoter: House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. He’s also trying to insert anti-abortion language into other federal legislation, especially bills to keep the government going.
“The Women’s March is urging elected officials to stand with families to defend reproductive rights, expand access to reproductive health care, and reject abortion bans and counter extremist, anti-choice groups and politicians,” its announcement about multiple marches said.
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