If Democrats have their way, the 2024 election will be a one-issue election for many voters (enough to win, hopefully). And conservative Republicans just keep making it easier and easier for that to actually happen.

In the half-century that Roe v. Wade was the law of the land, Republicans made a lot of political hay out of being what they called "pro-life," but what is now more accurately referred to as "forced-birth." They want to force every woman who ever gets pregnant -- no matter the circumstances, no matter the consequences -- to give birth, no matter what. American women (and men, it should be noted) do not support these radical restrictions of their rights. And they're now going to get to vote on it, in the clearest way since Roe was overturned. The 2024 election may well go down in history as being "the abortion election," to put this another way.

Republicans -- or at the least, the ones smart enough to read public opinion polls -- are terrified of this. They have every right to be. But they also have only themselves to blame. They have supported the concept of "life begins at conception" for decades now, but for all that time it was merely an abstraction. It was something for Republicans to give lip service to when trying to get elected. Now it has become reality. Which means that in-vitro fertilization is now at risk. Rape victims will now be forced to give birth to their rapist's baby. This is their "brave new world," and tens of millions of American women are now suffering because of it.

Republicans used to believe (and some still do) that their forced-birth position was actually popular with the voters. They would conduct opinion polls that were carefully worded to produce the result they wanted to see. They could claim that "a majority of Americans" believed as they believed. But this wasn't true, and still isn't. A majority of Americans is actually horrified at the brave new world Republicans are creating, and more and more they are responding at the ballot box.

Again, this terrifies Republicans, which is all to the good. For the first time in recent memory, some Republicans are now urging a state to overturn an abortion ban, because they know full well that it is so extreme that few voters support it. Even politicians who, a few years ago, expressed their strong support for exactly the same law -- they're now scrambling around trying to convince other Republicans to get rid of it before it tanks their chances of getting elected. As mentioned, they only have themselves to blame for this conundrum.

The Arizona supreme court this week ruled that a law written in 1864 which bans all abortions except to save the life of the mother can go back into effect. This is precisely what the forced-birth advocates want to see nationwide, in fact. To them, all abortions are evil and the only extenuating circumstance allowable is if both the mother and fetus are at risk of death (when it becomes permissible, to them, to save the life of the mother). That's it -- that's the only exception. Rape victims, incest victims, women who will lose the ability to reproduce if they carry their pregnancies to term -- none of them get any exception at all. As far as they are concerned, that is all God's will.

These radical laws are no longer theoretical or abstract. They are real. They impact real women's lives, for the worse. They overrule medical decisions made by a doctor and patient. They tell women what they can and can't do with their own bodies. They rip freedom and bodily autonomy away from millions. And this is what Republicans have been fighting to create for half a century.

President Joe Biden, to his credit, is fighting back. Donald Trump is trying to weasel out of the consequences of his own actions, since he still brags about how he personally saw to it that Roe was overturned. Trump tried to punt the whole issue, washing his hands of it by blithely saying it was now up to the states and that that would be fine with him. Arizona's decision was handed down almost immediately afterwards, and Trump had to quickly try to backpedal. Today, Vice President Kamala Harris will speak at a political rally in Arizona, and abortion will be the central subject of her appearance.

Team Biden is leaning in hard to two very good slogans in this fight: "Blame Trump," and "Donald Trump did this." Short, sweet, and to the point. They are smart to do this, since both slogans have the benefit of being true. They've already unveiled their strategy, which is already a proven winner:

Joe Biden's campaign plans to hammer Donald Trump for his role in erasing abortion rights largely by enlisting ordinary American women who have suffered from restrictions on the procedure, elevating their voices in place of the president's own.

This approach was immediately on display this week in a Biden campaign video featuring the story of a Texas woman released after Trump announced he would defer to state-level abortion laws, some of which impose draconian limits on women and physicians. Biden himself made no appearance in the ad, except to deliver a standard campaign finance disclosure line.

The strategy represents a kind of concession that Biden, with a complicated history on the issue and a reluctance to even say the word abortion, may not be the most resonant messenger on the issue for many voters, and that spotlighting regular people has the potential to reach those who may not start out sympathetic to the president's campaign.

Such personal ads have already worked, even in deep red states like Kentucky. The new Biden ad is heart-wrenching, because it shows the anguish women have to now go through in many American states. It is a personal story -- as they all are. Republicans blithely like to toss around talking points on how many weeks they'll allow abortions up to and "exceptions" that turn out to be meaningless, but at the heart of the matter are real women who are going through Hell because Republicans have decided what is morally acceptable and what is not for a woman and her doctor to decide. These laws have real-world consequences and you can bet your bottom dollar that the Biden campaign will be featuring more and more of them during the rest of the campaign.

