Tag Archives: midterms

Republicans can’t sugarcoat their losses on abortion rights anymore

Originally published in Vox on November 8, 2023.

Even before Tuesday’s elections, many progressives insisted the question of whether protecting abortion rights wins elections was already asked and answered. Democrats made abortion rights the centerpiece of their campaign advertising during the 2022 midterms, a cycle where Democrats outperformed expectations, kept control of the US Senate, and staved off a red wave. Polls last year also found abortion rights to be a significantly motivating issue for both independent and Democratic voters.

Abortion rights ballot measures won in all six states where they appeared in 2022, including states like Montana, Kentucky, and Kansas that otherwise elected Republican candidates. Democrats have been winning in special elections where they ran on abortion rights, and surveys suggested voters have grown even more supportive of abortion rights since the repeal of Roe v. Wade in June 2022.

Anti-abortion groups argued in turn that liberals were mistaking correlation for causation; they maintained that confidence in abortion rights messaging was misplaced, and voters would ultimately punish Democrats for their maximalist positions. They pointed out that Democrats tried and failed to unseat anti-abortion governors in the midterms, and applauded winning federal candidates who “went on offense” on abortion, like Sen. Marco Rubio and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance. The lost referendums, anti-abortion groups insisted, stemmed largely from Republican leaders failing to campaign hard enough and from being outspent, something they promised to never let happen again.

The polling on abortion rights, meanwhile, could be complicated and seem contradictory: Voters sometimes express support for second- and third-trimester bans while signaling strong opposition to restricting access to abortion.

The 2023 election cycle represented a big test: Were abortion rights activists right? Or were anti-abortion leaders correct that the earlier post-Roe losses stemmed from insufficient investment and mealy-mouthed campaigning?

A decisive 13-point victory for protecting abortion rights in red Ohio, wins for Democrats in the Virginia legislature where GOP candidates campaigned on rolling back abortion access to 15 weeks, and the decisive reelection of Kentucky Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, who made protecting abortion rights in his red state central to his campaign, provide the clearest evidence to date that voters of all political persuasions do not support the nationwide attack on reproductive freedom and are voting accordingly.

Anti-abortion leaders tested a host of new tactics this cycle — from rebranding abortion bans as “limits” to claiming the Ohio abortion rights ballot measure was really about curtailing parents’ rights. None of them worked. Republican strategists had been banking on November 7 providing them with proof that voters were sick of Democrats talking about abortion. Virginia was supposed to be a proof of concept that would let Republicans run on a “consensus” position on 15-week bans next year while changing the subject to other topics like crime and immigration.

So Tuesday’s results really were a resounding victory for Democrats and abortion rights supporters — but there are still some caveats and reasons for caution in 2024.

How abortion rights won in Ohio

Anti-abortion leaders recognized how important a win in Ohio would be to changing the narrative ahead of 2024. “A win here would show those other states that will have these ballot measures in the years to come, ‘Hey, these battles can be won,’” Peter Range, the executive director of Ohio Right to Life, told the 19th News in October. The anti-abortion movement threw everything they had at the campaign and still fell far short.

Instead, last night 57 percent of Ohio voters cast their ballot in favor of the constitutional amendment to codify abortion access, despite a significant array of obstacles in a solidly Republican state where Republican elected officials had come out uniformly against the measure.

“Generally speaking, ballot measures in Ohio don’t tend to win,” said Jonathan Robinson, the director of research at Catalist, a liberal voter data analytics firm.

Passing affirmative ballot measures is even harder. In the other conservative states where ballot measures won, abortion rights campaigners organized voters against anti-abortion proposals. Political scientists find it can be easier to be on the “no” side of ballot measure campaigns, since voters have a bias toward maintaining the status quo.

“The reality is Ohio is among the tougher states that we have worked in,” said Joey Teitelbaum, a pollster involved with the Ohio abortion rights campaign, who also worked on winning ballot measures in Colorado, Kansas, and Kentucky. “We stayed focused on a broad values-based message that went beyond partisan politics.”

Though polls indicated Ohio voters were broadly supportive of the proposed amendment, abortion rights advocates were dealing with new hurdles, including an expensive August special election that sought to raise the ballot measure threshold to 60 percent, voter roll purges led by the anti-abortion secretary of state, a misleading intervention from the state’s Republican attorney, and vocal campaigning from the state’s Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, who urged Ohioans to vote no in a TV ad.

The Ohio Ballot Board also drafted its own summary language of the proposed ballot measure, using more politically objectionable terms like “unborn child” instead of “fetus” and refusing to state that the amendment would protect not just access to abortion but also to contraception, miscarriage care, fertility treatment, and continuing pregnancy. Researchers know that the specific language that appears on a ballot can have a significant impact on how voters vote, and a poll released in late October found support for the amendment dropped considerably when voters were presented with the edited language.

“I have never encountered such complete opposition by the state government,” said Ashley All, who served as communications director for the winning pro-abortion rights ballot measure campaign in Kansas and has since consulted on other post-Roe ballot referendums.

Anti-abortion advocates raised millions more dollars than they had in previous ballot measure campaigns, and worked to cast the Ohio amendment as an “anti-parent” measure that would effectively create a new right to gender-affirming surgery for minors. Legal scholars said the fear-mongering about parental consent was unjustified, given Ohio case law and the Republican-controlled state Supreme Court.​

That abortion rights won so decisively against all these odds — and that so many Trump voters proved willing to cross party lines to vote in favor of the amendment — is a sobering result that anti-abortion leaders will struggle to dismiss. For now, the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America group is saying it lost because voters incorrectly believed pregnant patients could be denied life-saving medical care. But even in states with exceptions to abortion bans, doctors have been denying or delaying care, fearing funding cuts or criminal prosecution.

How abortion rights won in Virginia

Though Virginians were not casting votes on a ballot measure, it was no secret that the Virginia legislative elections were largely being fought over abortion.

“It almost feels like we’re running a single-issue campaign on this one,” J. Miles Coleman, of the UVA Center for Politics, said last week. Among women voters, who make up more than half of Virginia’s election, 70 percent rated abortion as a “very important” issue, up 47 percent from 2019.

All 140 seats in the Virginia General Assembly were up for grabs, and Democrats not only retained control of the state Senate but flipped control of the Virginia House.

Youngkin and anti-abortion groups bet that if they could win in Virginia by running emphatically on a 15-week abortion ban, something they cast as a “reasonable” and “consensus” position, then they could prove to Republicans nationwide that abortion need not be a political loser for their party. (The ban, which they called a “limit,” also would have exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.) They also hoped that staking out this position would allow them to more easily change the subject to topics they had advantages on, like crime and the economy.

Prior to the fall of Roe, national polls showed broad support for restricting abortion after 15 weeks, but since the Dobbs decision, voters have been signaling more opposition to the idea. A poll released in mid-October from Christopher Newport University found 54 percent of Virginians opposed the idea of a 15-week ban, and another October survey from the Washington Post-Schar School found 47 percent opposed and 46 percent approved.

Another way to understand the question in Virginia is whether voters would support lawmakers cutting short the window of legal abortion by 12 weeks, since abortion is currently permitted up to 26 weeks and 6 days of a pregnancy in the state.

Voters, though, had good reason to be suspicious Virginia Republicans really would stop at 15 weeks. In Florida, Republicans passed a 15-week ban on abortion in 2022, only to turn around and pass a six-week ban in 2023. Other GOP-led states like South Carolina, Georgia, and Ohio have passed six-week bans.

Multiple videos also emerged of Virginia Republicans admitting they’d likely push for more than they’ve publicly let on. In 2021, an activist secretly recorded Youngkin saying he’d go “on offense” if elected but needed to speak minimally about the topic during campaign season. Two months ago videos surfaced of a House of Delegates candidate saying he’d support a “100 percent” and “total” ban on abortion, and more recently a video of a candidate in a Virginia Senate race showed her saying she’d be interested in pushing beyond a 15-week ban.

A Washington Post-Schar School poll from October found that 51 percent of registered Virginia voters trusted Democrats to handle abortion, compared to 34 percent who trust Republicans.

