Politics | Voter.org

The GOP Primary Is a Field of Broken Dreams

August 17, 2023 primary, Broken, Dreams, Field0 comment

People near me at the Iowa State Fair were frantic. “Do you see him yet?” they panted. “Do you think he’ll come out into the crowd to talk?” When the presence of Secret Service officers made it clear that former President Donald Trump would appear at the Steer ’N Stein restaurant on the Grand Concourse, fairgoers formed a line whose end was out of sight. Not all of them could squeeze into the restaurant, so they filled the street outside, one giant blob of eager, sweating Iowans. When the former…

Abortion Is Inflaming the GOP’s Biggest Electoral Problem

August 13, 2023 abortion, Electoral, GOP's, Problem, Biggest, Inflaming0 comment

The escalating political struggle over abortion is compounding the GOP’s challenges in the nation’s largest and most economically vibrant metropolitan areas. The biggest counties in Ohio voted last week overwhelmingly against the ballot initiative pushed by Republicans and anti-abortion forces to raise the threshold for passing future amendments to the state constitution to 60 percent. That proposal, known as Issue 1, was meant to reduce the chances that voters would approve a separate initiative on the November ballot to overturn the six-week abortion ban Ohio Republicans approved in 2019. The…

The Abortion Backlash Reaches Ohio

August 9, 2023 reaches, backlash, abortion, Ohio0 comment

Officially, abortion had nothing to do with the constitutional amendment that Ohio voters rejected today. The word appeared nowhere on the ballot, and no abortion laws will change as a result of the outcome. Practically and politically, however, the defeat of the ballot initiative known as Issue 1 was all about abortion, giving reproductive-rights advocates the latest in a series of victories in the year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Fearing the passage of an abortion-rights amendment in November, Republicans in Ohio asked voters to approve a…

The Next Big Abortion Fight

August 5, 2023 Fight, abortion, Next0 comment

For the 150 or so people who filled a church hall in Toledo, Ohio, for a Thursday-night campaign rally last week, the chant of the evening featured a profanity usually discouraged in a house of God. “With all due respect, pastor, hell no!” shouted Betty Montgomery, a former Ohio attorney general. Montgomery is a Republican, which gave the largely Democratic audience even more reason to roar with approval. They had gathered at the Warren AME Church, in Toledo, to voice their opposition to a constitutional amendment that Ohio voters will…

Joe Lieberman Weighs the Trump Risk

August 1, 2023 Lieberman, weighs, Trump, risk0 comment

Joe Lieberman wants to make one thing clear. “The last thing I’d ever want to be part of,” the former Connecticut senator and onetime vice-presidential nominee told me by phone last week, “is bringing Donald Trump back to the Oval Office.” Democrats have their doubts. Lieberman and his former party have been warring for years, ever since he won a fourth Senate term, in 2006, as an independent after Connecticut Democrats dumped him in a primary. Suddenly liberated, Lieberman endorsed the Republican John McCain over Barack Obama in 2008 and…

How Jason Aldean Explains Donald Trump (And Vice Versa)

July 28, 2023 vice, Explains, Donald, Trump, Jason, Aldean, Versa0 comment

The commercial success of the country star Jason Aldean’s ode to small-town vigilantism helps explain the persistence of Donald Trump’s grip on red America. Aldean’s combative new song, “Try That in a Small Town,” offers a musical riff on the same core message that Trump has articulated since his entry into politics: that America as conservatives understand it is under such extraordinary assault from the multicultural, urbanized modern left that any means necessary is justified to repel the threat. In Aldean’s lyrics and the video he made of his song,…