The Midterms
and an anniversary
The Midterms
Was anyone else holding their breath for the week preceding Tuesday, November 8?
Even though I’m an optimist by trade, I had worst-case scenarios running through my mind. I tried to write a Quickening letter, but this is all I could conjure: “It feels like the soul of the nation is hanging in the balance.” I asked Derek, my spouse and editor, about the phrasing. He said it sounded too melodramatic. “Even though it’s true,” he added.
Well, I’m relieved to report, we did not sell our soul as a nation. The red wave didn’t drown us. In part, this is probably due to all the younger people who came out to vote. I don’t remember voting in midterms in my twenties. Thank you, young people.
I’ve never much respected single-issue voters. Many are anti-abortion, and many of those supported a vile candidate in 2016 because he promised to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe V. Wade, and he delivered for them. This year, Democrats used the abortion issue to their own advantage. I want to say thank you to everyone who turned out to cast votes for abortion rights.
There is still a Senate run-off in Georgia on December 6, between Democrat Raphael Warnock and Republican candidate Herschel Walker, since neither received more than 50 percent of the vote. You might be familiar with Herschel’s scandals—early in his campaign he supported a nationwide ban on abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest, but later he softened, perhaps as a result of two women coming forward claiming that he’d gotten them pregnant and paid for their abortions. (Herschel now backs the current abortion restriction in Georgia, where abortion is banned as soon as a heartbeat is detected—around six weeks; the ban is being challenged in court right now). Apparently the very powerful pro-life group Susan B. Anthony, whose president is Marjorie Dannenfelser, is spending at least $1 million to get Walker elected December 6.
FINGERS CROSSED WARNOCK WINS.
If the overturning of Roe v. Wade was supposed to send abortion rights back to the states, the people are speaking when given an opportunity to. Propositions to formally include abortion rights in state constitutions passed in California and Vermont—no surprise as abortion is legal there, but still encouraging. Voters in Kentucky and Montana rejected ballot initiatives that would have more formally banned abortions there. (Kentucky banned abortion with few exceptions after Roe v. Wade was overturned, though the ban is facing judicial review; abortion is still legal in Montana where legal restrictions are currently enjoined.)
One of the biggest and best abortion-rights wins for me happened in Michigan, where Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer was reelected, and where a measure passed to maintain access to abortion. Had it not passed, had the Republican gubernatorial candidate won, Michigan was on course to reenact an abortion ban dating from 1931, which would have been the strictest in the nation. I let out the breath I’d been holding when I heard the results.
The other great outcome was the Senate race in Pennsylvania, where John Fetterman defeated Mehmet Oz, who famously said in their sole debate that the decision to have an abortion should only be between a woman and her doctor—and local political leaders. Abortion in Pennsylvania is allowed up to 23 weeks or longer if the health or life of the pregnant person is at risk.
Ironically, the race I was most worried about was the one Michelle Goldberg wrote about in the New York Times, in an awesome article titled “The Midterm Race That Has It All.” The battle was taking place in Washington State’s 3rd Congressional District between Joe Kent, a ruggedly handsome former Green Beret running on the Republican ticket (Goldberg refers to him as “a burgeoning MAGA-world star”) and Democratic candidate Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a working mother in her early thirties who runs an auto shop with her husband (Goldberg refers to her as a “rural working-class Democrat who is emphasizing abortion rights”).
While Kent believes life begins at conception and supports a national ban on abortion, during her campaign, Gluesenkamp Perez ran an ad about how she had to have an abortion immediately following a miscarriage. What was interesting about this race was that these two were running to replace House Representative Jaime Herrera-Beutler, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump.
In his speeches, Kent talked about how he would “impeach Biden on day one”—and then Vice President Kamala Harris. Kent said that he would hold Anthony Fauci accountable for the “scam that is Covid.” When Goldberg asked him what that meant, he told her he would hold Fauci accountable for criminal charges. Pushed further on what those charges would entail, Kent told her he would have Fauci charged with murder. “As if it were the most obvious answer in the world,” she wrote.