There are real grounds for abortion rights optimism in 2024

The news out of Ohio is auspicious for those organizing abortion rights ballot measures next year in Arizona, Nevada, Florida, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Colorado. Abortion rights have had a 7-0 winning streak on the ballot since Roe v. Wade was overturned, and Republicans’ fear-mongering rhetoric about parents’ rights and abortion “up until birth” seemed to have failed. While Americans tend to be more uncomfortable with abortions later in pregnancy, voters seem to understand they are extremely rare, and typically associated with fetal anomalies, threats to a mother’s life, and barriers to care that delay access to the procedure.

Evidence continues to mount that voters are willing to cross party lines when it comes to protecting access to reproductive health care. If abortion rights campaigners can continue to frame the issue in a nonpartisan way, their odds of success in the next round of ballot measures look good. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s strong reelection in Kentucky is also an encouraging signal that Democrats can campaign openly on abortion rights in red states and still win.

It’s hard to overstate how much the loss in Virginia complicates’ Republicans’ 2024 campaign plans. Virginia was supposed to show that Republicans could cast Democrats as extremists, proactively pursue reductions in abortion access, and still win, even among Biden-leaning voters. The GOP wanted to show Republicans could “neutralize” the abortion issue, so that swing voters would feel more comfortable voting on other topics they trusted Republicans on. Youngkin insisted voters are “ready to move on and talk about topics besides abortion.”

The fact that Republicans failed so spectacularly doesn’t mean Republicans won’t try this strategy again next year, but it does represent a rather clarifying result — and one that should make GOP strategists pretty nervous, especially given that most voters think Republicans want to ban abortion in all or most cases.

How things could still go poorly for abortion rights in 2024

While things have gone well for abortion rights campaigners thus far, most will admit they were certainly not sure things would play out as they did. And, as anti-abortion leaders are quick to point out, Democrats tried and failed to unseat anti-abortion governors like Brian Kemp in Georgia, Kim Reynolds in Iowa, Mike DeWine in Ohio, and Ron DeSantis in Florida last year, showing that it’s not dispositive that politicians will pay a price for restricting access to abortion.

“In the midterms, yes, abortion mattered in certain places, and democracy issues mattered on certain races. But not all of them,” Ashley All told Vox. “Florida voted exactly as Florida does. Political observers and pundits want to make blanket statements about how things will impact an election, but everyone who works on campaigns knows it doesn’t work like that.”

Another concern is that Youngkin’s prediction was just premature and that voters will in fact grow more tired of hearing about attacks on abortion rights the further out from Dobbs the country gets. Republicans bet wrongly on that happening in 2022 and 2023, but experts admit it’s hard to know what will be animating voters a year from now, especially given how exhausted the electorate seems to be these days.

“Generally people seem a little burnt out,” said Robinson, of Catalist. “The level of political donations for Democrats and Republicans is down a lot, which suggests a sag in interest in politics. Interest in the Republican presidential primary is really low.” Though turnout on November 7 was high, the abortion rights measure in Ohio received nearly as many votes as Republican Sen. J.D. Vance did in 2022.

Reproductive rights campaigners also say the public should not underestimate how tough a fight they faced this year in Ohio compared to the previous six ballot measure campaigns in 2022. Anti-abortion politicians are likely to continue their efforts to curb access to the ballot, and invest heavily in TV and digital advertising aimed at confusing voters. This year abortion rights activists benefited from Ohio being the only ballot measure campaign in the country, helping them to raise three times as much money as their opponents, with most money coming from out of state.

Next year, when there are more expensive ballot measures competing for both media attention and political donations, on top of a surely consuming presidential contest and a bevy of congressional and gubernatorial elections, advocates say the fundraising landscape for abortion rights referendums may be much more difficult.

The 3 possible outcomes of the midterms in Congress, explained

Originally published in Vox with Dylan Scott and Li Zhou on November 2, 2022
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Once the dust settles from the midterm elections, what — if anything — is Congress likely to do over the next two years?

Right now, polls and forecasts suggest the Senate still is a toss-up, while Republicans are more likely than not to win a majority in the House of Representatives. That would mean some form of divided government, with Republicans in charge of one or both houses of Congress while President Joe Biden and his veto pen would be able to stop them from implementing much of their agenda. But it’s still possible, although it currently looks less likely, that Democrats could hold onto the Senate, giving them two more years of a Democratic trifecta.

Those three scenarios — Republicans winning just the House, Republicans winning the House and Senate, and Democrats holding on to control of Congress — differ in important ways. A Republican-dominated Congress could create something like gridlock, leading to potential battles over the debt ceiling and government funding and giving the Senate the power to hold up Biden’s nominees. A split legislature, with Republicans controlling only the House of Representatives, would put a focus on investigations and, potentially, lead to a vote to impeach Biden. And if Democrats retain control, they’ll face many of the same challenges they did over the last two years.

Here are the three possible outcomes of the midterms and what might happen once the new Congress begins in January 2023.

Scenario 1: Republicans control both houses of Congress

How likely is it? Not unlikely! Forecasts from Politico and FiveThirtyEight suggest Republicans are favored to win the House, while the Senate is a toss-up that comes down to a few key races.

What’s at stake? If Republicans win control of the House and Senate, they’ll have the scope to pursue a legislative agenda beyond what they’ve promised on the campaign trail — even if President Joe Biden’s veto could ultimately block most of their ability to make it a reality.

GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who would become House speaker if elected, released a “Commitment to America” agenda in September — mostly a vague, one-page outline of Republican talking points like “curb wasteful government spending” and “create good-paying jobs,” though it was sprinkled with a few specifics, like a pledge to hire 200,000 more police officers and end proxy voting in Congress, which allows members to cast votes remotely. McCarthy also promises to “confront Big Tech” and expand school choice and a “Parents’ Bill of Rights.”

The one-pager and the Republican campaign for controlling Congress mask what are sure to be larger fights within the Republican caucus around fiscal policy. Many House conservatives are interested in using forthcoming debt limit fights to force Democrats’ hands on cutting entitlement programs.

This hasn’t been a center of the midterm campaigns: The Commitment to America agenda says nothing about Medicare or Social Security. But earlier this year, the Republican Study Committee, the House’s conservative caucus that comprises nearly 75 percent of the House GOP, released a 122-page manifesto that pledged to cut Medicare and Social Security benefits by raising the eligibility age as well as pushing beneficiaries to enroll in private Medicare and retirement plans.

In the Senate, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) endorsed the idea of forcing Congress to vote on reauthorizing Social Security and Medicare every five years, and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) backed voting on the entitlement programs annually. Some conservatives and even prominent liberals believe Republicans could use the threat of a government default to force Democrats’ hand in these areas, though, for now, Biden has promised to veto any cuts to the programs. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has also so far rejected these ideas, calling them nonstarters, but the debate is unlikely to die out.

The Republican agenda for abortion rights also hasn’t been something they’ve sought to campaign on in the midterms but could become a top issue if they take control of Congress. The Commitment to America platform states merely that the Republican Party would “defend the unborn, fight for life,” but the RSC manifesto lists nearly two dozen anti-abortion bills the caucus supports codifying, including a bill effectively prohibiting abortions after about six weeks, and one that would provide 14th Amendment protections to fetuses.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) introduced a bill in September banning abortion after 15 weeks. When he introduced a bill banning abortion after 20 weeks in 2021, 45 Senate Republicans joined in support. While anti-abortion groups are pressing Republicans to go on the offensive, it seems for now congressional Republicans are waiting to see how the issue plays out in the midterms.

With two years ahead of the next presidential election, it’s likely GOP lawmakers will be keen to avoid giving Biden more big bipartisan wins, like they did in his first two years, compromising on issues like gun control, infrastructure, and competitiveness with China.

Were Republicans able to retake the Senate, they would be able to vote down Biden’s judicial nominees (including any that come up on the Supreme Court), block them wholesale from consideration, and pressure the White House to pick what they perceive as more moderate options. Republican lawmakers have already signaled that they may not consider Biden’s nominees.

