Ohio Legislature is considering a total abortion ban, which could mean the death penalty for women who get abortions.

[Simon_Jester]

Or to put it another way...

If there is a solid base of Democratic-leaning voters in Ohio, but the local Democratic Party is too incompetent to put up strong challengers and mobilize those voters, then that weakness has consequences on the Republican side of the aisle.

In the 2018 governor race, the Republican, DeWine, won with 2.188 million votes to the Democrat, Cordray's, 2.006 million. There are almost exactly eight million registered voters in Ohio.

So there's the picture for you: DeWine had the support of 27% of the registered population, Cordray had the support of 25%, and about 48% of the registered voters either stayed home or voted for an irrelevant third party.

If future elections look like this, the Republicans can be pretty confident of having permanent control of the state government just by having 30-35% of the state population willing to vote for them. Which means they will keep moving to the right until they find a position that about 10% of the population thinks is too liberal, about 15% thinks is more or less correct, and about 10% thinks is too conservative, but not so conservative that they stay home rather than vote for it.

Unless the Democrats can muster up a challenge capable of winning over 35-40% of the population, they're not a threat to this combination. The other 65% of the voting population aren't even relevant to the Republicans' internal calculations here.

...

So take a random sample of 100 Ohio voters and rank them from left to right in terms of their politics. The Republican Party will predictably adopt a position that about 5-10 of those voters (a handful of literal white supremacists and hardcore evangelist theocrats) think is too soft, but basically acceptable. And that about 15-20 of those voters think is just great, exactly what we need. That is to say, still the highly conservative rural-evangelist-probably-racist voters.

Then you have another ten voters to the right on the line who look at the policy and go "Uhhh... okay this sucks but it's better than having a liberal snowflake in office," followed by a line of 60-65 voters whose opinions aren't considered by the Republicans' decisionmaking.

They don't want or need many voters to the left of that hard core, because they don't NEED those voters unless the Democrats can put together a coalition capable of reliably mobilizing, say, a third of the state to vote for them.

[Gandalf]

No. What he's saying is that this is symptomatic of one-party rule, regardless of the party in question. With no meaningful opposition in the general election, the election is effectively decided in the primary election. Who shows up for the primary elections? The hard-core of each party. As a result, with one party rule, the only way an incumbent can stay in power is to placate the party base, and the only way a challenger can win is to do so harder. It's a ratchet.

Then shouldn't the non "hard core" people show up for the primaries if they have some sort of problem with this? If decisions are made by those who show up, those who sit back and let others decide must take some responsibility for the outcome.

Also, how far does this sort of responsibility go? Can we also blame Trump's actions as POTUS on the Democrats because Obama scared White America?

[The Romulan Republic]

Yeah, the ultimate end point of that way of thinking is "Democrats are to blame for everything Republicans do, because we didn't concede to them enough."

[TimothyC]

Or to put it another way...

If there is a solid base of Democratic-leaning voters in Ohio, but the local Democratic Party is too incompetent to put up strong challengers and mobilize those voters, then that weakness has consequences on the Republican side of the aisle.

In the 2018 governor race, the Republican, DeWine, won with 2.188 million votes to the Democrat, Cordray's, 2.006 million. There are almost exactly eight million registered voters in.

Just to expound on this: There was also Ohio's Class 1 senate seat on the ballot this year. Sen. Sherrod Brown (the incumbent) ran against challenger Jim Renacci. Sen. Brown ran a great campaign hitting Renacci from literally the day after Renacci won the primary. Sen. Brown won re-election with nearly 2.29 million votes (to Renacci's 2.01 million).

It is possible for a liberal Democrat to win in Ohio, but right now it seems like the operative word in that statement is "a" as none of the rest have been able to get their act together and step up.

Yeah, the ultimate end point of that way of thinking is "Democrats are to blame for everything Republicans do, because we didn't concede to them enough."

No, if anything I'm saying Democrats get some blame because they have conceded too much.

[Gandalf]

Yeah, the ultimate end point of that way of thinking is "Democrats are to blame for everything Republicans do, because we didn't concede to them enough."

Or from the Republican side; "Sure we nominated them, and voted them into power, but how terrible is the other side?"

Don't forget that the relatively "moderate" Kasich also wanted to create a government department to promote Judeo Christian values.

[The Romulan Republic]

"Moderate Republican" is generally a very relative definition of moderate, along the lines of "Yeah, we think big business should be deregulated, poor people are parasites, and our law should be Christian-based- we just don't believe in committing treason or literally enslaving or murdering anyone who isn't like us."

[Simon_Jester]

Then shouldn't the non "hard core" people show up for the primaries if they have some sort of problem with this? If decisions are made by those who show up, those who sit back and let others decide must take some responsibility for the outcome.

That was my point. If the Republicans don't need to attract the support of more than 30% or so of voters in their state to win, and can therefore afford to alienate the other 70% of the population without fear of all those alienated voters supporting the opposing party...

Well, the outcome of the Republican primaries will be determined by, at best, the 30% or so of state voters who are politically active Republicans. Obviously, that means the right-most 20% or so of voters in the state will always get to set the Republican Party agenda in that state. It's pretty much inevitable. Even if the moderate Republicans turn out faithfully in the primary, it won't matter. Because the Republicans can afford to squeeze a lot of moderate Republicans OUT of their party and cry 'RINO!' and still win the election.

Also, how far does this sort of responsibility go? Can we also blame Trump's actions as POTUS on the Democrats because Obama scared White America?

If the barbarians smash down the gates and sack the city because the legionaries did a lousy job of fighting barbarians, clearly the barbarians are the main villains of the sacking of the city. They're the ones who charged in and charged back out with big Santa sacks full of loot, theirs is the moral blame.

But that doesn't mean the commander of the legionaries should get to keep his job and try to fend off the next barbarian invasion the same way he 'fended off' this one.

"Moderate Republican" is generally a very relative definition of moderate, along the lines of "Yeah, we think big business should be deregulated, poor people are parasites, and our law should be Christian-based- we just don't believe in committing treason or literally enslaving or murdering anyone who isn't like us."

You see a better class of Republican politics in some places, but only in places where a blue supermajority is forcibly keeping them honest by making it impossible for a Republican who runs on the usual far-right platform to win anything.

Republicans at the state level tend to be just as bad as they can get away with without causing Democrats to turn out in droves to vote against them, in my opinion. If there aren't enough Democrats in the state to matter, they become utterly atrocious. If they're operating in a blue state, a lot of them learn to adopt center-right rather than far-right coloration.

[Gandalf]

Wait, who exactly are the barbarians/villagers in that weird analogy?

[Ralin]

Wait, who exactly are the barbarians/villagers in that weird analogy?

Pretty sure he was talking about a pop culture-ish Rome.

[NoraOne]

It seems to me that such a law can also affect infertile couples.
The fact is that tens of thousands of couples all over the world need IVF and a surrogate frozen embryo transfer. How then to do in this case?
I think that this will make an irreparable contribution to the development of an infertility treatment clinic and will completely change the future of reproductive medicine.

[houser2112]

I have a feeling that most of the people who would get behind a total abortion ban (the very few who are pro-life from a purely secular viewpoint) would chalk up an infertile couple as "God's Will", and that IVF is "playing God" and should not be allowed.