The Dobbs decision is enormously consequential, and it seems like a very big political deal right at the moment—but will it matter much as an election issue in November?
I have my doubts about that.
Let’s make like McKinsey nerds and put it in a two-by-two matrix.
Scenario A: Red city, red state: These voters will be largely satisfied with Dobbs and in many cases positively ecstatic about it, as they should be. But they were probably already going to be pretty energized in November: Democratic president, Democrat-controlled Congress, high inflation and high gasoline prices, failed “return to normalcy,” etc. They don’t need another reason to turn out, but that probably isn’t going to make much difference in any House or Senate race, thanks in part to the very successful Republican gerrymandering that so often deprives Republican voters of the opportunity to crush a Democrat with any real hope.
Scenario B: Blue city, blue state: They’re going to rage like Jeremiah on Twitter, but there isn’t going to be any change, or even any real prospect of change, to their state abortion laws—if anything, those laws may be even more liberal in the post-Roe era—and they may be a little depressed by losing on the abortion issue, which is an offputtingly quasi-spiritual . . . thing . . . for Democrats. If there were any Republicans around for these blue-state urbanites to take out their frustrations on, they might, but most of the voters in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, etc., would have to drive an hour to find a Republican to kick in the shins. I’m sure they’d love to go to Idaho to vote against Mike Crapo, but they’ll have to take out their anger on Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, if anybody. And they might do that.
Scenario C: Red city, blue state: These do not exist. Not really. The largest U.S. cities with Republican mayors right now are in red states: Jacksonville, Fort Worth, and Oklahoma City. The biggest blue-state city with a Republican mayor is Fresno. (No, mayors don’t tell the whole story, but this is a quick-and-dirty indicator.) I suppose Colorado Springs might just about qualify. In any case, beleaguered Republicans in Fresno probably are not going to be more beleaguered this November than they were last November, or any less.
Scenario D: Blue city, red state: This is the possibly interesting case. Blue cities in red states are some of the nicest places in the country to live: Austin, Salt Lake City, etc. The Democrats who live in them feel a little like Republican college professors—as though they are operating in occupied territory. (I know that Republican college professors think this way because I have heard so from both of them.) They get excited, write checks, etc.—they are the only reason anybody has ever heard of Robert Francis O’Rourke. Red-state Republican incumbents or Republican contenders in districts that have a substantial piece of some of the bluer cities or suburbs might actually have to think about how they are going to talk about this issue a little bit. That might conceivably matter in races such as Ohio’s 1st Congressional District, which includes a big piece of Cincinnati (where Democrats swept eight of nine city council seats in 2021), a seat currently held by Steve Chabot (R.). That race currently is rated as a toss-up by the Cook Political Report, which gives the district a Partisan Voting Index of D+2. Chabot, a longtime incumbent, won only 51.8 percent of the vote in 2020. Some of the other Cook toss-ups are similar, e.g., Cassy Garcia will need some help from exurban San Antonio and the Democrat-leaning city of Laredo in her bid to unseat incumbent Henry Cuellar in Texas’s 28th (D+5).
So, my sense is that the voters most likely to be motivated in some meaningful way by Dobbs are Democrats in Republican states, which might make a difference in a few races in closely divided electorates.
Democrats will try to make the midterms a national referendum on abortion rights—because they sure as hell don’t want to talk about the price of a gallon of gas—but I do not think that is likely to succeed. One of the weirder aspects of the clabbered, sour partisanship of our time is that the most hardcore partisans are more inclined to punish their own party for losing than to punish the other party for winning. And Democrats are going to go into the November election feeling like losers because of the economy and because of Dobbs.
That being the case, if Dobbs is to have any real near-term political impact, it may be in encouraging dissatisfied Democrats to push out Joe Biden in 2024, assuming he lasts that long. That’s where simmering blue-state Democrat rage could have some real effect.