The GOP’s terrible, no good, very bad week

The news had all been bad for the Democrats — until it wasn’t. Recent polling has shown President Joe Biden’s approval drifting downwards and, most worryingly, below Donald Trump’s in five out of six battleground states. This led to the slightly belated realisation among senior party figures that it might have been a good idea to come up with an alternative to an increasingly shaky-looking (in every sense) candidate whose 2020 victory is thought of as a greatly successful compromise. Then came Tuesday.

Enter… women

There was a flurry of gubernatorial, state legislature, mayoral and other local office elections, as well as a series of citizen initiatives. The Democrats greatly outperformed expectations — and it seems to largely have come down to reproductive rights. More than a year after Roe vs Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court and state legislatures set about dismantling access to abortion, voters, even in largely conservative states, have responded.

Andy Beshear, the incumbent Democratic governor in Kentucky, the most crimson red of states, easily beat Daniel Cameron, his MAGA-endorsed opponent. Beshear’s campaign largely centred on painting Cameron as an extremist on abortion.

In Virginia, where Republicans had campaigned on a “moderate” 15-week abortion ban, the Democrats are projected to not only hold their narrow majority in the Senate, but have flipped the House of Representatives, putting up a major obstacle to Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin’s platform.

And in Ohio, which Trump won by eight points in 2020, voters overwhelmingly passed an amendment to the state’s constitution protecting access to abortion care. This is part of a broader trend — before Tuesday’s elections, five of the six states to put abortion measures to the public either voted to strengthen protections or reject their removal.

Whether this has a flow-on effect to 2024 remains to be seen — The Washington Post notes a lot of counties that voted for Trump in 2020 also voted in favour of reproductive rights. Trump has drifted from arguing on the 2016 campaign trail that “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who have abortions to a far more moderate view in recent months.

“If we’re really going to be honest about this, and I consider myself pro-life, but I understand that’s not where the country is,” Fox News’ Sean Hannity conceded on election night. “I have to believe that is an indication that the women in America, suburban moms, want it probably legal and rare and probably earlier than at the point of viability.”

Ivanka’s amnesia

As the results continued to filter in on Wednesday, the final witness testimony of Trump’s fraud trial was taking place. Trump’s daughter Ivanka, testifying as a witness rather than as a defendant on account of the statute of limitations, was the final of 25 witnesses before the attorney-general’s office rested its case. Her performance was far more subdued and polite, though she had a notable selective memory — suffering almost complete amnesia when questioned about the events of a decade ago by the prosecution, while able to recall details in granular detail during the examination by the defence.

The ‘debate’

Oh yeah, these guys. While Trump continues to easily outpace every single one of them, the five “leading” candidates for the GOP nomination in 2024 continue to hold debates. The spectacle has the eerie and quietly heartbreaking quality of an abandoned theme park — a desperation to entertain radiating off the defunct animatronics that no-one visits anymore; predictably this has caused an increasingly unhinged tone.

This is largely led by anti-woke libertarian entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, a man who comports himself as though he would spontaneously catch fire if he wasn’t being paid some kind of attention. He went the Trump route, making fun of Ron DeSantis’ alleged use of lifts in his shoes, attacking DeSantis and Nikki Haley as warmongers, suggesting another wall be built on the border with Canada and — Jesus Christ — calling Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “Nazi”.

Haley, for her part, called Ramaswamy “just scum”, Tim Scott suggested war with Iran, and DeSantis pitched shooting drug traffickers at the southern border “stone dead”. The debate was also — and you’ll be shocked to hear this — just lousy with misinformation.

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