Issue One and Things of That Exact Nature
It's going to fail, it's going to be glorious
On Issue 1:
My sporadic writing continues with a diatribe that truly shouldn’t catch any of you by surprise. And I fully understand that I’m speaking to a very agreeable wall! No one reading this is voting yes on issue 1, nor should they, and this won’t change any minds but it sure is fun to write.
Issue 1 is not just evil, it’s doomed to fail because Ohio Republicans and their gremlin, Aaron Baer from the “Center for Christian Virtues” and Michael Gondiakis from Ohio Right to Life, two men who have firmly cemented their eternal destination of the inner circle of hell, do not understand this state.
Ohioans are notoriously easily duped. We have learned this over and over again, voters approved a casino oligopoly, rejected soundly medical and recreational weed, and were somehow overwhelmingly convinced that we should have a bipartisan redistricting committee. Obviously we all know how that went, but whatever we got got. The greater point is that they might be a huge swath of hog voters, but those hog voters like the illusion of choice. Issue 1 isn’t the illusion of choice, it’s a deliberate attempt to end that, and in a state that is only mildly a republican utopia it’s not a given.
That leads into something to be said about Republican echo chambers. Anyone who thinks they don’t exist hasn’t seen a vast majority of twitter blue users. These are highly curated spaces because they can’t stand dissent. And that ultimately is what is going to lead them to fail in a few short weeks. The vast majority of Ohioans like dissent, from one side or the other and at the core of Issue 1 is the ability not to dissent, against any future majority now or later. The online right is increasingly and bafflingly online, the Ron DeSantis republicans exist in a space where they feel like the thought leaders of their time. The actuality is they’re cranks who don’t realize that Trumps win weren’t because of some esoteric morals campaign but rather because rural voters found in him something mesmerizing.
Liberal fears about this are valid, and the possibility of this passing is mortifying, but slim and getting slimmer. The USA Today Poll did the excellent job of confirming just about all of my priors. This isn’t even going to be close.
The mentality that a majority of voting Ohioans are going to show up to a early august election to take away their rights fundamentally ignores who shows up to early August elections. These are for engaged voters! The vast majority of Republican and Trump voters aren’t these! What we’ve learned since 2016 overwhelmingly is that Republicans can have a turnout problem in elections that don’t have someone named Trump on the ballot. The caveat on this is that turnout is up across the board, both sides, but the Republican turnout problem is more so there’s just fundamentally less of them. If the wine moms are showing up enmasse it’s game over for them routinely. This isn’t to say that Ohio isn’t a red state, 2018 and 2022 both showed us it is, but those still had Trump endorsements and a Trumply aura. No such thing exists here, and blood red Ohio isn’t in a feeding frenzy over this. The consultant class and the chamber of commerce is, a group that distinctly couldn’t find the pulse of Ohio if the state had a blood pressure cuff around it, are flat out delusional.
Those who show up in August are engaged and proactive, they’re usually 8% of the voting population but they’re loud! They care! And by-god they don’t want that care to be unable to do something in the future.
The Republicans would’ve been wise to delay this, but as we know they can’t. The prospect of abortion access in Ohio being codified is too grave, too directly harmful to their divine mandate to govern with their Christian supremacy at all costs, to tempt that fate.
That’s why Issue 1 is going down. Ohioans are seeped in reality, even if elections are increasingly proving otherwise.
The worst thing you can have in a state like this is hope, because it is absolutely crushing to see it diminished election after election with no end in sight. I don’t even want to picture what 2024 will bring to Ohio and specifically Sherrod Brown, but as naïve as it is I hope Issue 1 going down in flames can bring us some. This state and the state Democratic party are in desperate need of anything, a jolt, some momentum, some money coming in to stop the bleeding. The biggest win since 2018 (courtesy of one of the worst Senate candidates ever) was 2 house flips in 2022. That’s not enough. We need this and this state needs this, which is why I’m not cataclysmic and why I’m looking forward to that beautiful moment August 8th that results come in.
And if I’m wrong I will mourn Ohio all the same like I’ve done for countless prior elections.
This is going to be a big day for Ohio, and hopefully the beginning of something. I just hope I don’t eat my words.
Vote no on August 8th or I will curse your immortal soul. I’m waiting for my absentee ballot to arrive so I can fill in the no bubble and get a tiny shot of Dopamine to convince myself that this state is salvageable