On Election Night, The REAL Action Is Going To Be In The State Legislative Flips

One thing you need to remember about election night coverage. Whether it’s CNN, or MSNBC, or network coverage, the vast majority of coverage deals with the presidential election, the US House and the US Senate. Super Steve Kornacki isn’t going to be spending any time talking about the results of an individual state House or Senate seat results.

But they sure as hell cover it when the legislature or Senate of a state flips. And that’s what you need to watch out for, because if I’m right, which is always an iffy proposition, the big board men like Steve Kornacki are going to be reporting some surprising changes in state governments, especially GOP controlled states.

Because if there’s one unintentional misdirection that the mainstream media keeps perpetuating, it’s that abortion is a national issue. And nothing can be further from the truth. It isn’t the GOP House or Senate that have passed abortion restrictions, as much as they’d love to.

The Dobbs case that actually allowed the Supreme court to overturn Roe v Wade came from a civil suit out of the state of Alabama. And as the Supreme Court made perfectly clear in their idiotic decision, the entire reason for the ruling was to return the abortion issue back to the states for adjudication. And by that matrix, by SCOTUS interpretation, the Dobbs decision was a spectacular success.

So you can’t even blame it on the Supreme Court. They simply ruled that the previous Roe v Wade ruling was judicial overreach, and the matter belonged to the states to decide, and so they returned the issue to them to do just that.

It’s not the US Supreme Court that outlawed abortion. It’s the states of Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri, Tennessee and others that used their state legislatures to ban or restrict women’s reproductive rights. And that right continues to lie solely within the states. 

And thank God the residents and constituents of those states realized that simple fact most riki-tik. And finally realizing that they held the power, they set forth to actually use that power to bend the legislatures to their will. There ensued a slew of constituent generated ballot initiatives to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution. Every one of these was a deep red state, and if my faulty math is correct, they have gone a perfect 10-0.

And now comes the moment of the great denouement for the GOP legislatures. I don’t count the 2022 midterms, those arrogant *ssholes on the Supreme Court carefully crafted the release of their decision to make it too late to have a real effect on the states for the midterms. While some states already had laws passed with snapback clauses effective the moment Roe was overturned, most states had to actually legislate and pass bills they already had in the hopper. With the shock and awe of the midsummer decision, there was no real time for state activists to craft an effective response.

That’s not true anymore. At least 10 GOP dominated states have flipped double barrel birds at their pernicious legislators by using ballot initiatives to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitutions. And more importantly, they discovered the cardinal rule. That it wasn’t Washington that f*cked them over, it was their own local legislators. The ones they have the most control over.

Earlier this week, a Democrat running in a deep red Alabama district laid a 25 point Wookie stomp on her GOP kitty litter opponent, running on a reproductive rights platform, winning a seat she lost by almost 25 points the year before. This is not a fluke. Democrats don’t win deep red districts in Alabama by 25%. Those constituents are royally pissed. And they let their feelings be known.

2024 is the first true state test of the fallout of the Dobbs decision in the states. And in at least 10 GOP dominated states, the constituents have already slapped down their legislators by passing constitutional amendments to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitutions.

And now, for the first time since the Dobbs decision, these voters are going to finally get the chance to tell their legislators what they think of their leadership. And if going 0-10 in abortion preservation bills is any example, these cretins are in for a rough ride. The Alabama results confirm that all by themselves.

This isn’t national, this is personal. This is the 1st time that constituents finally get to tell their legislators what they think of them, and in the most intimate and impactful way possible, at the ballot box. It may well be possible that these voters decide to vote for the up ballot GOP candidates, although why they would I can’t imagine, and vent their spleens on their local torturers, or they may just decide a pox on all their houses, and vote Democratic down the line. After all, remember, in the Kansas primaries where abortion rights was on the ballot, scored of GOP voters came out to vote for abortion rights, and left the rest of the ballot blank. I can’t think of a more powerful demonstration than that.

I thank you for the privilege of your time.