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Today’s 1-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision. 2024 elections will lead to one of three futures: [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-06-24

Roe v. Wade fell exactly one year ago. We're now in a world where tiny vote shifts lead to huge changes. A few thousand votes in 2024 will determine the future:

a national abortion ban

ongoing state-by-state fights

or protections for reproductive freedom nationwide.

If you’re pregnant, do you—with your doctor and your family—make the decisions? Or do politicians jump in and make the decisions? This is a question of freedom. A basic, fundamental freedom. And the fight over it is transforming U.S. politics.

When reproductive freedom has been on the ballot, the pro-freedom side has won. Over and over. In the Kansas abortion referendum. In the midterms. In this spring’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

Over the last year, the abortion fight has been state-by-state.

But in 2024, it’s national.

A red wave could lead to a national abortion ban. A blue wave could encode reproductive freedom in U.S. law. Or a mixed decision could leave these questions at the state level.



If the GOP holds the House and flips three Senate seats—such as any three of AZ, WV, MT, OH, WI—and gets the White House, they’ll have a Republican trifecta. The pressure from the MAGA base to pass a national abortion ban will be overwhelming. That’s their goal.

Election outcomes often feel inevitable in retrospect. But when you dig into the math, the number of votes that turned the country one way or the other is often mind-blowingly small.

If just 21,461 votes had flipped from D to R across three states in 2020:

5,229 in Arizona

5,890 in Georgia

10,342 in Wisconsin

Trump would have won. Or Trump would’ve won if twice that number of Dems had stayed home.

That’s a scary-tiny margin.

In the House, if Dems had flipped 3,343 votes (or gained 6,6686 votes) across the five closest seats (CO-3, CA-13, MI-10, NY-17, and IA-3) in 2022, they would’ve held the House majority.

Voters cast 107.7 million votes in 2022. The House majority was decided by <0.01%.

In the Senate, if the GOP had flipped 22,803 voters in Nevada and Georgia on November 8, 2022 (and then won the Georgia runoff), they would have won a Republican majority in the Senate and Mitch McConnell would be Senate leader right now.

Looking forward, we have to expect similarly microscopic margins. That’s just the nature of the moment in history that we’re all living through.

The path to a GOP trifecta in 2024 requires very little improvement for the GOP relative to recent elections.

And if they get it, watch out. If Republicans win and move fast, a national abortion ban could be in place by February of 2025.

That’s the disaster scenario we have to avert.

But there’s a flip side.

If Ds

net 5 more House seats

hold the Senate (win 4 of WV, MT, OH, AZ, WI)

and hold the White House

we could have the votes to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act—Tammy Baldwin’s great bill.

Wisconsin is key to all these fights.

The White House tipping point.

The home of Senator Tammy Baldwin, up in 2024.

And home to (at least) two flippable House seats: WI-01 and WI-03.

x Why is the GOP so obsessed? Because Wisconsin is the Electoral College tipping point.



Here’s what that means. This picture lines up states by the Dems’ 2020 victory margin, from biggest win to biggest loss. Each state is numbered by its number of Electoral College votes. pic.twitter.com/lFQ2SYZukR — Ben Wikler (@benwikler) April 30, 2023

A national abortion ban.

Or national protections for reproductive freedom.

Either is possible based on the 2024 election.

Or we could wind up with split government, and ongoing state-by-state trench warfare.

Over this last year, Wisconsin Republicans refused to do anything to repeal our state’s 1849 abortion ban. But Wisconsinites rose up last fall, blocking a GOP supermajority and reelecting Governor Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul—both ardent defenders of reproductive freedom.

The voter uprising further intensified this spring, when Wisconsin voters elected pro-freedom Judge Janet Protasiewicz to the state Supreme Court by 11 percentage points, shocking the country.

And soon, thanks to a lawsuit by Gov. Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul, our state’s archaic 1849 abortion ban will have its day in court.

That’s a lot of progress in one purple state in a single year. But until there’s a national law protecting the freedom to make your own decisions about abortion, Wisconsinites are one bad election away from further bans passed in the state—or nationally.



In fact, no matter where you live in the United States, your freedom to make your own decisions about your own body, and the freedoms of generations to come, might be on the line in the 2024 elections… based on what happens in Wisconsin specifically.

As we reflect on the Dobbs decision one year ago, and as we celebrate the victories that fought back against it, let’s commit to making the next 16 months even more consequential than the last 12.

Let’s organize our way to a win for freedom in 2024.

Can you chip in to help?

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