In April, McConnell wouldn’t commit to giving a Supreme Court pick a hearing in 2023 if the Republicans retook their majority. It’s something he’s done before: During the Obama administration, McConnell notably blocked Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland from ever getting a hearing by arguing that his nomination was in an election year.

What constraints would the party in power face? The House and Senate will ultimately be limited on what they can enact into law over the next two years, as Biden will remain in the White House with a veto pen he promises to use. The Senate will also lack a veto-proof conservative majority, even if Republicans win control of the chamber. But even if it’s unlikely that Republicans manage to pass very conservative bills into law, a Republican-controlled Congress will certainly be able to stymie Biden’s legislative agenda.

Scenario 2: A divided Congress

How likely is it? Congress could be divided two ways — with a Democratic Senate and Republican House, or the reverse, a Republican Senate and Democratic House. The latter is very unlikely; if Democrats perform well enough to hold on to the House, they’re unlikely to lose Senate control. The Senate is a toss-up while the House leans Republican, so the former certainly could happen.

What’s at stake? In the case of a split Congress, the likelihood of more ambitious legislation passing is exceedingly slim. Instead, the two chambers are poised to focus on their own respective priorities, while facing clashes over must-pass bills like government funding and an increase to the debt ceiling.

As House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has made clear, House Republicans are prepared to hold any increase to the debt ceiling hostage in exchange for cuts to other programs like clean energy investments and Social Security. In that case, the House and Senate could face an interminable standoff that could put the United States on the verge of defaulting on its debt, a scenario that could have devastating consequences for the economy.

On the House side, meanwhile, a Republican lower chamber would be able to proceed with its many investigations even if the GOP doesn’t control the Senate. As would be the case if Republicans captured the majority in both chambers, they’d have free rein to hold investigations in the House on everything from Hunter Biden’s financial dealings to the Biden administration’s approach to border security, and they intend to use it.

Investigations and impeachment votes can both proceed without the Senate’s approval or the White House’s signature. Some House members have already said they plan to push for the impeachment of President Biden, and have already introduced at least eight resolutions to do that.

Last week, the Atlantic’s Barton Gellman — who was prescient in predicting that Donald Trump would not admit defeat if he lost his reelection bid — published a piece detailing why he thinks a new House Republican majority would vote to impeach Biden within its first year, largely driven by mounting caucus pressure from election deniers who cast Biden as illegitimately elected.

House Republicans could also push for the impeachment of other high-ranking Biden administration officials, including US Attorney General Merrick Garland, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and Vice President Kamala Harris, and hold a series of House investigations next year if they take power, specifically on areas like Democrats’ handling of the southern border, the DOJ, inflation, and the energy crisis. Rep. James Comer (R-KY) is set to lead the House Oversight and Reform Committee and told Politico he also wants to spearhead investigations into the business dealings of Hunter Biden and the origins of Covid-19.

“Part of our constitutional duty is oversight,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), a founder of the Freedom Caucus, who’s expected to wield significant influence in a Republican majority, during the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this year. “We need to know why the Biden administration has taken the intentional position of not having a border.”

What constraints would the party in power face? With Senate control, Democrats could continue to advance more judges and executive branch nominees. The Senate, after all, retains the critical ability to approve judges for district courts, circuit courts, and the Supreme Court with a simple majority. Filling these vacancies will be a crucial priority for Democrats if they’re able to hang onto the Senate, especially after Republicans spent much of the Trump administration attempting to stack the courts in their favor.

“The main difference between a split Congress and one controlled by Republicans completely would be Biden’s ability to fill judicial and other vacancies,” says Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia.

Already, the Senate has confirmed judges at a rapid clip, approving Biden’s faster than any president at this point in their term since President John F. Kennedy. Biden’s nominees have also included a significant number of women, racial and ethnic minorities, and public defenders, all groups that Democrats could continue to prioritize for these roles if they hold the upper chamber. As of early October, there were still 44 judicial nominees pending in the Senate and additional vacancies that did not have nominees yet.

Scenario 3: Democrats keep control of Congress

How likely is it? This is the unlikeliest scenario of the three, according to the polling and election forecasters. The president’s party historically loses ground in the midterm elections, and Democrats hold narrow majorities as it is. But with an unusual political climate — inflation is up, but unemployment is low, while the Supreme Court’s June abortion ruling has animated the Democratic base — they have at least an outside chance to defy one of the most consistent trends in US politics.

What’s at stake: Democrats would have two more years of complete control in Washington (outside of the Supreme Court). The legislative agenda is theirs to set. What do they want to do?

Based on interviews with current and former congressional staff, as well as lobbyists and progressive advocates, two items would almost surely be the subject of legislative debate and possible action: abortion rights and election integrity.

The consequences of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision and anti-democratic radicalism within the Republican Party have been the two of the most consistent themes in Democratic campaigns this cycle.

Both would likely require modifying the filibuster in the Senate, presuming (as we safely can) Democrats are still short of a 60-vote supermajority. That is where the difference between a 50-seat Democratic majority and a 52-seat one matters; Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) are resolutely opposed to weakening the filibuster, but incoming Democratic senators will have signaled an openness to it on the campaign trail.

Some bills — the Women’s Health Protection Act on reproductive rights, the Electoral Count Reform Act (if it doesn’t pass this Congress), and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act for election integrity — could serve as a starting point for those efforts, if the filibuster were no longer an obstacle. But they are only starting points and far from finished products, as earlier Senate Democratic disagreements about the WHPA and voting rights laid bare.

Democrats would also have a chance to pass budget reconciliation legislation without having to worry about the filibuster (though they would be limited in what they could do).

“The good news is it’s highly unlikely the government is going to shut down and you can still pass a lot of stuff using the reconciliation process,” said Jim Manley, a longtime strategist for former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. “Nothing comes easy on Capitol Hill these days, but it helps your odds of getting something done besides continuing to fund the government.”

The contours of any reconciliation bill would depend on the macroeconomic situation. Is inflation still at historic highs? Has the economy entered a recession and sent unemployment soaring? That would dictate, at least in part, how much Democrats might be willing to approve new spending or hike taxes to pay for their spending plans.

The leftover pieces of Biden’s Build Back Better plan would likely be the starting point for any reconciliation bill that the next Congress might decide to pursue in 2023. Democrats passed climate provisions as well as fixes to the Affordable Care Act as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. But entire swaths of the BBB agenda focused on child care, pre-K, and long-term care for seniors and people with disabilities were cut out during the 18-month negotiations that were largely driven by Manchin and Sinema’s desires.

What constraints would the party in power face? The 2024 election looms, with either Joe Biden preparing to run for reelection (more likely if Democrats win a historic victory in the midterms) or a swarm of possible successors jockeying for a position from Capitol Hill. The Senate map in 2024 is much less favorable to Democrats than it was in 2022, which may make Senate leaders reluctant to put their most vulnerable members (in states like Montana, Arizona, and Wisconsin) through a messy legislative debate or force them to take difficult votes.

“If you’re just thinking of it from that perspective, with all those Democrats up for reelection, I question how much of an appetite there’s going to be for a progressive agenda,” Manley said.

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It would also make a difference whether Democrats continue to cling to 50 seats in the Senate, leaving Manchin and Sinema (who are up for reelection themselves in 2024) with an effective veto pen over the legislative agenda. If they can expand their majority to, say, 52, that would give party leadership some wiggle room in deciding which policies to pursue.

Those would likely be difficult debates, on both the particulars of the policy and the prospect of changing the Senate’s rules for good. But progressives argue Democrats would have a mandate to act.

A Democratic victory would reflect “overreach by the GOP in terms of extremism, plus Democrats competently governing in some difficult terrain,” said Mary Small, national advocacy director for Indivisible. “Codifying abortion rights has also been a galvanizing issue for voters.”

Still, progressives hope Democrats feel emboldened if they wake up one morning in November (or December, depending) and learn they are still in control of Congress. They will have passed two major bills (the American Rescue Plan and IRA), weathered soaring inflation, and still earned the trust of voters.

