A couple days ago David Leonhardt had a story about how Democrats overestimated the strength of the abortion issue in a way that ultimately hurt them at the polls.
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe, it was considered almost a given that the issue was going to help them clobber the GOP in future elections. And in 2022 they convinced themselves that was true but in retrospect, the evidence wasn’t really that strong.
Democrats did surprisingly well in the 2022 midterms, just months after Roe’s demise. But there were also reasons to be skeptical.
It was hard to find a single election where abortion seemed decisive. Although it might have helped flip a few House elections, the Democrats who won hadn’t emphasized the issue more than those who had lost. And not a single incumbent Republican governor or senator lost in 2022, despite attempts by Democratic…