Kent made the rounds on conservative and far-right media platforms; according to Goldberg, he appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show and on Steve Bannon’s podcast. He was backed by Trump. I wondered if a Democrat could beat him, a Democrat who is also a woman who openly supports abortion. She seemed practical and down to earth. She said she brought her 13-month old son to the auto shop she runs with her husband and put baby noise-protecting headphones on him because she hadn’t yet been able to get daycare. At a rally she said: “If you think you can spend 15K a year on daycare, per kid, and save for retirement, and save up for a mortgage, you’re living in a really different economy than me and most of the people that I know.”
I could relate. When Diego and Charlie were little and I was teaching, having both of them in preschool ate up about 80 percent of my paycheck. I kept working because I liked my job and it provided health insurance. But financially, it barely made sense, and if I were a single mother, it would have been awful. So many women though, my own mother included, have faced and today face, that near-impossible challenge of juggling work and unaffordable childcare. With strict abortion laws, it will only get worse.
Ohio was a disappointment: J.D. Vance, who once despised Trump but now supports him, beat moderate Democrat Tim Ryan for Senate. I read Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy, years ago. It wasn’t a great book, but it did make me think that maybe he would have some empathy for working class people. He did start out criticizing Trump, but soon started to kiss Trump’s ass, as Trump himself put it when he mocked Vance at a rally. A University of Cincinnati political science professor chalked up the disappointing outcome of the Ohio midterms to this: “Ohio is whiter than the nation, older than the nation and less educated than the nation. And that combination almost exclusively excludes Democratic success.”
The incumbent Republican Ohio governor Mike DeWine won, as did Greg Abbot in Texas and Brian Kemp in Georgia. Republicans overall were banking on a message of inflation, crime, and immigration. But there are other things concerning the nation, apparently, like climate change and the massive overstep of the Supreme Court in overturning Roe. The people are speaking and voting. Hopefully even more people will vote for abortion rights in coming elections. According to Pew Research, 61 percent of Americans think abortion should be legal in most cases. Even 56 percent of Catholics think so.
I’m so heartened by the turnout of voters and protesters and abortion rights supporters. People are being bold, speaking loudly and bravely; this makes me proud to be American and gives me hope. Like Alan Guttmacher, the obstetrician/gynecologist and president of Planned Parenthood in the 1960s—and the namesake of the Guttmacher Institute—I believe that abortion rights advocates and anti-abortion advocates have the same goal in mind: they both want to see fewer abortions. But instead of limiting access or banning access or shaming those who seek to terminate their pregnancies or threatening doctors and healthcare providers with prison, abortion rights advocates would like to see an expansion of access to comprehensive sex education and contraception—including emergency contraception—as a means to reduce the number of abortions, while keeping—always keeping—access to safe, legal abortion.
It appears that when abortion is put to voters directly, as happened in Kansas in August and with the midterms in Montana, Kentucky, Vermont, California, and Michigan, people come out in support of abortion rights. Here in California, voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 1, which will amend the California State Constitution to include this language:
“The state shall not deny or interfere with an individual’s reproductive freedom in their most intimate decisions, which include their fundamental right to choose to have an abortion and their fundamental right to choose or refuse contraceptives.”
Maybe those of us in California should get out of our blue bubble and move to Texas or Ohio or, as my beloved good friends from San Luis Obispo did, to Georgia, to work on Stacey Abrams campaign. Thank you, friends!
UPDATE:
As of this morning, Sunday, November 13, 2022, I’m happy to report that the Arizona and Nevada senate races have been called for the Democrats! And—rejoice! Marie Gluesenkamp Perez beat Joe Kent in the Washington House race!!!!! She won by fewer than 5,000 votes.
It’s also my 23rd wedding anniversary.
As my grandmother Grace Wolf used to say, HAPPY DAY.
Thank you for giving your gifts to all of us. We need to show others we care, we need to vote, keeping in mind those that have less. We need to be good ancestors. (from Layla Saad)