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Senator Ron Johnsons political shenanigans have ranged from the absurd (like when he said it may be true that COVID vaccines cause AIDS only to later deny ever believing that) to the potentially illegal (coordinating an effort to serve up fake Donald Trumpsupporting electors to Vice President Mike Pence, allegedly in an effort to overturn Joe Bidens victory in 2020). Democrats are amplifying these issues, but the strategy to defeat the incumbent Wisconsin senator also has another clear target: his record on women. The Supreme Court decision overruling the landmark Roe v. Wade Fridayand Wisconsins 173-year-old state law banning abortions now in effecthas the potential to make this strategy more politically potent than ever, making Johnson a clear test case in Democrats promise to make womens rights a winning issue at the ballot box.

Johnson is an easy target in that respect. The two-term senator said he didnt view the repeal of Roe v. Wade as a huge threat to womens health and that things would be fine. He said anyone who does not like Wisconsins abortion laws can move, has advocated for a federal abortion ban after 20 weeksdespite arguing that the matter was a states issueand supported a Mississippi law to ban abortions after 15 weeks. The Wisconsin Democratic Party regularly blasts out fact sheets highlighting Johnsons work to strip reproductive rights. The states Democratic candidates for Senate have all targeted Johnsons record on women and reproductive rights across various mediums, including paid campaign TV ads (Sarah Godlewski cut an ad outside the Supreme Court in Washington), social media posts, and official statements.

Its a strategy seemingly based on lessons learned from the last three election cycles. In 2018 Democrats energized their base to deliver Tony Evers the governorship, despite Trump winning the state two years prior; in 2020, Biden managed to flip the state from red to blue by siphoning off key votes in Milwaukee suburbsWaukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington counties notable among themand chipping away at historically landslide margins in traditional Republican strongholds like the Mequon, Elm Grove, and Brookfield suburbs. Alex Lasry, a Milwaukee Bucks executive running in the Democratic Senate primary, stressed in a phone call that to win the state, Democrats need to replicate the victories of Barack Obama, Senator Tammy Baldwin, Evers, and Joe Biden by paying attention to places that Democrats neglect and Republicans take for granted.

Republicans concede this could work; one GOP strategist who has run numerous campaigns in Wisconsin explained that Johnson cant win by plucking from the MAGA playbook alone. The people who are going to walk through walls to vote so that they can vote for Ron Johnson, theyre gonna show up anyway. But that isnt gonna be enough to get him elected, the strategist said. They either have to figure out a way to make him passable to those people that probably would vote for Ron Johnson, but might not.

Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barness campaign for Senate said it received more individual donations on Friday than any other single day in the campaign, including its launch and the day Johnson announced his reelection campaign. Lasrys campaign said it has experienced a notable uptick in online campaign donations. And Friday through Sunday, Godlewski, the only woman candidate in the Democratic primary for the Senate seat, had her best-performing fundraising days since the start of her campaigneach day outstripping the previous. The ruling that came out Friday was a very dramatic moment in the fact that now people in Wisconsin have fewer rights than they did even last week, Godlewski told Vanity Fair. I think thats gonna be a centerpiece because we know Ron Johnson; this is exactly what he wanted.

Barnes and Lasry echoed this sentiment. People are frustrated. Women are incredibly frustratedas they should beseeing their rights being taken away in real time. Things that were fought and won 50 years agoto have to go through those same exact fights, people are fired up, especially maybe those who may not have thought they were political before, understanding just how deeply involved politics is in folks daily lives, Barnes said.

We see what happens when Republicans take over, they continue to make sure that they take away rights for women, Lasry said.

Wisconsin Democrats feel they have a credible case to make against Johnson when it comes to his record on women. In addition to his position on Roe, Johnson has suggested that single mothers choose to have more children in order to receive greater welfare assistance. He also suggested that assisting single mothers with government aid turned them into dependents and that mothers on welfare assistance should work in childcare centers as an alternative solution. He is really a true believer when it comes to the oppression of women and disrespecting women. Hes been doing it for a long time here in his political career, Melissa Baldauff, a Democratic strategist based in Wisconsin, told me. (Johnsons campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)

Robyn Vining, a Democratic member of the Wisconsin State Assembly, relied on women voters in 2018, when she flipped a longtime red seat previously held by the likes of former Republican governor Scott Walker in 2018 and held on to it in 2020. We had women who had never knocked doors before, out knocking doors. We had women writing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of postcards, Vining said. It really matters. Women are fed up. Theyre sick and tired of being targeted, of being unrepresented.