They will also try to learn from the mistakes of the past two years, where they feel a lengthy legislative debate reduced the urgency to get something done as the immediate concerns of voters and lawmakers transitioned from the economic recovery of early 2021 to the inflation crisis of 2022. They are hoping they can tell a more consistent story about how the policies that Democrats are proposing will materially improve voters’ lives.

“Doing nothing is not going to help us make the argument in 2024,” Small said. An unlikely victory in 2022, she said, would call for “repeating their work to call out the extremism of the GOP and to competently deliver on ways that improve people’s lives materially.”

What Republicans would do if they win back Congress

Originally published in Vox on September 14, 2022.
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With the midterm elections less than two months away, Republicans are strongly favored to win a majority of seats in the House. Democrats, for now, are expected to keep control of the Senate, though some of the contests — particularly Wisconsin, Georgia, and Nevada — could be particularly close.

With President Joe Biden’s veto power, the implications of Republicans reclaiming one or both chambers in Congress will have more to do with blunting a Democratic policy agenda than swiftly enacting conservative priorities.

But if they do win power, what do Republicans want to do with it? If you’ve had some trouble figuring that out, you’re not alone. It’s been confusing. Different factions within the party are competing for the agenda-setting mantle, and it’s been a long time since Republicans wrote a unified policy and governing platform. When they tried at their 2020 national convention, they ended up scrapping their plans. Instead, they kept their 2016 platform, and avoided an anticipated fight with Donald Trump over a new one.

Even the right-leaning magazine National Review observed recently that “Republicans are doing little to explain what they would have the government do differently if they took power.” There has been a mix of proposals introduced with varying degrees of specificity, and previews of the intraparty fights we might see over the next few years.

It’s always easier for a party to appear united when they’re in the minority, but if Republicans reclaim power, they will have the much harder task of needing to unite around a real agenda. That’s when they’ll have to make real decisions on issues like abortion bans, civil rights, rollbacks of environmental protections, and welfare subsidies.

Here are the many competing proposals for the GOP’s policy vision — and what they tell us about what might come next.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s forthcoming “Commitment to America”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has been preparing for a world where he becomes majority leader, and has been taking cues from Newt Gingrich, who in 1994 helped write the “Contract with America” that House Republicans used to successfully return to power. When the GOP retook the House in 1994, they worked swiftly to bring votes on their agenda.

Gingrich has been advising Republicans over the past year, suggesting they focus on “kitchen table” issues, on being “happy warriors” who are enthusiastic about the future of the country, and on doubling down on government oversight and accountability, like election security and Biden investigations.

McCarthy is even calling his forthcoming platform the “Commitment to America” — a name intentionally resonant of Gingrich’s 1994 plan. The Commitment to America, which has been in the works since last June, is expected to be formally announced September 19 in Pittsburgh, according to Axios.

Much of the platform will sound familiar to anyone who has read news headlines over the last few years, with bullet-point themes around economic conditions, crime, race, and gender. Details are sparse, but ideas it’s expected to contain include fighting inflation by ending “Build Back Better” federal spending, reimposing work requirements to incentivize labor force participation, and lowering gas prices by increasing American energy production.

School-related issues include a “Parents’ Bill of Rights” and expanding school choice.

Republicans also plan to target Big Tech and illegal immigration, and to increase funding for police and the military. Holding the Biden administration accountable for “mismanagement” and supporting gun owners and anti-abortion groups are additional listed priorities.

While the platform takes aim at rising health care premiums and a “Democrat socialist drug takeover” that the GOP says could lead to fewer treatments, the McCarthy agenda notably excludes any language about repealing Obamacare — a priority for the first eight years of the law’s existence.

Mitch McConnell has resisted any specific agenda

While McCarthy is looking to 1994, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is urging his party to instead heed the playbook from 2014, when Republicans seized midterm control of the Senate chamber after campaigning primarily just against President Barack Obama.

He thinks the Commitment for America-style bullet points are too politically risky and create too many opportunities for Democrats to attack the Republican Party. Last fall, McConnell rejected pleas from colleagues and donors to release a legislative agenda, preferring instead to keep the midterms as a referendum on the White House incumbent.

McConnell suggested that whoever is the 2024 Republican nominee for president can lead the process of crafting the party’s next agenda, in part out of recognition that Biden holds veto power until then. Still, not everyone in his chamber agrees; Sen. Lindsey Graham came out this week with a bill banning abortion after 15 weeks, sending a clear, if expected, signal about what he’d push for if his party takes power.

Some Republicans are getting specific

The House’s conservative caucus, the Republican Study Committee, and two presidential hopefuls have also entered the fray in releasing policy priorities.

In June, the RSC released a 122-page manifesto dubbed the Blueprint to Save America, with a long list of conservative ideas. While not a formula campaign document per se — it’s billed as an alternative budget to the one put forth by Democrats — it gives much clearer indications as to where House Republicans might go if they take power, as nearly 75 percent of House GOP members are in the RSC.

For example, while the Commitment to America platform states merely that the party would “defend the unborn, fight for life,” the Blueprint to Save America lists nearly two dozen anti-abortion bills the caucus supports codifying, including a bill effectively prohibiting abortions after about six weeks, and one that would provide 14th Amendment protections to fetuses.

Likewise, while the Commitment to America platform includes preventing transgender girls from playing school sports with other girls, the RSC platform lists seven specific anti-trans bills the caucus supports codifying, including one that would create a new criminal offense for providing gender-affirming health care to minors.

While Republicans may realize that campaigning explicitly on the items in the Blueprint to Save America creates more political vulnerabilities than the vague ideas in the Commitment to America, the RSC document offers more concrete clues as to what exactly conservative lawmakers are looking to do if they gain power.

Florida Sen. Rick Scott, a first-term senator and chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, in March released his own 12-point “Plan to Rescue America” — billed as an agenda for the House and Senate if Republicans take power in November. Like the other aforementioned proposals, it’s a mix of cutting taxes, fighting Big Tech and crime, and pushing cultural fights in schools, though some of its components seem more geared toward standing out in a future Republican presidential primary. For example, Scott recommends completing the border wall and naming it after Donald Trump, putting “America First,” and fighting socialism. (“Socialism will be treated as a foreign combatant which aims to destroy our prosperity and freedom,” Scott’s platform proclaims.)

Former Vice President Mike Pence also released his own 28-page policy proposal in March, dubbed a “Freedom Agenda.” It’s gained little traction among midterm candidates, but that probably wasn’t really the point, as analysts suspect he might use it for himself if he decides to run for president in 2024.

Centrists are pleading for a different path

Some political analysts and policy wonks are pushing for moderation and compromise if Republicans take control — likely a tough sell for many conservatives who are loath to give Biden any more bipartisan wins ahead of the 2024 election.

Last month, leaders with American Compass, a conservative think tank that bills itself as pro-worker and pro-family, penned a New York Times op-ed urging the GOP, if it takes power next year, to consider bipartisan dealmaking on industrial policy with China, apprenticeships and non-college educational pathways, and something like Sen. Mitt Romney’s proposed expanded child tax credit. “The common force pushing forward these various policy opportunities is the evolution in conservative thinking toward greater focus on the interests of the working class and a greater role for government in addressing the free market’s shortcomings,” they wrote.

In July, Douglas Schoen, a centrist Democratic campaign consultant who advised Mike Bloomberg’s 2020 presidential run, wrote an op-ed in The Hill urging the Republican Party “to coalesce around a moderate agenda that offers real solutions” and avoids “relitigating past grievances.” Schoen suggested some ideas that have been part of aforementioned Republican platforms, like prioritizing deficit reduction, loosening regulations on America’s energy sector, providing parents with school choice options, and increasing funding for law enforcement.

He also suggests that, “perhaps most importantly,” conservatives should moderate on abortion and guns, something no GOP coalition is calling for.

“By assuming a more open stance on abortion legality, Republicans can better sell their party as one that protects individual liberties,” Schoen writes. “Similarly, by moving to the middle on guns, the GOP can position and promote themselves as the law and order party.”

