Anger over abortion bans may threaten democracy

If Republicans face post-Roe v. Wade headwinds over their unpopular abortion stance it will create strong, dangerous incentives to further skew democracy

In the medical field, a “crisis” is the point at which a disease either gets better or the patient dies. As history professor Thomas Zimmer recently noted, American democracy is now at this point. The outcome of this week’s vote in Kansas over whether to strip abortion rights from the state constitution helps explain why.

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On Tuesday, Kansas voted 59-41 percent to keep abortion rights in its constitution. The sponsors of the amendment had scheduled it to correspond with what they anticipated would be a typically low-turnout primary. If federal law had remained unchanged they might have been right, because in that scenario the impact of changing the state constitution would have been limited and the stakes of the vote would have seemed low. But once the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the stakes of the referendum for Kansans spiked.

With that backdrop, millions of dollars were spent on both sides and turnout nearly doubled, from 473,438 in the 2018 primary to more than 900,000 on Tuesday. Turnout that high – nearly 70 percent of 2020’s historic general election turnout – is nearly unheard of, an indication of voters’ perception of the stakes. And the unexpected landslide result suggests the Supreme Court thrusting the abortion issue back into the political realm has the potential to scramble the landscape.

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For the Republican Party, the reversal of Roe is both a long-sought victory and a new political liability. The liability it represents is, in turn, another factor in America’s political crisis. To see what I mean, let’s look at where things stand with the politics of abortion rights:

• Abortion rights are still broadly popular in the United States, as they have been with remarkable consistency since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973.

• If the Kansas results prove to be predictive, voters – and not just Democratic voters¹ – appear to care deeply enough about abortion rights to organize and turn out to vote.

• The Republican Party is largely powered, as it has been since the 1970s, by conservative evangelicals who oppose abortion rights, as well as social progress in other areas.

• These conservative evangelical activists and voters care about the Republican Party but, like most advocates, they care more about their issues and protecting their own power.

Since 1973, Republicans have benefitted from the base energy Roe created without paying the full cost for the unpopularity of their position because, ironically, the existence of Roe’s constitutional guarantee moved the issue down voters’ list of concerns. Fiscally conservative parents, for example, didn’t have to worry about what would happen if their daughter, or their son’s girlfriend, became pregnant; because the right to abortion was law, their votes for Republican candidates didn’t create risks for their kids.

Since Roe – the entire political life of everyone under 65 – the abortion issue was like a loan to the Republican Party that hadn’t yet come due. The results in Kansas suggests the first repayment notice may have arrived. From the NY Times:

The Kansas vote implies that around 65 percent of voters nationwide would reject a similar initiative to roll back abortion rights, including in more than 40 of the 50 states. …[This is] an evidence-based way of arriving at a fairly obvious conclusion: If abortion rights wins 59 percent support in Kansas, it’s doing even better than that nationwide.

In classic democratic theory, when a political party realizes some of its positions are so unpopular it can no longer compete and win, it adapts by adjusting or jettisoning those positions. But it is highly unlikely Republicans have that option with abortion given the outsized power of anti-abortion forces in the party. If they tried it, either the officials who led the way would be defeated in primaries, or the party’s general election coalition would disintegrate, or both. Republicans are stuck with their opposition to abortion.

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The hopeful possibility in the Kansas results is the reversal of Roe gave Americans a preview of the world Republicans envision early enough to prevent it from becoming reality. But Kansas was a special case, with abortion rights were explicitly on the ballot. Will Democrats be able to tie themselves securely enough to the cause of abortion rights to benefit from the pro-choice political tide? We shall see.

The peril is what the Kansas results mean for a Republican Party that is already challenged by an age-stratified electorate moving away from them.

Since 2004, young voters have been strongly Democratic. As these age cohorts become a larger chunk of the electorate, the math for Republicans gets harder. Via Split Ticket.

If Kansas does turn out to preview a persistent electoral penalty for Republicans (and it may not²), due to their unpopular abortion position, it may accelerate the Party’s turn against democracy. The logic is straightforward. If you are in the business of governing, as political parties are, and if to govern you must first win power, as indeed you do, then a development that makes it difficult for you to win power³ is an existential threat. So if it turns out Republicans are facing a future of more losing than winning and little power, what might they do? Worryingly, the two main strategy options are paths they have already started down:

• Shifting the composition of the electorate.

• Finding a way to win without needing to get the most votes.

(Part of me feels I should defend this argument against claims of exaggeration, but based on what we’ve learned in the January 6th Committee hearings I think we’re past that point.)

Here’s one way to think about this:

When at a future retreat of Republican muckety-mucks, a strategist explains to leaders that: 1) the party will regularly struggle to win majorities and wield power now that abortion rights are at stake in every election; 2) it can’t change its position on abortion rights because its base would revolt and officials leading the charge would be defeated; and 3) therefore it needs to enact laws that further restrict voting in Democratic areas and engineer much more active and widespread intimidation of Democratic voters to influence the composition of the electorate, what Republicans are going to stand up and say “that’s wrong and I won’t be part of it”?

Among the painful lessons I learned during the Trump presidency is very few Republicans⁴ involved in politics have principles they hold deeply enough to be willing to incur a personal or professional cost to defend them. And by this point, most of the minority who do have either lost primaries or retired.

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The Kansas abortion rights results suggest we may be entering an era of politics where abortion rights being on the ballot creates a headwind for Republicans that, when combined with the the party’s generational challenges, make it hard for them to win elections, even on the tilted playing field they’ve already built. To keep winning, they’ll need to tilt the playing field even more, which will require escalating tactics that are increasingly incompatible with a functioning democracy.

Maybe they won’t do this. But based on what we’ve learned about the Republican Party the last 7 years, including the kinds of people who have left it over Trump and related outrages, what would you anticipate? The legendary investor Charlie Munger once said, “Show me the incentives, I’ll show you the result.” This claim is not always right, but in my experience it usually is.

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I often find this duality of hope and despair to be disorienting. But it’s crucial that we realize that the practical implication of it is we should do everything we possibly can in the coming years to keep American democracy on a democratic path. At some point, America’s white nationalist minority faction will lose enough elections and enough power that it will no longer be able to threaten our democracy. But right now it is a threat, and we need to defeat it.

1. That abortions rights won in Kansas with meaningful support from independents and even Republicans is among the strongest arguments that it will *not* prove to be predictive of candidate elections.

2. I’ve seen little evidence so far that Democrats will develop and execute a strategy that would make this happen.

3. Remember, Republicans don’t have the option of trading the pro-life principle in exchange for winning elections; if they tried it, either the officials who led the way would be defeated in primaries, or the party’s general election coalition would disintegrate – or both. In either case it wouldn’t work.

4. This is not a claim that Democrats are universally virtuous.