Before the Dobbs decision threw out Roe v. Wade, the only worry for all American women was that the Supreme Court would keep curtailing abortion rights and adding needless obstacles to obtaining one. Now women have to worry about dozens and dozens of state courts and state legislatures making such decisions for them. That is not progress, not for them. As one Washington Post columnist put it:

All abortion politics are national, not local. Abortion developments -- new laws, new restrictions, new stories of women caught up in heart-wrenching and sometimes life-threatening decisions -- are no longer confined to the geography where they take place. They are instantly part of the larger debate.

So far, abortion has been an enormous game-changer and motivator for election turnout. Democrats are hoping that the issue becomes the pre-eminent one in the 2024 campaign and that single-issue women's rights voters will hand both Joe Biden and a whole lot of other Democrats the margin of victory in November.

It's impossible to say at this point in time, but there is a good chance they will be proven right. The 2024 election may be remembered historically as "the abortion election" because the issue is so potent. But then, issues of freedom and human rights often are.

Because this possibility exists -- 2024 becoming known as "the abortion election" -- we are going to dedicate a whole lot of this week's column to the subject (including a rant at the end, rather than our normal talking points section). So for now, let's just whip through what else has been going on politically before we get to the awards.

It wasn't widely reported, but Trump showed his racist core once again, condemning immigrants from (as he previously put it) "shithole countries" because they are not White. Think this is overstating it? Here's what he had to say: "Why can't we allow people to come in from nice countries, I'm trying to be nice. Nice countries, you know like Denmark, Switzerland? Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway?" The audience of rich donors reportedly responded with "chuckles from the crowd." Republicans have abandoned all pretense and dog-whistles and are just saying this stuff out loud now.

Last week, a group of House Republicans wanted to pass a bill that would rename Washington's Dulles Airport after Donald Trump. Democrats responded by suggesting a bill that would name the closest federal prison to Trump's Florida golf resort after him instead (which is reminiscent of the effort by some local California Democrats to rename a sewage treatment plant after George W. Bush a while back, we have to add). Wouldn't it be fun if Trump had to serve a sentence in a prison named for him? Heh.

Trump's legal woes are building to a crescendo, as his first criminal trial begins on Monday. He filed three motions to try to delay the case, and all were quickly shot down by the courts. In advance of the very real possibility that he will be jailed for contempt of court (which is a entirely possible, since he is incapable of controlling his own mouth, even in a courtroom), Trump has taken to comparing himself to Nelson Mandela. Because of course he has.

Allen Weisselberg, a former executive (an "ex-executive"?) at Trump's company who already did a short stint in jail for his financial crimes on Trump's behalf was sentenced to an additional five months in prison this week, for perjury.

Meanwhile, yet another longtime Trump lawyer quit this week, who could wind up testifying against Trump in his national security documents case in Florida. Hey, it's better than doing jail time for a man who shows no loyalty to anyone but himself, right?

But all the rest of Trump's legal woes will be totally eclipsed next week (we had to get the word "eclipse" in here somewhere this week!), when we fully expect some of the headlines to use the tried-and-true "trial of the century" phrase -- which is rather ironic, seeing as how O. J. Simpson died this week. But then his trial actually took place in the previous century....

In Congress, House Speaker Mike Johnson is once again skating on thin ice with his own caucus. After failing once earlier in the week, today the House managed to pass a bill reauthorizing foreign intelligence gathering, which was important since it was facing a deadline. If the House hadn't acted, the whole FISA law might have disappeared, but now it'll be up to the Senate (where chances for passage are quite good) next week.

Next up for the House may be passing some sort of military aid to both Israel and Ukraine, but this will only make the ice under Johnson's skates that much thinner. Marjorie Taylor Greene -- who got a new nickname this week from former Republican House member Ken Buck: "Moscow Marjorie," or as it is trending right now on social media: "Moscow Marge" -- is still threatening to move forward on her "motion to vacate the chair," so Johnson's tenure as speaker is very much in doubt if any Ukraine bill actually gets a floor vote. Stay tuned!

Johnson also further delayed sending over to the Senate the articles of impeachment for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, probably to delay the publicity until it could possibly counter some of the media circus that will doubtlessly surround Trump's criminal trial. As things stand, the article are supposed to be delivered early in the week, and chances are excellent that the Senate will dispense with them as quickly as possible, without bothering to hold an actual impeachment trial. Some Republican senators are howling over the monstrous unfairness of this, but pretty much all of them voted to dismiss Trump's impeachments too, so they have no leg to stand on now.

But let's get back to our main subject, shall we? There was some other minor political news this week, but none of it rose to the level of the fallout from Trump's abortion announcement and the Arizona supreme court's decision. So without further ado....