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Women Are Fed Up: Democrats See Ron Johnsons Abortion Record as Their Path to Victory - Vanity Fair

This version of patriotism links criticism of our countrys failings with a commitment to changing them. It cleaves to principles of freedom and equality because they are right, and also because they are ours, they are us. It addresses Americas worst aspects, not as enemies to be eliminated (as in our many domestic wars on this or that) but as we would approach a friend or family member who had lost their way. In this spirit, even the harshest reproach, the most relentless list of wrongs, comes with a commitment to repair and heal, to build a more just and decent country. It also entails a practical faith: As long as change might be possible, we owe it to one another to try.

These may sound like the gentle tones of a more nave time. Dont we know more now than earlier generations did about the cruelty and complexity of history, the intensity of white supremacy in the early Republic, the constitutional compromises with slavery? Havent we outgrown complacent patriotism? But this is wrong and, really, embarrassingly parochial. We do not know more about American injustice than King, or, for that matter, Johnson, the son of bigoted East Texas who became a complex but effective civil rights champion. There was nothing complacent in their patriotism.

They insisted that every American ought to shoulder some of the responsibility for their countrys crimes and failings, whether or not they had personally benefited or suffered from them. And, for Johnson and King, everyone deserved to take some pride in American progress toward justice. Patriotism was a practical task: to appreciate and preserve what is good, work to change what is bad, and remember that part of what is good in a country is that citizens can change it. Patriotic effort came with no guarantee of success, but it was an obligation nevertheless a duty akin to what the philosopher William James once called the moral equivalent of war.

Today, America faces threats to national well-being and even survival: climate change, racial inequity, oligarchy, the economic collapse of whole regions. But the enemy is not an invader: These slow-moving crises pit us against one another. Spewing our carbon, living in our economically and ideologically segregated neighborhoods and regions, trading accusations of bigotry and bad faith, we are one anothers problems. In these conditions, it is hard to find threads of commonality. At some point, a liberal gets tired of saying, We are better than this, when we seem resolutely not to be.

But there is something beyond both one last We are better than this and your preferred update of Garrisons a covenant with death and an agreement with Hell. Progressive patriotism justifies risks and sacrifices to try to create a country that deserves them. Loyalty to the country, in this light, means faith that you and other citizens can still build better ways of living together.

Progressive frustrations such as climate inaction, gun proliferation and the erosion of reproductive freedom are rooted in ways our political system stops majority opinion from ruling through the Senate, the Electoral College, and the Supreme Court, for starters. Earlier political transformation, such as the New Deal and the civil rights movement, had to shift political power and make the country more democratic in order to make it better. Because democracy is power, and power is scary and dangerous, political trust and a generous vision of the country are especially important in making a country more democratic.

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Opinion | Democrats Need Patriotism Now More Than Ever - The New York Times

What a difference a year makes.

President Biden strutted into the Fourth of July a year ago on solid political footing, declaring the nations independence from the coronavirus.

Twelve months later, Mr. Biden is stumbling into the fireworks and festivities battered and bruised and struggling to convince voters he can right the ship.

Larry Jacobs, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota, said the change in the political landscape over the last year is night and day.

Optimism among Democrats took a hit by the failure to pass the Build Back Better agenda and the subsequent Democratic fighting, Mr. Jacobs said. The situation has only gotten worse for Dems inflation haunts all Americans and will likely go up in the coming months.

Inflation climbed to a 40-year high last month. The stock market and 401(k) retirement accounts have been in a tailspin, and the cost of gas and groceries has soared.

SEE ALSO: Independence Day on track to be a conservative holiday, experts say

The rate of people dying from COVID-19 has slowed, though the death toll surpassed 1 million in May and continues to climb.

