Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Abortion issue is changing everything for November – Daily Kos

Reuters:

Most Americans see Trump's MAGA as threat to democracy: Reuters/Ipsos poll

Days after Democratic President Joe Biden gave a fiery speech attacking former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies as an extremist threat, a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Wednesday found a majority of Americans believe Trump's movement is undermining democracy.

Fifty-eight percent of respondents in the two-day poll - including one in four Republicans - said Trump's "Make America Great Again" movement is threatening America's democratic foundations.

58%? That counts as most.

Tom Nichols/Atlantic:

The Nihilism of MAGA World

The president said something frightening and true.

Joe Bidens address to the American people last week was,as I wrote at the time, necessary and right. The staging was bizarre, and the speech had some of the hallmarks of a group product that hadnt been subjected to a final spackle-and-smooth by a chief writer. But Biden got one big thing right, and that one thing explains why Donald Trump and the MAGA World apologists are reacting withsuch fury. The president outed them as anti-American nihilists:

They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country MAGA Republicans have made their choice. They embrace anger. They thrive on chaos. They live not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies.

This, as Biden pointed out, is what makes the MAGA movement so dangerous. It has no functional compass and no set of actual preferences beyond a generalized resentment, a basket of gripes and grudges against others who the Trumpists think are looking down upon them or living better lives than they are. It is a movement composed of people who areeconomically comfortable and middle-class, who enjoy a relatively high standard of living, and yet who seethe with a sense that they have been done dirt, screwed over, betrayedand they are determined to get revenge.

Biden broke with tradition by saying what presidents are never supposed to say: He admitted that he was finally giving up on trying to accommodate a group of Americans, because he understands that they do not want to be accommodated. I know that some of my friends and colleagues believe that Biden, as president, must continue to reach out to MAGA voters because they are our neighbors and our fellow citizens. (The former GOP operative and my fellow Never Trumper Tim Miller made this point justthis morning.) My instinct is to agree with them. But how do we reach those voters? These citizens do not want a discussion or a compromise. They dont even want to win, in any traditional political sense of that word. They want to vent anger over their livestheir personal problems, their haunted sense of inferiority, and their fears aboutsocial statuson other Americans, as vehemently as possible, even to the point of violence.

Detroit News:

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's lead grows as fall campaign begins, new poll finds

Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's lead over Republican Tudor Dixon has expanded to 13 percentage points with two months remaining before Election Day, according to anew poll from The Detroit Newsand WDIV-TV (Channel 4)...

In a similar July 5-8 poll commissioned by The News and WDIV before Dixonbecame the Republican nomineein the Aug. 2 primary election Whitmer was leading Dixon by 11 percentage points.

Detroit News:

Abortion drives Michigan governor's race as women turn against GOP, poll finds

When it came to which issue would motivate Michiganians to vote in November, 34% said abortion and women's rights the most popular answer ranking above inflation and the cost of living (26%), education (10%) and the economy and jobs (8%).

"This should be about (Democratic President Joe) Biden. And it's not. It's about abortion," Glengariff founder and pollster Richard Czuba said of the governor's race.

The current poll numbers for Whitmer were similar to the survey results from the same period before the 2018 election, when Democrats won all three of Michigan's top offices.

In early September 2018,Whitmer was up 14 percentage points over Republican Bill Schuette, who was then the state's attorney general. Whitmer ended up beating Schuette by 9 points.

"This looks exactly like the 2018 numbers right now," Czuba said. "The motivation to vote is as high."

The 2018 results have been tied to a so-called "pink wave" of female voters pushing back against the beginning of then-President Donald Trump's administration.

Czuba said he's now seeing signs of a "magenta wave" of female voters and independent voters beginning to form for November because of the abortion debate.

"Until someone can stop that conversation or override that conversation, that wave is going to keep building," the pollster said.

Ruy Teixeira/Substack:

The Democrats Shifting Coalition

Unlike Trump, They Love the Highly Educated

No doubt about it. The Democrats are doing better. They have enjoyed a stretch where the economy has done a bit better and, most importantly, other issues have come to the fore to take the focus off of the many ways voters are still quite unhappy with the Biden administration and the state of country (NBC poll: 68 percent say were now in recession; 74 percent say the country is off on the wrong track).

The key issue here is clearly the Dobbs decision on abortion rights. That decision put the Democrats on thepopular side of public opinionand they have taken full advantage of that (aided by Republicans inability to keep a leash on the most militant anti-abortion forces within their party).

19th News:

Why women are setting the new midterms conversation

Analysis | Two GOP women pollsters talk about abortion, democracy and the changing dynamics of this years elections.

My takeaway from what they shared: The 2022 midterms look different than they did six months or a year ago. Cost of living is still front of mind for many women, but issues of choice on abortion, on the freedom to vote have risen in relevance. The moment feels existential for many women, including independents and swing voters, and its all on their minds when they describe the country as headed in the wrong direction to pollsters.

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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Abortion issue is changing everything for November - Daily Kos