These latter proposals will likely fall on deaf ears for now.

The Trump wild card

One hard-to-predict variable that could greatly affect what Republicans do if they reclaim power in Congress is Trump, and how much pressure he seeks to put on their governing agenda. Trump made dozens of endorsements in congressional and gubernatorial elections, and even though his candidates’ win rate has been declining over past cycles, his influence over Republican voters, and thus candidates looking to win Republican primaries, is still very strong. If he mounts a bid for president, that could also affect the trajectory of a Republican-led House. He’s already promised that, if elected in 2024, he’d pardon January 6 rioters, sentence drug dealers to death, and abolish the federal Education Department.

Expect investigations and maybe an impeachment push

While the Commitment to America platform is sticking to less controversial euphemisms like “hold the Biden administration accountable,” some rank-and-file Republicans have been more explicit about the revenge and retribution they’d push for if their party takes over.

In late August, The Hill reported that some members plan to push for impeachment of the president, some of whom have already introduced at least eight resolutions to do that. While the existing impeachment resolutions will expire at the end of the year, some lawmakers have vowed to reintroduce theirs in January, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. Another possibility is to push for impeachment of other high-ranking Biden administration officials, but not Biden himself. McConnell has urged his party to avoid campaigning in the midterms on impeachment, and a highly politicized impeachment process is unlikely to be a unifying strategy for the 2024 election, but sometimes pressure for impeachment takes on its own hard-to-control momentum.

Aside from impeachment, Republicans have confirmed they’re looking at holding a series of House investigations next year if they take power, specifically on areas like Democrats’ handling of the southern border, the DOJ, inflation, and energy. Rep. James Comer (R-KY) is set to lead the House Oversight and Reform Committee and told Politico he also wants to spearhead investigations into the business dealings of Hunter Biden and the origins of Covid-19.

Campaigns may have lost their most effective — and annoying — outreach tool

Originally published at Vox.com on July 19, 2022

Text messaging — with their markedly high “open rates” — is an especially potent form of political outreach: Since 2016, texting has become one of the most appealing ways for campaigns to engage voters or supporters, especially as so many have ditched their landlines.

But as part of a broader effort to crack down on the fast-growing problem of spam calls and texts, mobile carriers like AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon have been rolling out a new policy that affects any business, nonprofit, union, or campaign that intends to send at least 3,000 messages per day.

It means that political campaigns and advocacy groups have fewer rights to text you, if you haven’t affirmatively opted in to receive the messages — and it’s causing distress among those groups ahead of the midterms.

The changes — known as “10DLC” for the 10-digit long codes that high-volume businesses and apps use to text local numbers — will require organizations to register with the Campaign Registry, a subsidiary of the Milan-based communications firm Kaleyra. Carriers will impose higher messaging fees and slower delivery rates for any group that fails to register, and in some cases block them from delivering messages altogether.

Every registered group must also limit their texts only to users who have opted-in to receive them, a massive change from the status quo. Progressive groups warn this new requirement will yield dire democratic consequences — particularly for the most marginalized who are typically ignored by elites and politicians. Others suggest these groups have grown too reliant on unsolicited texting, and that it’s not essential to successful mobilization.

Campaigns had a preview of what the future might look like if they fail to comply with the new 10DLC rules. Last month, a Democratic National Committee texting campaign, meant to notify voters that it was primary day, provide them with information on making a voting plan, and invite them to attend a free virtual training on mobilizing others, was suspended after at least five recipients of the roughly 50,000 registered complaints about the unsolicited blasts.

Recipients of the DNC texts had been invited to opt-out of future messages by texting back “stop,” and the DNC said their records indicated that everyone they texted had expressed interest in receiving the messages either by opting in or having affirmatively engaged with the committee before in other ways. Still, the handful of complaints triggered an audit, and the committee’s ability to send messages from that particular number is still suspended.

“This shutdown … is nothing less than the silencing of core political speech at the hands of a private company pursuant to an ambiguous, unwritten policy,” DNC executive director Sam Cornale wrote in a letter to the CEOs of AT&T and T-Mobile. “As we have explained, in the wake of unprecedented voter disenfranchisement efforts, text messages have become a critical tool in combatting misinformation and attempts to disenfranchise in real time. … The health of our democracy demands you act now to change this harmful policy.”

Scott Goodstein, who led Barack Obama’s pioneering texting program during the 2008 cycle and was the lead digital adviser to Bernie Sander’s 2016 campaign, said the Democratic committees’ defense of unsolicited messages is short-sighted.

“The DNC has no incentive to think about this differently,” he told Vox. “Spamming fundraising donor lists works and helps politicians raise a few extra bucks, but spamming low-turnout voters may not help these politicians communicate with this transient but critical portion of the electorate. What if we went into these communities and held different events to get opt-in? It’s a lot more work but that’s the point. They’re thinking short-term and not long-term.”

10DLC is the mobile carrier solution to spam text messaging

There’s little question anymore that people are being flooded with unsolicited texts: Aside from just being annoying, government agencies say the increased spam is leading to higher rates of fraud. In 2020, criminals stole at least $86 million through frauds originating in spam texts — with examples like targeting seniors on Medicare, claiming to offer extended warranties for cars, or impersonating Covid-19 contact tracers. The median amount customers lost was $800.

In 1991, Congress passed the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) to stop robocalls and auto-dialers that contacted individuals without their consent. But organizations that send texts have been able to operate in a legal gray area, by having individuals press “send” on mass-texting tech platforms — thus blurring the line between automated and human outreach.

Mobile carriers say their new 10DLC policy is a response not only to customer dissatisfaction but also to a political climate that’s been urging more serious intervention.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, both Democrats, wrote separate letters to the Federal Communications Commission over the last year urging greater attention and action on the issue of spam calls and texts.

The 10DLC policy was supposed to be rolled out last year but was delayed following requests from members of Congress to wait until after the 2021 elections. The changes took effect in March.

Mike Donoghue, the co-founder and CEO of Subtext, a company that connects media organizations, artists, and other creators with audiences over text, said his company has welcomed 10DLC and thinks it will help build and retain trust with the public.

“A lot of other players have tried to ignore it or pretend it’s not going to happen but it’s already happened and we’re not going back,” he told Vox.

Goodstein, who now runs a progressive digital marketing agency called Catalyst Campaigns, says he doesn’t actually believe the 10DLC regulations will be effective in controlling political spam texts, in part because the penalties are so weak and there’s little stopping a company from just contacting individuals who complain or opt-out from a different long-code number.

“It’s just whack-a-mole with 10DLC until there’s real pain,” Goodstein said, noting that with CAN-SPAM, a 2003 federal law passed to block unsolicited email, violators faced hefty fines, prosecutions, and even jail time. “Which is why you didn’t get spam from Pizza Hut,” he added.

Advocates warn 10DLC will lead to voter suppression

Progressive advocacy groups and Democratic campaign leaders have been working for over a year to try and convince mobile carriers to exempt them from 10DLC rules. Democratic lawyers have thus far urged federal campaigns to not register, in part to avoid conceding the point that 10DLC should include political groups.

In a letter sent to the CEO of AT&T, Congressional Black Caucus PAC chairman Rep. Gregory Meeks argued that the proposed 10DLC policies “will lead to the disenfranchisement of minority voters across the country” by limiting their ability to do voter education outreach.

And in February, in joint letters to T-Mobile and AT&T’s CEOs sent by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Governors Association, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, and the DNC, the executive directors collectively urged against implementing the opt-in requirement for political texts.

Doing so “would have catastrophic implications for the ability of political parties, candidates, and other political committees to engage with their volunteers to communicate regarding voter education, GOTV messaging, and other essential political speech,” they wrote. “You are proposing to drastically curtail political expression at the core of our democratic system, speech that is at the very heart of First Amendment protections.”

The executive directors pitched what they saw as a compromise plan, where political campaigns and committees would still register with the Campaign Registry, but not be subject to any opt-in requirement so long as they give individuals the option to opt-out. Requiring opt-in “would undermine our democratic process and hinder access to the polls,” they wrote.