We're actually giving this award somewhat in anticipation of hearing her speak later today, but Vice President Kamala Harris has already more than earned this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week, for becoming the point-person for the Biden administration's political messaging on abortion rights.

Harris has definitely done a good job already, even before we hear what she has to say in Arizona later on. This is an issue which she obviously feels very strongly about, and it shows in the authenticity of how she speaks about it. Harris has had problems with her delivery on other issues, but not on this one. She shows honest emotion and what she has to say resonates with the crowds she addresses.

We will doubtlessly be seeing a lot more of her out on the campaign trail, hitting this issue hard. President Biden has had a more complicated political stance on abortion (everyone tends to forget this, but he's only the second practicing Catholic president America has ever had), but Harris does not. She speaks from the heart and she speaks for tens of millions of women when she does so.

If this truly does become "the abortion election," then Harris will be one of the main reasons why. Up until Roe v. Wade was overturned, many Democrats shied away from talking about the issue entirely. Biden himself edited his State Of The Union speech this year so he could mention "women's rights" rather than have to say the word "abortion." But Harris is of a new generation of Democrats and is unafraid to speak plainly and from her heart.

So as we said, we are awarding this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week somewhat in advance, but we have no doubt that Harris is about to give a barn-burner of a speech on the issue today. And next week. And the week after that.

[Congratulate Vice President Kamala Harris via the White House contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]

We're not going to get into the reasons why (because we are saving that for our talking points rant), but we are posthumously awarding the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week to a man who has been dead for over a century: William Claude Jones. Keep reading to discover why he more than earned such a dishonor....

[Since he's been dead for quite a while now, we cannot provide contact information for Arizona Territorial Speaker Of The House William Claude Jones, sorry.]

Volume 747 (4/12/24)

As promised, here is our own rant on the importance of abortion rights to the 2024 election campaign. For years, Democrats had felt constrained by abortion as an issue, since it wasn't all that clear how strongly the public supported abortion rights.

That has, obviously, now changed. Abortion rights, to date, have a perfect track record at the ballot box. Every time abortion rights have been presented to voters -- even in deep red states -- the vote has been pretty overwhelmingly against banning abortion and for women's rights. This has freed up Democratic politicians to lean in hard to the issue, which (to their credit) most of them are already doing. So here is the speech we are offering up -- our suggestions for how to speak to the voters about the issue (some of which we didn't come up with ourselves, so we've provided links to give credit where it is due).

Blame Donald Trump

We are all now living in the world Donald Trump made possible. For the first time in American history, the Supreme Court ripped away an individual human right, and all the blame for this rests at the feet of the man who put three of the justices on that court: Donald Trump.

The court, in all its supposed wisdom, decided that the right to bodily autonomy for women would henceforth be up to each state's government to decide, instead of being constitutionally guaranteed to all American women as it had for half a century. Just like during the Jim Crow era, the rights of Americans now depend on the ZIP code they live in. On one side of a border, women have full bodily rights, while on the other side they don't -- because their legislature or state courts decided to take them away.

Donald Trump came out this week in strong support of this balkanization of American human rights. He's totally fine leaving it all up to the states. Except that when one state -- Arizona -- decided that a law originally passed 160 years ago was still valid, Trump backed down and urged the state to "bring it back into reason," and expressed his confidence that "it will be straightened out." But when Democrats in the legislature tried to do precisely that as soon as they could, Republicans blocked it. They like the law and they don't want to see it repealed, even though it was passed when women couldn't vote and Arizona wouldn't become a state for another half-century.

It seems Arizona's state legislature hasn't improved much since 1864, just after it first became an American territory. Back then, the speaker of their house chamber was a man named William Claude Jones. After Jones's first wife divorced him, he married a woman he declared was 12 years old. When he moved to the Arizona territory, he married a third woman, who was 15 years old. Jones himself was around 50 at the time. He abandoned her within a year, and headed off to Hawai'i where he married "a princess from a noble family" -- who was 14 years old.

This is the man who passed that abortion law through his chamber. These were the morals of the man -- who was clearly a pedophile -- who got to decide what was permissible for Arizona's women. And Arizona Republicans are just fine with letting this law stand as it is, even though there are zero exceptions in it for rape or incest. Rapists in Arizona should be able to select who will be the mother of their babies, in other words (according to Republicans), and the rape victim should have no say in the matter at all. This is barbaric, but that's actually what Arizona Republicans are now fighting to preserve.