Russias war with Ukraine has made things worse, adding to disruptions in the supply chain brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

It is creating a hairy political environment for Democrats four months out from the midterm elections where they are defending their fragile House and Senate majorities.

Kevin Sheridan, a GOP strategist, said things started going bad for Mr. Biden after the chaotic pullout of military troops from Afghanistan, which drew condemnation from across the political spectrum, and led his approval rating to slip and stay below 50%.

Hes never going to recover from that disgraceful exit, Mr. Sheridan said.

Since last July, gas prices have jumped from $3.13 a gallon to $4.868 this week, according to AAA. Inflation, meanwhile, has jumped from 5.4% to 8.6% and Republicans have been happy to complain about the baby formula and tampon shortages.

SEE ALSO: Supply chain problems, wildfires dent Fourth of July fireworks after two years of pandemic slumps

Every single policy Biden and Democrats have accomplished has made Americans daily lives worse, not better, and thats why voters are going to fire them into the sun in November, Mr. Sheridan said.

Democrats hoped things would start to turn around in the fall after Mr. Biden signed the $1 trillion infrastructure bill into law, delivering on a campaign promise.

But the momentum from the bipartisan agreement was not enough to unlock enough support for Mr. Bidens $1.75 trillion social safety bill dubbed the Build Back Better plan.

The failure further frustrated liberals, whove been lukewarm on Mr. Biden from the beginning.

Democrats say Republicans are the real problem.

After opposing job-creating infrastructure investments and much-needed pandemic assistance, voting to overturn election results because they didnt like the outcome, and pushing a nationwide abortion ban, House Republicans have given voters zero reason to trust them with control of Congress, said Helen Kalla, spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

History shows the presidents party often loses seats in the midterm elections, and the magnitude of the losses is directly tied to the political climate and the seats that are in play.

Out of the 40 midterm elections since the Civil War, the presidents party has lost ground in the House in 37 of them.

In a recent analysis, Kyle Kondik, of the University of Virginias Center for Politics, said the presidents and their parties in the three other races benefited from some sort of extraordinary occurrence.

President Franklin Roosevelt and Democrats bucked the trend in the 1934 midterms after passing the New Deal during the Great Depression. President Bill Clinton and Democrats made gains in 1998 thanks to a strong economy, and in 2002 President George W. Bushs popularity soared after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Democrats are praying the Supreme Courts recent ruling overturning Roe v. Wade could be that sort of seismic event.

Mr. Biden ratcheted up things this week after he called for a filibuster carveout to protect abortion rights, pressuring Senate Democrats to codify Roe into federal law.

Mr. Kondik said the question is whether the abortion issue is enough to overcome the fact that Mr. Biden is unpopular, and voters dont trust him on the issues they care about most a list that includes inflation, the economy and crime.

The Real Clear Politics average of polls shows, by a 38% to 57% margin, most voters disapprove of the job Mr. Biden has done as president. It marks a major drop from a year ago when more than 51% approved and 41% disapproved.

Those numbers are worse than Donald Trumps at a comparable time in his presidency, Mr. Kondik said.

The drop in support includes Democrats, and spills over into his handling of most issues.

Republicans are predicting victory in November.

Democrats agenda of failure has left Americans worse off in every aspect and thats why Nancy Pelosi will be fired in four months, said Michael McAdams, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

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A tale of two July Fourths: No fireworks for Democrats this year - Washington Times

Abortion rights demonstrator Elizabeth White leads a chant in response to the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 24, 2022. Brandon Bell/Getty Images hide caption

Abortion rights demonstrator Elizabeth White leads a chant in response to the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 24, 2022.

The rage among pro-abortion-rights protesters in front of the Supreme Court over the weekend was palpable. Plenty of that anger was aimed at the high court, but there was also quite a bit reserved for Democrats.

"I'm not hopeful at this point that this is something that will be federally protected. I have as little faith in Democrats at this point as I did in Republicans," Carolyn Yunker said Saturday. She traveled down to the court from her home in D.C.'s Maryland suburbs.

"Democrats have used this for 50 years to fundraise. They had opportunities to codify Roe," she said. "They chose not to because being the pro-choice candidate in an election helps you raise money. And frankly, I'm pretty disgusted with a lot of our representatives right now."