Five months later, on July 12, Anthony Russo, vice president of legislative affairs for T-Mobile, wrote back rejecting this idea, saying requiring opt-in is essential to protecting customers. “There is no confusion about this requirement — simply unwillingness to abide by it,” Russo wrote. “While many political, civic-oriented, and other non-profit organizations have the laudable intentions, T-Mobile’s primary concern is for its customers and ensuring they receive only those messages they want to receive.”

Elvin Bruno, the director of mobile fundraising at Grassroots Analytics, a firm that helps Democratic candidates raise money, told Vox the rollout of 10DLC has had a dramatic impact on campaigns so far, especially smaller campaigns on the local and statewide level.
“The regulations have been inconsistent, poorly communicated, and all the deadlines and dates have changed,” he said. “I can’t stress enough how bureaucratic and unclear it has been to navigate, even for folks like us who are working with the largest political operations in the country.”

Republican campaigns haven’t made as much noise against the proposed regulations, though they say 10DLC is part of a larger threat rooted in the power of technology companies to discriminate.

“From Google suppressing Republican GOTV and fundraising emails to mobile carriers censoring and policing political speech, Big Tech is blatantly trampling on First Amendment rights,” said Emma Vaughn, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee. “Republicans will continue leading the fight to protect our rights against Big Tech billionaires. For them, it’s all about power and control — if they can silence political candidates, they can silence you.”

Mobile carriers, and their trade association, CTIA, say they’ve continuously engaged with political groups and collected feedback throughout the process, but stand by 10DLC and enforcing industry best practices.

“We believe customers should be able to control which entities send them bulk text messages, which is why we’re requiring bulk message senders to acknowledge they have recipients’ consent before participating in our program as a registered sender,” said Alex Byers, a spokesperson for AT&T. “This approach enables customers to receive messages they want and protects them from unwanted robotexts.”

When asked about the concern about blocking get-out-the-vote text messages ahead of the November election, Byers noted that customer complaints are the primary metric carriers would look at to determine if a message is unwanted or spam. “Our experience is that informational texts like these would be highly unlikely to generate many complaints,” he said.

Donoghue of Subtext thinks the professed concern that 10DLC will inhibit voters from learning things like changes to their polling location are largely smokescreens, and most political groups simply resent the idea that they should get consent before texting.

“If you randomly sampled 10 text messages from a given campaign, I suspect the vast majority are going to be asking people to do something, like signing a petition or making a donation,” Donoghue said. “But campaigns shouldn’t want to send messages that people find annoying. I think a lot of folks are starting to realize that.”

The FCC has flipped-flopped on the issue, though more federal intervention may be coming

Back in 2012, Goodstein and his firm Revolution Messaging petitioned the FCC to clarify that the Telephone Consumer Protection Act did not distinguish between emails that turned into texts, and regular texts. This was a texting loophole popular at the time, and Goodstein saw his crusade as a consumer protection mission, given that individuals pay for the cost of receiving text messages, unlike receiving political flyers in the mail, or emails. Even if your phone plan includes unlimited texts, senders are not privy to that information ahead of time.

In late October 2012, just before the presidential election, a Virginia marketing firm that had represented Republican candidates began sending out anonymous texts with attacks against Barack Obama. “If re-elected, Obama will use taxpayer money to fund abortion. Don’t let this happen,” read one of the messages. “Medicare goes bankrupt in 4000 days while Obama plays politics with senior health,” read another. By using the email-to-text loophole, the marketing firm was able to bypass the TCPA requirement for opt-in consent. When reporters eventually figured out who was behind the unsolicited texts, the founder of the firm claimed they were exercising their First Amendment rights.

In 2015, then-FCC chair Tom Wheeler finally ruled on the petition, and clarified that “consumers are entitled to the same consent-based protections for texts as they are for voice calls to wireless numbers.” It was a win for Goodstein and those who believed political texts without opt-in consent were TCPA violations and simply unethical.

But in 2018, the P2P Alliance, a coalition of providers and users of peer-to-peer (P2P) text messaging, filed a new petition with the FCC, asking for exemption from TCPA’s rules. In June 2020, the FCC, chaired by Ajit Pai, issued a ruling affirming P2P was distinct from autodialing, a win for campaigns and advocacy groups that wanted assurance they could contact people without opt-in consent.

Goodstein says the FCC must reverse this decision and close the loopholes that allow political spammers to run amok. The new 10DLC rules, he believes, won’t be enough to stop bad actors. The P2P Alliance spent over $130,000 lobbying in 2021, and over $50,000 this year.

Representatives from the Democratic political committees welcome the FCC’s attention in this area, but they say expecting action ahead of the 2022 elections is unrealistic.

Will Wiquist, an FCC spokesperson, pointed to a proposal the agency’s chairwoman, Jessica Rosenworcel, circulated to her colleagues last October. Rosenworcel proposed launching a rule-making process to require mobile wireless providers to block illegal text messaging. If adopted, the rule-making would explore steps like network level blocking and applying caller authentication standards to text messaging.

“The item has yet to be adopted and remains up for a vote by the full Commission,” said Wiquist.

Heading into November, some progressive advocates and Democratic leaders say the 10DLC rules pose an existential threat to a free and fair election. Restrictions on text messages will enable more voter suppression, they warn, and opportunities for misinformation to spread, unchallenged. Goodstein says the opposite is true, that allowing unsolicited political texts to flow freely will annoy people to the point where they just tune out everything.

“Just like sending hundreds of robocalls a few days before elections, some portion of these undecided voters are going to become disenfranchised,” he said. “They’ll be confused on what to believe, and less motivated to engage.”

The Bogus Claim That School Closures Will Doom Democrats

Originally published in The New Republic on January 25, 2022.
————

If you’ve read any national news stories over the past few months about the political implications of pandemic-induced school closures, you’ve likely come across Brian Stryker’s name. He’s become the go-to source for reporters and commentators—particularly those at The New York Times. The paper ran a Q&A with him in early December titled, “A Pollster’s Warning to Democrats: ‘We Have a Problem.’” His work has been cited in subsequent op-eds of The New York Times and was featured prominently in a recent Times piece built around the idea that more omicron-induced school closures urged by teachers’ unions could spell disaster for Democrats next fall. On the basis of a survey Stryker’s firm conducted of 500 Virginia voters, the Times stated unequivocally that “polling showed that school disruptions were an important issue for swing voters who broke Republican—particularly suburban white women.”

Stryker, a partner at the Democratic polling firm Anzalone Liszt Grove Research (which announced it’d be changing its name to Impact Research last week), gained this prominence following a widely circulated memo he and his colleague Oren Savir published in mid-November, which analyzed Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Virginia’s gubernatorial election. The memo reported findings from an online focus group of 18 suburban Biden voters in Northern Virginia and the Richmond metro area, and states that while concerns over “critical race theory” were a problem for voters, school closures were a bigger factor. Perhaps most ominously, their memo quoted a Biden voter who cast her ballot for Youngkin as saying her vote “was against the party that closed the schools for so long last year.”

Democrats have plenty of reasons to fret about the upcoming midterm elections. While Joe Biden won by over seven million votes nationally in 2020, Democrats were devastated down the ballot. The party failed to flip any of the dozen state legislative chambers it had targeted and lost 13 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Election analysts attribute Biden’s victory in large part to suburban women who loathed Donald Trump, but Trump won’t be on the ballot in November, plus midterms have historically been bad for the party of first-term presidents. Voters are concerned about inflation, and Joe Biden’s approval rating hovers, roughly, at a troublingly low 40 percent.

Yet one much weaker midterm theory, curiously, has gained traction among the political elite, especially following the rise of the omicron variant. The slow pace of school reopenings in the 2020–21 school year, we’re told, still represents a significant political liability for Democrats, one that could grow even worse as some school districts close temporarily this month due to Covid-19. Blaming teachers’ unions and Democrats who ally with those unions is also part of this cautionary tale. Alexander Nazaryan, a Yahoo News reporter, went so far as to call Chicago’s teacher strike this month a “Reagan vs. air traffic controllers moment.” If Biden doesn’t “stand up to” teachers’ unions on school closures, Nazaryan warned, “he loses credibility at a critical time in his presidency.”