To be fair, some Republicans realize that this is somewhat problematic (to say the least). Even Republicans who used to actually voice support for the 1864 law. Arizona Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake spoke glowingly of the law when she ran for governor two years ago, calling it a "great law." Now that this "great law" has been upheld by her state's highest court, she has drastically changed her tune. She is now actually actively lobbying Republicans in the state legislature to join with Democrats in repealing the law. But it's really too little, too late -- we've already seen that when she thinks it will benefit her politically, she will throw women's rights under the bus in an instant.

For a half-century, Republican politicians gave their tacit support to the forced-birth advocates. It was all rather abstract, so it really didn't matter how extreme the laws they supported really were. It helped them get elected, and that was good enough. But when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the protections of Roe v. Wade, it all got very real, very quickly. Now blithely stating that you think "life begins at conception" will mean that in some states, in-vitro fertilization will essentially be outlawed. Or that rape victims will be forced to carry their rapist's baby to term, whether they want to or not.

Donald Trump did this. Never forget. He too thought it would be politically expedient to go along with appointing anti-abortion judges, without really caring what it would mean. He is still proud of the fact that Roe v. Wade was overturned. He takes credit for doing so. He brags about it. But "credit" isn't really the right word, because any woman seeking to lay the blame for losing the right to decide what happens with her own body should blame Donald Trump, not "credit" him.

Some Republicans try to sound reasonable on abortion, by supporting "exceptions" to their abortion bans. But when a woman tries to get a medically-necessary abortion using one of these exceptions, doctors will turn her away because they are afraid of being sent to jail. They speak of 15-week or 16-week bans as being reasonable, when they truly are not. Most abortions -- over 90 percent of them -- in America do indeed take place before these limits, but the ones that happen after that point are the ones that are the most in need of protection. Because these are the abortions that happen not because the mother doesn't want to have a healthy baby, but because that is not going to happen for them.

This can include when a miscarriage happens and the fetus dies, for instance. But even then some doctors will refuse to perform an abortion -- even when refusing to do so will cause the woman to suffer excruciating pain, perhaps prevent her from ever becoming pregnant again, or even die. The doctors are rightfully terrified that their decisions will be second-guessed by some local cops or district attorneys and they will be sent to jail for doing what is medically necessary and humane.

When "the life of the mother" exceptions are put to the test, they fail. Even when a doctor knows that the fetus is going to die and that quick action will avoid deadly sepsis, the woman is forced to wait until the fetus actually does die before an abortion will be allowed -- for no medically-sound reason whatsoever. The "exception" dooms women to needless pain and anguish and medical risk. And "life of the mother" doesn't cover a whole range of other problems, either. What happens when a woman is informed that her fetus is developing abnormally and has failed to develop the organs necessary for life? Such a fetus can be carried to term and then die within minutes or hours after the mother gives birth to it. Who would force a woman to go through that excruciating experience even though the doctors know it is going to happen months in advance? Republicans, that's who.

This is a question of freedom. The freedom for you and your doctor to make medical decisions -- even extremely heart-wrenching ones -- without a gaggle of theocratic politicians looking over your shoulders and telling you what you can and can't do with your own body. This is the freedom Donald Trump has taken away from tens of millions of American women. And he brags about doing so!

Democrats believe your body should belong to you. Not to Republicans in the government, not to Donald Trump. Not to some male judges. Only to you. And we believe that for all American women.

Why should American women today enjoy fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers did? Why should we go backwards on human rights, depending purely on what state you live in? Why should some women get the medical care they need when they need it, while others are denied and condemned to pain, possibly losing the ability to bear any future children, or even death? That's not the America I want. But it is precisely the America Donald Trump has created -- and he's just fine with it.

Republicans won't be satisfied until they ban abortion nationwide. They may try to do this in a reasonable-sounding way, but check the fine print. They're fine with limiting abortion in blue states, but their laws also would allow red states to go even further and ban all abortions with no exceptions at all. Which is the real endpoint they want to get to, nationwide, for all American women.

Arizona just reinstated an abortion ban from the time of the Civil War. It was passed through their territorial government by a man who married multiple girls -- not "women," but girls, one as young as twelve years old. And the Republicans in their current state government just refused to even allow a vote on repealing this archaic law. They are just fine with leaving it on the books.

Arizona is just one state. There are plenty of others where laws that are just as Draconian are now in place. The Republican Party wants to force every woman who ever gets pregnant to give birth to a baby, and it simply does not matter to them what that woman wants or thinks about it. Even when she's a rape victim. Even when the father of her baby is her own father.

Donald Trump did this.

Remember, in November.

One party stands strong for women's freedom while one party fights to take rights away from women. And if Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans win, things are just going to get worse, because they are not done yet. Don't give them that chance. Vote for human rights and freedom. Vote blue.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Cross-posted at: Democratic Underground