One thing which strikes me about this month’s Ohio constitutional referendum, enshrining abortion and other forms of “reproductive freedom” in the state constitution, is that Donald Trump won Ohio’s popular vote twice. Indeed, in 2020, Trump was the first Presidential candidate of either party to win the entire contest without carrying Ohio since 1960. This despite Trump running on the explicit pledge to pack the courts and overturn abortion rights.
Thing is, this outcome isn’t unprecedented, not even recently. Like Kansas before it, Ohio voted one way on candidates, and another way on issues. In the same ballot cycle, Ohioans voted to legalize recreational cannabis, something Republican leadership consistently opposes. Yet despite breaking with organized conservatism on important, high-profile issues, Donald Trump is currently on track for a third Ohio win, with an anticipated simple majority.
We could extrapolate this trend nationwide. I already mentioned Kansas, which has a Republican-controlled legislature, but an endangered Democratic governor. I live in deep-red Nebraska, which hasn’t supported a Democrat for President since 1964. Yet on polls which survey issue-specific views, Nebraskans consistently show razor-thin a majority for legal abortion and wide support for minimum wage increases. Nebraska’s government consistently spikes efforts to let Nebraskans vote on medical cannabis.
On issue after issue, Americans consistently skew center-left. Over three-quarters of Americans support cannabis for recreational and/or medicinal use. More than two-thirds of Americans believe abortion should remain legal in at least the first trimester. Same-sex marriage was once deeply unpopular even in relatively progressive states (think California’s Prop8), but support currently stands above seventy percent. When separated from personalities and parties, Americans consistently support progressive issues.
Despite this, Donald Trump, who has pledged to crack down on all these issues, is currently on track to win next year’s general election. Some of that comes down to single-issue outrage: President Biden’s willingness to support Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing nationalist government in the current Israel-Hamas war has proven toxic with his own party. But let’s be honest, Trump won’t repudiate Netanyahu either, so that’s a losing issue either way.
Nor are the Republican Party’s opinions exactly concealed. The Party itself hasn’t had a nationwide platform since 2016, and currently is beholden to the whims of its most active members—which, in practice, means whatever applause lines Donald Trump can muster at campaign rallies. As Levitsky and Ziblatt have noted, Trump has no underlying principles; he’s built his entire campaign around whatever anti-democratic puffery his crowds demand.
But that’s the people who actually attend Trump rallies. Crowds are pretty poor barometers of public opinion, as the ugliest, most aggressive crowd members usually dominate the outcry. Worse, they have a polarizing effect. When people only communicate with those they already agree with, they tend to emerge with more doctrinaire, intolerant versions of their existing views. Psychologists call this “group polarization,” but I prefer the military term: “incestuous amplification.”
While Trump panders to his nastiest supporters, Americans overall consistently support more progressive concerns. Ideas which formerly dwelt at the pinko fringe, have become mainstream. Americans want stricter gun control, or at least background checks and red-flag laws; higher taxes on the super-rich; and a path to citizenship for immigrants, including the undocumented. These aren’t fringe Looney-Lefty ideas. All have majority support, and some have overwhelming supermajority support.
This gulf between America’s principles, and America’s candidates, baffles me. Based on the most prominent hot-button issues, the mainstream of the Democratic Party is more conservative than the aggregate American electorate. Some Democrats are arguably losing support, not because they support progressive issues, but because they think they’ll gain electoral advantage by pandering to conservatives and pretending to be bipartisan. Kamala Harris, a law-and-order Democrat, comes immediately to mind.
Ohio has this month become the most prominent example of this division. The state is currently controlled by a Republican legislature and a Republican governor. The state’s GOP has pledged to simply ignore the voters’ will, at least on abortion. Citing Levitsky and Ziblatt again, the Republican Party has become the party of anti-democracy in America today. They see voters as a force to squelch, not honor.
And a frightening number of Americans are apparently okay with that. If Trump wins the Presidency next year, and especially if he shepherds a Republican majority into Congress, they’ll pass laws that contravene the will of their own voter bloc. They have, indeed, pledged to do so. When they crack down on their own voters and suppress the popular will, nobody should pretend that they weren’t warned.
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