Perhaps because many of the people who lead these conversations are frustrated parents themselves, the idea that school closures will come to haunt Democrats is something that to many of them feels true or, at the very least, highly plausible. Life remains logistically and emotionally challenging for parents in countless ways, especially those with kids under 5, and so there’s a sense that surely something’s got to give.

Throughout the first six months of the pandemic, many of those same voices also warned that Democrats would pay a steep political cost. That didn’t bear out in the 2020 election. The loudest critics have insisted that Democrats will push for a full return to remote learning—despite the truth that most politicians and union leaders have suggested only temporary accommodations as the country weathers the quickly rising and quickly falling omicron wave of infections.

Instead of a practical debate, online discourse creates an artificial dichotomy, in which one can only belong to one of two camps: an adherence to complete lockdown until we achieve “Covid-zero” or a complete return to pre-pandemic normalcy. But outside Twitter and op-ed pages, many surveys and studies have shown that actual parents and voters hold much more nuanced views. They can hate the harms of distance learning while determining when the pandemic has altered how they want to live and school their children. They can express frustration with their circumstances but maintain that not all problems have immediate resolutions and clear villains.

The latest eruption of the school-closure debate has been defined by a bout of amnesia, one that has erased the bountiful evidence of public sentiment from the 2020–21 school year.

Throughout the pandemic, including during the first few months of 2021, poll after poll showed that most parents and most voters—including the majority of Democrats and independents—were not in favor of sending kids back to K-12 schools full-time, at least until teachers and seniors were vaccinated.

In mid-February last year, 74 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of independents told Politico/Morning Consult that states should wait to reopen until teachers had received the coronavirus vaccine. A separate Quinnipiac poll from the same time period found just 27 percent of adults thought schools were reopening too slowly, with 47 percent of adults saying they felt reopenings were taking place at the right pace, and 18 percent reporting schools were reopening too quickly. Another February 2021 poll from YouGov/HuffPost found just 27 percent of adults thought schools should be completely reopened, with 29 percent backing partial reopening and 30 percent supporting virtual learning.



The findings were consistent when pollsters talked to just K-12 parents. The University of Southern California asked a nationally representative sample of parents in late January 2021 how their child was learning—in person, remotely, or hybrid—and then asked what they would want for their child if they could choose any option. USC found that 75 percent of parents said their child was receiving the type of instruction they wanted. A separate poll, released by the National Parents Union, found that in mid-January, about two-thirds of public school parents were getting the kind of schooling they preferred for their kids, with about 20 percent wanting more in-person instruction and 10 percent wanting less. EdChoice, a national school choice group, polled U.S. parents monthly, beginning in May 2020, about their comfort level sending their child back to school. Parental comfort levels didn’t break 60 percent until April 2021.

This was all true despite millions of parents and voters expressing deep dissatisfaction with virtual learning, concerned about its toll on academic progress and children’s emotional and social well-being. Seventy-two percent of voters told RMG Research last February that they saw in-person learning as better than virtual instruction, and 57 percent of parents told Yahoo!/YouGov last January they thought their child had fallen behind academically. Sixty-four percent of parents whose children were learning remotely in October 2020 told Pew they were concerned about their child maintaining friendships and social connections, compared to just 49 percent of parents whose kids were attending school in person.

But it doesn’t require any great intellectual leap to bridge these two divides. One could easily favor in-person learning in the abstract, hold real worries about the implications of virtual school, and yet still determine that remote learning is the right call at that time given the risks of the pandemic. Individual families inevitably have different risk thresholds based on resources and other factors. Low-income, Black, and Latino families were more likely last year to prefer remote learning even as studies showed those children suffered greater learning losses in subjects like math and reading from virtual school compared to their white peers.

David Houston, an education policy professor at George Mason University and the survey director for the annual EdNext survey, told me that was indeed consistent with public opinion research. “We asked parents in spring 2020, fall 2020, and spring 2021, ‘Do you think your kid is learning more or less or about the same?’ Folks aren’t fools, they certainly don’t think their kids were doing as well as they would have under normal conditions,” he said. “But simultaneously we asked a question about satisfaction with the instruction and activities provided by their child’s school, and the rates were really pretty darn high.”

When kids returned from summer break in the fall of 2021, life looked quite different in most parts of the country. Things were far from the “normal” of what classrooms of 2019 looked like—delta was circulating, kids were often wearing masks, and individual classes would shut down for a period after a string of positive tests—but the vast majority of children were back learning in school buildings full-time.

Parental attitudes also lifted. Reputable polling has shown broad satisfaction among parents with having their kids back inside schools and no increase in negative views toward teachers’ unions. Surveys have also shown that voters—particularly Democrats and independents—are not holding Democrats responsible for last year’s school closures.

The University of Southern California’s Understanding America Survey surveyed parents four times during the pandemic: October 2020, when 29 percent had fully in-person school; April-May 2021, when 50 percent were in person; June 2021, when 79 percent were on summer break; and October 2021, when 93 percent were in person. The researchers found that parents’ concerns about their child’s learning had gone down significantly last fall. When asked about their school’s efforts to meet their children’s needs—including academically, socially, and mentally—82 percent to 91 percent of parents were satisfied in each area. “This level of positivity was consistent across subgroups,” they reported, “including by race/ethnicity, household income, parental education level, region of the country, urbanicity, partisanship, and grade levels.”

Likewise, in a nationwide poll conducted in early December by Global Strategy Group and GBAO, researchers found just 13 percent of Democrats and 27 percent of independents described Democrats closing schools as a “very concerning” school-related issue to them, compared to 60 percent of Republicans. More Democrats and independents—17 and 39 percent, respectively—said they were very concerned that Democrats were promoting critical race theory in schools.

In a national survey of public school parents registered to vote conducted last month by Hart Research Associates and Lake Research Partners, pollsters found 78 percent of parents expressed satisfaction with their school’s overall handling of the pandemic, and 83 percent reported satisfaction with their school’s efforts to keep students and staff safe. Moreover, just 22 percent of parents said they felt their school waited too long to resume in-person instruction, while three-fourths felt their school struck a good balance between safety and learning (48 percent) or actually moved too quickly to reopen (26 percent).

Although repeated efforts to pit parents against teachers were never successful, the national conversation shifted back to the artificial construct once journalists and talking heads began analyzing how Republicans retook Virginia’s governorship and gave New Jersey’s Democratic Governor Phil Murphy a much more competitive reelection than anyone anticipated. 
The ALG survey and focus group provide useful insights. Focus groups, like the best journalism, can be particularly valuable for drawing out further hypotheses to test. But treating that research as dispositive is a mistake, particularly when other high-quality surveys have found evidence that conflicts with or complicates ALG’s findings.

Geoff Garin, a longtime Democratic pollster and president of Hart Research Associates, did some polling for Terry McAuliffe during the election, followed by an in-depth postelection survey of more than 2,400 Virginia voters after the election on behalf of the Democratic Governors Association. “It’s very clear that education was a dominant factor in driving the outcome of the race, but there’s really no evidence that the question of school closures was an important part of that,” he told me. Garin’s research found that 9 percent of Biden voters switched to Glenn Youngkin in 2021 and that education was indeed a top-cited issue for this pivotal subset.

But rather than school closures, Garin said, these people talked exclusively about Terry McAuliffe’s comments surrounding parent involvement in school. In a late-September gubernatorial debate, McAuliffe declared, “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions,” adding, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Youngkin’s campaign made those deeply unpopular remarks a centerpiece of his campaign in the closing weeks of the race, running ads and circulating petitions and fliers stressing that “Parents Matter.” Under the umbrella of parental involvement, Youngkin’s campaign also leaned on other issues agitating parents like mask and vaccine mandates, transgender rights, and racial equity initiatives.

