Fox pundit says Democrats did well in midterms because 'these women just went crazy'

Josh Marcus
·2 min read
Community members gather to protest the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade and Kentucky's trigger law to ban abortion, at Circus Square Park in Bowling Green, Ky., on Saturday, June 25, 2022. (Grace Ramey/Daily News via AP, File)

A Fox New guest said women who “just went crazy” after the Supreme Court shot down constitutional abortion rights helped drive turnout across the country during midterm elections on Tuesday.

“Abortion is becoming the issue that is driving turnout,” Jim Messina, who managed the Obama-Biden presidential ticket in 2012, told the newtork. “Last night, exit polls, Democrats win independents in a non-presidential year. No polls saw that coming, and it was because these women just went crazy.”

The political operative pointed to the Michigan house and senate flipping, the victory of incumbent Democratic Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, and five abortion-related ballot measures as evidence.

As The Independent has reported, concerns about abortion rights and reproductive freedoms drove “seismic” levels of turnout in states across the country.

States like Michigan, Vermont, and California all voted abortion protections into their state constitutions via ballot initiative.

“This is a seismic win for abortion rights in a battleground state,” Center for Reproductive Rights president Nancy Northup said of Michigan’s vote in a statement. “This victory is also a win for people in the neighbouring states of Indiana and Ohio, where abortion is banned.”

The Vermont for Reproductive Liberty Ballot Committee, which campaigned for the amendment, said on Tuesday that “Vermont voters made history tonight.”

“Vermonters support reproductive freedom in all four corners of the state,” the committee said in a message to voters. “They believe that our reproductive decisions are ours to make without interference from politicians.”

Meanwhile, voters in Kentucky and Montana appeared poised to shoot down proposed anti-abortion measures.

It continues a run of state-level proposals backing abortion, after Kansas voters shocked the nationa and rejected an anti-abortion amendment despite being a state that tends conservative.

The momentum contradicts predictions from pollsters that abortion wouldn’t be a major issue this election.

“Exit polls show that voters cared a lot more about abortion than expected: it was the second most important issue they kept in mind, according to NBC News’s polling, right behind inflation and far ahead of crime, gun policy, and immigration,” as Clémence Michallon noted in a column for Independent Voices.