Abortion is the latest policy hammer Democrats have used to beat Republicans at the polls

In his opinion ending a half century of abortion rights, Justice Sam Alito sneeringly wrote that if women care so much about the issue, nothing is stopping them from seeking redress at the ballot box — to which women have responded, “will do.”

It is believable that Alito, insulated from the little people by his private jets and ivory trout streams, was incapable of reading the national room. He might not read, or believe, polls that consistently show that three-fifths of Americans say abortion should generally be legal. Maybe he thought that these emotional women would calm down and accept his male view of the world.

But now, even the tin-eared justice must be understanding what he has wrought.

Ohio is only the latest state to show that things don’t always work out for the dog that finally catches the Roe vs. Wade car. Even after employing all its standard tricks of the trade — holding the election under its most favorable terms and telling two different stories about why it was necessary in the first place — Republicans were pancaked by an electorate that didn’t buy their nonsense.

The traditional way to hit bottom is to stop digging the hole; abortion opponents have ordered up more steam shovels, blaming Ohio Republicans for not being aggressive enough in their attack on American liberties.

In 1984, Ronald Reagan defeated Walter Mondale by the same margin that pro-choice advocates carried Ohio. Mondale, as was customary for 1980s-era Democrats, said his party had failed to get its message out. No, the problem was that it did get its message out, and no one was buying the message.

Sober Republican campaign strategists understood this, and did their best not to get their message out — telling the electorate that the issue wasn’t about abortion, but parental rights. Because children are all the time amending their state constitutions to mandate a later bedtime.

The overturn of Roe, however, is having a political effect that transcends abortion. Democrats are waking up to a hack that can short-circuit Republican gerrymandering and voter-suppression tactics: Put a clear, understandable issue on the ballot.

From abortion rights to minimum wage to health care to legalization of marijuana, policy-based ballot initiatives have proved popular with voters and driven higher Democratic turnout.

It’s been an effective counterweight to GOP gerrymandering, which has been particularly effective, giving them state congressional representation well in excess of their actual numbers.

Still, the artificially inflated number of Republicans in office have given the party an illusion of popularity that has emboldened its membership to press for ever more extreme positions, most notably, but not exclusively, on abortion. Now, this circumstance has painted them into a corner from which there is no obvious way out.

Just as Democrats didn’t see the Republican focus on state legislatures coming, Republicans failed to understand the power of issue-based ballot initiatives. Ironically, this was the tactic the California GOP embraced almost 50 years ago when Proposition 13 appealed directly to the voters over taxation.

Back then, Democrats had a union problem that was very similar to contemporary Republicans’ abortion problem.

Through the ’70s, Americans took an increasingly dim view of labor unions, which demanded increasingly ridiculous work rules, and were perceived as lazy producers of shoddy products. Yet it was impossible to win a Democratic primary without them.

Today, as a percentage, fervent opposition to abortion is running at about the same level as union membership in the 1980s, a lost decade for Democrats. It took Bill Clinton and his New Covenant to reshuffle the deck by placing more emphasis on individual initiative than institutional excess.

To date, Democrats — capable of tying themselves in prodigious, eye-averting knots over pronouns and drag queens — have only marginally tapped into their great issue advantage.

As such, Democratic issues prevail, even when and where Democratic candidates do not. Republican candidates might obfuscate their true position on abortion to avoid voter ire. But a ballot initiative can’t duck.

Ballot initiatives motivate people who are otherwise not particularly interested in politics — and by their own implicit admission, high turnout is not advantageous for Republicans. People might not show up at the polling place to vote for Paul Politician, but they will show up to vote for their own personal rights and freedoms.

Already, it appears abortion will be on the ballot in Florida and Arizona, and Democrats are doing everything they can to get the word “abortion” on the ballot in as many states as possible in 2024. Abortion is a hammer.

Many old-fashioned Republicans have blamed Donald Trump for killing the GOP. Yet it may be the GOP that winds up killing Donald Trump. In a rare moment of candor, Trump lamented that the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling could make it “very very hard for Republicans to win elections.”

Himself included.

Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Abortion, minimum wage, marijuana on ballots a win for Democrats