Last week in the states there was a small series of elections that could best be described as Mid-Session-Mid-Term elections, in that they fell in an off-year between a Presidential election (2024) and a Mid-Term Election (2022).

The results were a little strange. If you heard about them at all it probably wasn’t via our MSM but political tragics, and if you did it was likely how the GOP didn’t do that well, especially given the deep, deep polling trouble that the Vegetable-In-Chief is in. and the rest of his Democrat Party on almost all issues. For the Democrat-MSM Complex then it was smug satisfaction that these elections turned out somewhat like 2022, when a Red Wave was expected that turned into a Red Trickle.

As with that election, New York provided surprising gains for the GOP given that it’s long been a Democrat stronghold. Virginia was held to be a disappointment but with the growth of Washington D.C. it’s been trending Democrat for years so I thought it would be tough for the GOP to win the State House and Senate even after Youngkin’s winning the Governorship in 2021. And so it proved, with the GOP winning every State seat in areas where Biden had +9 Federal Seat wins in 2020, but being unable to break those areas where he had double-digit wins.

The answer that most Democrats had for their success in these elections was the same as in 2022 – abortion. But unlike last year the issue should have been dying down as the anger against the Supreme Court Dobb’s decision ebbed away. Why didn’t it?

Simple: the Democrats knew it was their only “positive” issue, that it’s the Numero Uno issue for single woman and that the Democrat Party has become the Husband of Last Resort for Unmarriageable Women:

So they milked it for all it was worth, as well as attaching it to another piece of ginned up hysteria, the “MAGA Extremist” tag.

In Ohio it took the form of a referendum to add abortion rights to the State constitution. Pro-abortion groups poured tens of millions of dollars into the campaign for advertising and get-out-the-vote operations, vastly outspending the Pro-Life groups by more than $12 million. The result wasn’t even close, 56.6% to 43.4%, in a state that voted for Trump twice.

But the success of this tactic also showed up in other areas, no more so than in Virginia’s District 57 for a Federal House seat, where the Democrat candidate got exposed months ago as having made money on a type of Only Fans online sex website that specialises in husband-wife fun, Chaturbate, where she and her hubby had performed for customers watching their live streaming sex acts. You’d think that such a candidate, a Porn Star, would be doomed even in this day and age, but she wasn’t and while half of that had to do with abortion the other half of the reason had to do with the lack of reaction of her GOP opponent:

Normally after her secret sex-for-money gig was exposed, one would think that support for Gibson would evaporate, and that Owen would be a shoe-in. But the Democrats stuck by her, and the Republicans ignored the issue. Owen may have wanted to take the high road, thinking that the public exposure would doom her campaign. But by the time the election rolled around a month-and-a-half later, my sense of the situation was that most voters were not even aware of the issue.

In the meantime, Gibson was flooding the airwaves (and YouTube and social media) with ads that emphasized three things: abortion, abortion and abortion. She took the approach favored by extreme Democrats: “MAGA Republicans” wanted a 100% ban on abortions; “a total abortion ban, no exceptions;” “women and doctors in jail;” even “women [are] facing the death penalty for having an abortion.”

Owen’s response? Crickets.

He won by 51% when he should cleaned her clock. His cluelessness almost lost him an unloseable election but it’s not fair to just stick to Owen’s. This is why Republican voters of all stripes often refer to their party as The Stupid Party and it makes a joke of this comment made here by a former National MP a couple of years ago:

Unlike the Republicans, the National Party does not do culture wars. The reason being that National is not nearly as uniformly conservative as the contemporary Republicans. 

I’ve no doubt that last sentence is true but the first is rubbish; aside from a handful of House Reps and Senators the bulk of the GOP actually avoids culture wars like the plague, often has not a fucking clue they’re even happening, and has to be dragged into the fight, as any number of US Pro-Life figures have attested to:

[M]ost of them have a fleeting relationship with the pro-life movement. Conveniently draping themselves in it when they need donations and votes, but making excuses and tacitly ignoring the needs of the pro-life community when the movement could use their voice and face.
…
The GOP donors have always felt social issues are a losing proposition, which is why they are so late to the party on the parent’s rights movement and the so-called gender-affirming care. They are squeamish and shaky in their positions because they really don’t believe in them. Democrats, whether they believe in it or not, are all in with their agenda and are in lockstep in their messaging (aka lies) as well as their funding. Here’s an enlightening challenge: Find out how much Emily’s List rakes in as opposed to the Susan B. Anthony List. Better yet, PPFA versus any pregnancy resource center or pro-life organization.

However, even if Owen is such a GOP figure that’s no excuse for failing to recognise his opponents weaknesses were such that she and the Democrats had only one “strength”, clung to it like a drowning woman, and therefore needed to be knee-capped on that as well. But:

His ads can best be described as pablum for the masses. He assured us that he was for bringing us together and better paying jobs. He wants better education and an end to divisive politics. No doubt he also supports motherhood and apple pie. His ads gave no details of how he would achieve these general goals, and nary a word in response to the tsunami of fear-mongering abortion ads that Gibson was running, including on Fox News during prime-time morning hours. Neither Owen nor anyone in his campaign gave any indication that they had the slightest inkling that abortion might be a key issue for thousands of suburban women who were being bombarded with Gibson’s ads. So, to my knowledge, he never responded to them or even attempted to discuss the issue.

And the real joke is that he could have “discussed” the issue because the Democrats, in talking of one side of abortion extremism, ignore the fact (and were allowed to ignore it) that the other end of the spectrum of 100% no rules, abortion-to-full-term, is also only supported by a fanatical fringe and that abortion restrictions are hardly a purely Christian, GOP, American issue:

“When I tell my constitutional law students that most European laws resemble the Mississippi statute upheld in Dobbs v. Jackson (which banned abortion after 15 weeks but permitted it for essentially any reason up to then), they’re surprised, having assumed that anything in Europe must be more liberal than in the United States. But that’s not the case.

“In Germany, women who want an abortion face a mandatory three-day cooling-off and counseling period. More than 20 European nations—like Ireland, which recently liberalized its abortion laws—ban abortion after 12 weeks. In Britain, a woman named Carla Foster was recently sentenced to prison for procuring an abortion at 32-34 weeks.

“Sweden requires permission from the National Board of Health for a woman to obtain an abortion after the 18th week. Such permission is generally granted in cases of ill health on the part of the woman or the fetus. Abortions are illegal once the fetus is viable.”

“Interestingly, that’s what polls show most Americans support. A recent Rasmussen survey showed that 56 percent of Americans think that abortion should only be allowed during the first trimester of pregnancy, with 23 percent believing that abortion should be available throughout, and 21 percent not sure.”

Here I’m reminded that the French President, who is no dummy, stuck his oar into the Dobbs decision and American reaction and resulting proposed abortion restrictions like that of Mississippi while completely forgetting France’s:

In short there’s no reason for Owen, the GOP or any right-wing politician concerned about abortion (anti-abortion Left politicians have been made extinct) to hide from the argument and just allow themselves be smeared as religious fanatics by massive political attack advertising. But they do, either because they’re clueless or because they don’t give a shit.

So where does this leave us with respect to the Big Enchilada of the 2024 Presidential election?

I suggest that the Democrats will continue to hammer away on abortion and “MAGA extremists” because, as in 2022 and 2023, they’ve got nothing positive to push. But even then the primary drivers will be what they were in 2016 and 2020: which candidate do you hate more?

Of course that assumes that both Biden and Trump will be the Presidential nominees of their respective parties, and although that looks to be the case here in late 2023 it may not be so in 2024 for a variety of reasons. But that’s a post for another day.