In the ALG memo, Stryker and Savir argue that, yes, McAuliffe’s gaffe resonated, but it really hit home because it played into existing frustrations parents had over school closures and feeling “that Democrats didn’t listen to parents when they kept the schools closed past any point of reason.”

Garin says his research showed no such thing. “It was completely clear in the surveys from the last few weeks of the election and postelection that voters were reacting to McAuliffe’s comments,” Garin told me. “Youngkin put that quotation front and center with an enormous amount of advertising; he and his campaign never related it to school closures.” Among the Biden-Youngkin voters, Garin’s research found 54 percent said McAuliffe’s position on the role of parents in schools influenced their vote, and 41 percent said his position on the teaching of critical race theory influenced their vote.

These aren’t entirely separate matters. As opposition to CRT becomes heavily associated with Republicans, liberals and moderates who also feel racial and social justice causes have “gone too far” are more likely to glom onto another slogan that allows them to express the same idea without feeling it’s so conservative. Christopher Rufo, the Manhattan Institute activist who got Trump to take notice of CRT in the fall of 2020, has embraced calling their legislative crusade against diversity, equity, and inclusion a “parent’s movement” and describes their efforts as a push for “parental transparency” on curriculum.

Mario Brossard, a senior research vice president at the Democratic polling firm Global Strategy Group, who conducted polling in October on CRT, told me, “It is clear that the discussion or the talking points around having parents have more input into the curriculum” is being used as a euphemism for CRT. “The folks who are anti-CRT are fairly well entrenched, and they hold those sentiments quite strongly,” he said.  “What Christopher Rufo is trying to do is make it more palatable to a broader cross section of voters, parents, and Americans generally by talking about parental input into the curriculum.”

In the ALG focus group memo being widely cited as evidence that CRT is just not as big an issue, the researchers did say that participants, even as they conceded critical race theory wasn’t formally taught in schools, talked about feeling “like racial and social justice issues were overtaking math, history, and other things” and “worried that racial and cultural issues are taking over the state’s curricula.”

A Fox News Voter Analysis survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, which polled over 2,500 Virginia voters after the election, found a stunning 72 percent of respondents said the debate over teaching CRT in schools was “an important” factor to them, with a quarter calling it “the single most important” factor.

This doesn’t fully discount the school-closure explanation. The Fox survey also found 27 percent of voters ranked “the debate over handling Covid-19 in schools” as their single-most important issue. But of that cohort, two-thirds cast their ballot for Terry McAuliffe. Given that the aforementioned Covid-19 debate could encompass masks, vaccine requirements, and virtual schooling, it’s hard to parse out exactly what’s going on. But the fact that voters who said it was the most salient for them broke heavily for McAuliffe goes against the conventional narrative.

Michael Hartney, a political scientist at Boston College, did a postelection analysis for Chalkbeat, where he found Youngkin made slightly larger gains in regions where schools took longer to fully reopen, controlling for the share of Trump voters and white voters in a given area.

He also found that Youngkin did no better in places that had a school district staff member dedicated to diversity, or that mentioned equity in its mission, proxies he designed for CRT. 

“The analysis was by no means perfect, but I do think it showed that there is little systematic evidence that Youngkin ran up vote share (relative to Trump) in districts which have more heavily emphasized diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives,” Hartney told me via email, stressing he was doing “merely an exploratory analysis.” Hartney added that he’s waiting on getting some postelection micro-survey data to analyze and tease out some of these patterns more carefully.

Brian Stryker, the ALG pollster, told me he doesn’t know why school closures didn’t come up in Geoff Garin’s postelection survey but maintained they were a big deal in his research. He stressed the importance of candidates and elected officials showing more empathy for the hardship families have faced and continue to face around schools.

“Going to remote learning is deeply unpopular, it just feels like that’s in the ether, it’s the thing that you hear from parents all the time,” he said. (Stryker lives in Chicago, where schools closed earlier this month.) “That’s not a very scientific thing to say,” he added, “but the focus groups and surveys are backed up by every parent that I talk to in my life, and they’re all furious about the closing and all worried their school is going to be next.”

On Twitter earlier this month, Stryker shared a Suffolk/USA Today poll showing 66 percent of the country and 52 percent of Democrats oppose shifting schools to remote learning to contain the spread of omicron. “Hard data to back up what we’re all feeling—closing schools, on top of being an educational disaster, is a political disaster for Democrats too,” Stryker tweeted.

But when I brought up that polls showed most voters, including parents, were not in favor of fully reopening schools before vaccines came out, he agreed that “minds changed around the vaccine, once teachers were getting vaccinated, once grandparents were getting vaccinated.”

Has he found any evidence that leads him to conclude voters will hold Democrats responsible in November for schools that close during the omicron wave?

“I think 10 months is a long time, and I think parents are pretty understanding of the fact that people are very sick right now; nobody wants teachers to go to school with the coronavirus,” he said. “Should there be another wave that looks like omicron, we may have to reassess, but in 10 months, if this isn’t still happening, I don’t think it will be a huge voting issue.” 

Minimum Wage Measures Pass Easily in Four Red States

Originally published in The American Prospect on November 5, 2014.
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As devastating as Tuesday night’s election was for Democrats—Republicans took control of the Senate and won a number of key governor races—it was actually an encouraging night for the progressive economic agenda. In four red states—Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota—minimum wage ballot initiatives all passed easily. In San Francisco, voters overwhelmingly passed a $15 minimum wage—with notably little opposition from the business community. And in Illinois, voters sent a clear message through a non-binding advisory initiative that they want lawmakers to raise the minimum wage, and fast.

Increasing the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 has been a major economic priority for President Barack Obama, part of his effort to curb the nation’s rising levels of inequality. (Under Obama’s plan, year-round, full-time minimum-wage workers would go from making $15,080 per year to $21,008.) Yet ever since April, when congressional Republicans mobilized to block wage-hike legislation, progress on the federal level has gone nowhere.

In light of this, it’s interesting to see a state like South Dakota—a state that hasn’t supported a Democrat for president in decades—vote to raise the wage by a 53 percent margin. The initiative will result in 62,000 South Dakotans taking home higher paychecks. In an email to The American Prospect, Zach Crago, executive director of the South Dakota Democratic Party, said, “It’s about rewarding hard work with an honest wage. That message resonates with South Dakotans. Republican candidates oppose it at their own peril.”

Minimum wage initiatives were so popular among voters leading up to the election that even Republican candidates like Alaska gubernatorial candidate Dan Sullivan had to say they’d vote for a minimum wage increase. Sullivan did just that, despite his having opposed it before the primary. Alaska’s minimum wage initiative passed with nearly 69 percent of the vote. Ed Flanagan, a leader of the Alaskans for a Fair Minimum Wage campaign, told The American Prospect that while the campaign faced no real organized opposition, the conservative state legislature could still try and repeal the law in two years—a move they pulled on Alaskan voters back in 2002. But given the high percentage of Alaskans who voted to raise the wage, Flanagan hopes state lawmakers “will think twice about messing with the will of the people.”

In Arkansas, Republican U.S. Representative Tom Cotton, during his campaign for U.S. Senate, stayed mum for months on a potential minimum wage increase until it became so popular with Arkansas voters that he finally felt compelled to come out in September to back it. Cotton won his Senate race last night, but so did the minimum wage—with 65% of Arkansas voters supporting the ballot initiative.

Exit polls for states where minimum wage initiatives weren’t on the ballot also showed high levels of support for future increases. In Wisconsin, although Scott Walker was re-elected, and has consistently opposed increasing the minimum wage, a solid majority of Wisconsin voters said they’d like to see it raised higher than $7.25.

Undoubtedly, it was a damning night for the Democratic Party, but the picture isn’t entirely bleak for progressives. Exit polls reveal that 63 percent of voters believe the U.S. economic system favors the rich; this highlights a much larger national frustration for politicians to organize around. Arun Ivatury, a senior strategist with the National Employment Law Project Action Fund, told The American Prospect that, going forward, politicians who embrace economic populism “will run away from the pack in 2016, when the electorate looks much more like America. Those who don’t will be bypassed. It’s our job to make sure people know who is who.”