Since the May leak of Justice Samuel Alito's draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, Democrats' main message to their voters has been that abortion is on the ballot in November. But many who support abortion rights have been voting, and, like Yunker, they're frustrated that electing Democrats hasn't produced more results.

In the fall, House Democrats did pass a bill that would have made Roe's protections federal law. But it failed in the Senate in May, where it would need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.

Some abortion rights supporters want the Senate to blow up the filibuster, but Democrats haven't unified behind that idea, and President Joe Biden hasn't pushed for it. He has also resisted calls to expand the court.

Biden is the leader of the party that supports abortion rights, but since the ruling, his visibility as part of the response has been limited. Immediately after the ruling, he gave a statement, but the White House also canceled the daily press briefing, and he left for a major summit in Europe.

His fellow Democrats are not satisfied. Over the weekend, 34 senators urged Biden in a letter to lead a national response.

A White House official emphasized that the administration will support medication abortion and cited dozens of discussions with abortion-rights stakeholders. The White House also says policy action is coming this week.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday afternoon that House Democrats are exploring legislation to protect data on period-tracking apps and protect the right to travel between states. She also said the House may again vote on legislation to codify Roe.

Long-term change, however, will be the result of more voting. That means winning over new voters like 19-year-old Pryia Thompson, who went to the Supreme Court on Saturday with her grandmother. As a new voter who supports abortion rights, she's feeling ambivalent about her vote.

"Honestly, I'm just getting started, and all of this is happening, so it's hard to make decisions and know who to vote for, who's really for us," she said.

For years now, the overwhelming majority of Democratic candidates have been running as supporters of abortion rights. With Roe overturned, Democratic candidates like Sarah Godlewski, running for Senate in Wisconsin, will be working to have a stronger message to tell voters that they truly will prioritize protecting abortion rights if elected.

"This is one of the reasons why I stepped up to run for the U.S. Senate, was that I was getting sick of reproductive freedom being treated like some sort of extra credit project," she said.

While this anger is prominent in the abortion rights movement, there's also an acknowledgement that some supporters grew complacent during the half century that Roe was in effect.

"There is a tendency for people who've had a right to sort of assume that that's the way it is and it won't be challenged," said Aimee Allison, founder of She The People, which promotes women candidates of color. "And even when we heard that the Supreme Court was planning to overturn Roe v. Wade, it didn't sink in for many people that this was actually a threat realized and it was going to have an effect on our lives."

Right now, she's focused on electing Senate candidates who could help eliminate the filibuster and ease the way for abortion protections to pass.

"If we can elect these women of color, we'll have the votes in order to pass the legislation that went through the House and a sitting at the Senate to restore abortion rights and make reproductive justice a reality," she added.

In the short and medium-term, some are focused on abortion access. Laura Kriv was among a small group protesting in front of Justice Brett Kavanaugh's house on Saturday night.

"Just like the Janes started this movement years ago and and took it upon themselves to make sure women had safe access to abortion, we're going to have to do the same thing," she said, referring to the Jane Collective that helped women seeking abortions in the 1960s and 1970s. .

Kriv added that that is going to be more of a focus for her than watching what politicians say.

"I'm not going to wait for the politicians. I'm certainly not going to wait for Biden," she said. "I would love it if he would expand the court so that more of our rights aren't taken away. But I'm not going to sit back and wait."

With activists motivated to do so much to protect abortion access right now, it's not clear how much they see voting this November as a solution.

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Abortion-rights supporters vent their frustration at Biden and Democrats - NPR

Abortion access in North Dakota is about to change dramatically. On July 28, a 2007 law banning the procedure with narrow exceptions for rape, incest and the mothers life will take effect.

Its a 15-year-old law, written and passed in a bygone era, when the right to an abortion secured by Roe v. Wade seemed ironclad. Passing the law had no immediate consequences then, and existed as little more than a signal to pro-life voters that the state was on their side. But after a late June Supreme Court decision ending the right to abortion, that law will now reshape the politics of North Dakota womens health care.

