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October 14, 2024
To Restore Abortion Rights, Democrats Must Win the Senate
If Democrats manage to win the White House but lose the Senate, then people in GOP-controlled states will continue to be forced to bring pregnancies to term against their will.
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, speaks at a campaign rally, Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024, in Cincinnati. Ohio.
(Jeff Dean / AP Photo)
If the Democrats manage to win the White House but lose control of the US Senate, then people in Republican-controlled states will be forced to bring pregnancies to term against their will for another two years. It’s really that simple. There is no restoration of abortion rights without the Senate. The New York Times, and the smattering of Republican voters they talk to who claim to be “undecided,” can facetiously ask for more information about Kamala Harris’s policies all they want, but without the Senate (and Democratic control of the House of Representatives) there are no Kamala Harris policies. There are just speeches and some executive orders that will be overturned by the Republican-controlled Supreme Court—a Supreme Court, mind you, that will never be reformed if Republicans control the Senate.
Unfortunately, it does not look like Democrats will hold the Senate. A new NYT/Siena poll shows that the Democrats’ odds are, frankly, dire. Democrats can afford to lose only two seats in the upcoming election. One is almost certainly gone: West Virginia “Democrat” and oil slick shaped like a real boy, Joe Manchin, decided not to run for reelection against the state’s popular Republican former-governor Jim Justice. His opponent, Democrat Glenn Elliot, is a man I had to Google because I couldn’t remember his name even though I write about this stuff for a living. West Virginia is gone.
That means the Democrats cannot lose another seat. Ohio Senator and actual populist Sherrod Brown is in a tough battle against Republican Bernie Moreno in a state Trump is likely to win. But Moreno is a literal car salesman who has never held elected office and is backed by crypto-bros. I know this thin and vapid resume worked for J.D. Vance in Ohio, but Moreno doesn’t even have a book slamming his own family to fall back on. Sherrod Brown must be protected at all costs.
In Arizona, thankfully, Democrat Ruben Gallego seems poised to defeat Republican xenophobe Kari Lake—while Kyrsten Sinema no doubt prepares for a lobbying and punditry career that will (Gods willing) lead her to getting owned by me on CNN one day. But in Montana, Democratic Senator John Tester appears to be in deep trouble. According to the NYT/Siena poll, he is losing handily to former Navy SEAL and wealthy businessman-with-family money, Tim Sheehy. All Sheehy does is run around declaring that women have been “indoctrinated” to support abortion while bemoaning the fact that all women “want to talk about” are his plans to take away their rights to bodily autonomy. Apparently, that is enough for Montana’s voters.
If Tester is going to lose to a haircut who thinks women should be forced to give birth even if they don’t want to, then Democrats need to pick up one other seat. According to pollsters, the best chances for that are in Texas, where Democrat Colin Allred trails the odious Ted Cruz by four points (still within the margin of error). In Florida, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (who my mother has sent so much money to I’ve cut her off from Act Blue), seems to be trailing Medicare fraud overseer, Rick Scott. She’s down by nine points in the NYT/Siena poll (though a recent Marist poll shows the race much closer).
Florida, Montana, and Texas are all states that Trump is likely to win. That means for the Democrats to hang onto the Senate, a number of voters would have to go to the polls and vote for Trump but against the Republican candidate for Senate. That could happen, if there are voters who want Trump to be president but want him restrained in some way by the Senate. But, like, have you met a Trump voter? When was the last time you met a cultist who said “Yes, I believe the dear leader is the only person who can save us from certain doom, but He should be restrained from His rapturous work by non-believers who will work tirelessly to frustrate His great plans.” If the future of abortion rights rests on the votes of Republicans who want Trump to have power, but not too much power, then there is no future for abortion rights.
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This leaves only one likely way for Democrats to take the Senate: Kamala Harris is going to have to win one of these states, and the Senate candidate will have to ride her coattails. Tester has decided to go the other way on that: he still hasn’t technically endorsed Harris for president. He’s making the political calculation that Montana isn’t going to go for Harris so he’s staying as far away from her as reasonably possible. And I wish him all the luck with that. I’m not from Montana, so I can’t speak to how politically toxic it is to be seen with an educated Black woman there. Let’s see how the all-white, all-the-time strategy works out for him.
In Texas, Colin Allred has endorsed Harris, but he’s also keeping the presidential campaign “at arms length.” Allred happens to be Black, though you’d hardly know it from his media strategy, which hasn’t included a lot of hits on Black or Latino-focused media. Again, best of luck with that. The last Democrat to win a Senate election in Texas was Lloyd Bentsen, and he did indeed pull off that feat while Texas voted for a Republican (George H.W. Bush) for president. Of course, that was back in 1988 and predates the invention of the iPhone and Flex Seal, but sure, let’s go ahead and try to pull that off again.
Only Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in Florida doesn’t seem to be running away from Harris, with Mucarsel-Powell saying the switch to Harris gave Florida Democrats a burst of momentum. But it appears the Harris campaign has written Florida off: the Vice-President has not been to Florida since she replaced Joe Biden as the party’s nominee.
Look, I’m not a political scientist or a campaigns expert. I don’t know how to win Senate elections in red states—if I did, I wouldn’t be a journalist like Clark Kent, writing this piece, I’d be out there like Superman, literally saving the country. If you made me run for Senate in Texas, I’d lose by 30 points to a Republican whose only qualification was being one of the guys Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones allows to clean his eyeglasses.
But it seems to me that the strategy of hoping voters will split the ticket to vote for Trump and a Democratic Senate candidate is deeply flawed. The best chance for Tester, Allred, and Mucarsel-Powell is an energized Democratic base turning out at record numbers to carry them to victory. The most energetic force in Democratic politics right now, Kamala Harris, is probably the best way to get those Democratic voters to turn out in record numbers, should those voters even exist in large enough numbers to make a difference.
Maybe the Harris campaign can do that over the apparent objection of people like Tester and Allred, and without putting the candidate’s kicks on the ground in states like Florida and Texas, which the Electoral College allows Harris to ignore. But, somehow, Democrats are going to need massive turnout to save the Senate and have a chance of putting Harris’s agenda into play.
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For those wondering, the Senate map in 2026 isn’t much better. The only potentially vulnerable Republicans are Maine Senator and concern-troller Susan Collins, and North Carolina’s Thom Tillis. Democrats have to defend Jon Ossof in Georgia, and Gary Peters in Michigan.
With that in mind, I’ll offer the obligatory demand for Democrats to develop even a basic sense of self-preservation and add Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico as states, should they ever again get the opportunity to do so as they had in 2020. Otherwise, a Republican-controlled Senate and a country that forces women to give birth against their will is the most likely outcome for the foreseeable future.
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Elie Mystal
Elie Mystal is The Nation’s justice correspondent and the host of its legal podcast, Contempt of Court. He is also an Alfred Knobler Fellow at the Type Media Center. His first book is the New York Times bestseller Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution, published by The New Press. Elie can be followed @ElieNYC.