And without Democrats support, it wouldnt have been possible.

When the 2007 abortion ban passed, it came with remarkable bipartisan backing. The state House passed the bill 68-24, with 14 of its 33 Democrats lending their votes. In the Senate, the measure passed 29-16, and eight of the chambers 21 Democrats supported it enough to have blocked it, had those senators voted the other way.

A handful of Democrats who backed the bill are still in the Legislature. Senate Minority Leader Joan Heckaman, D-New Rockford, is one of them.

State Sen. Joan Heckaman

I think all of us value life. And I think that's probably one of the reasons I voted for that bill, Heckaman said. Pressed on whether she believes its a good law, Heckaman said its debatable.

I don't want any abortions to happen, she said But at the same time, the Legislature has been negligent of its job of fulfilling the health care for women and newborns. We don't take care of the young moms, we don't make sure that they have what they need. And I think we've got a long way to go there.

State Sen. Tim Mathern, D-Fargo and an elder statesman among a shrinking Democratic caucus, was another supporter of the bill. He said hes proud of work he did in 2007 to insist on several exceptions that make the law less strict such as exceptions for cases of rape and incest and to protect the mothers life. Like Heckaman, he said hes disappointed in a lack of systems that support infants and new parents.

There is also concern about the child the other life that we're dealing with here. That life is also worthy of our society's attention and concern, he said. He added that the legislative process involves compromise, and lamented that its become more of a black and white process that is often driven by the outer edges of debate.

Mathern acknowledged, though, he sees a shift since 2007.

I think society has changed in terms of the concept of bodily integrity as being a concept wholly independent from the issue of the life of another person, he said. And I think that has more energy today from the public than it did 15, 20 years ago.

In one respect, Mathern is clearly correct: quite a lot is different from where it was 15 years ago, when rural Democrats were not yet a rarity and when abortion was less of a partisan debate. In fact, the two leading sponsors in the House were Democrats.

Since then, the Democratic-NPL has been decimated by advances the GOP has made in rural areas, as the country increasingly polarizes into more urban, left-of-center enclaves and more sparsely populated conservative zones.

In North Dakota, Democrats are hardly competitive west of Interstate 29 anymore. Nationally, its hard to imagine a modern Democratic caucus split on the issue of abortion and for a lot of voters, thats what matters. To hear Mathern tell it, North Dakota Democrats cant outrun the reputation of those national Democrats.

I don't think your rank-and-file Democrats changed, he said. But I think the national narrative about what Democrats believe and what Republicans believe has become taken in by North Dakotans.

Mac Schneider, active in North Dakota Democratic politics from 2008 to 2018, has watched a lot of those changes happen.

When I started (as a state senator) back in 09, the Tip O'Neill saying that all politics are local I think that was largely true, Schneider said. Now I think it's largely true to say all politics are national.

Much of North Dakotas modern abortion debate traces to 1991, when an anti-abortion measure with exceptions for rape, incest and to save a mothers life passed the North Dakota Legislature. It was met with a veto by Gov. George Sinner, who once aspired to the Catholic priesthood.

"I am a Catholic and ... I agree with the current Catholic judgment that abortion is wrong," Sinner said at the time. "The issue here, however, is the role of the law."

But Sinner signed a bill that imposed a 24-hour waiting period on abortions, and required women receive information on medical risks and alternatives.

1991 was a year of intense conflict over abortion. The Associated Press also recalls that days after the passage of the abortion bill, 26 people stormed a Fargo abortion clinic, and that 10 North Dakota anti-abortion protests saw 210 people arrested over the course of the year.

Sinners choices slowed the success of the anti-abortion movement. But it couldnt mask that the Legislature was overwhelmingly opposed to the procedure; the ban had passed in the Senate 32-21, and in the House 64-39.

The fact that it did pass showed the majority of our legislative representatives did speak out against abortion, Renee Klein, leader of the North Dakota Right to Life, told the Associated Press that year.

By 2007, Gov. John Hoeven now the states senior Republican U.S. senator was ready to sign an abortion ban, and did. It still left critics unsure what would come next, and raised questions that more politicians will surely face in coming years.

"Assume you're undergoing chemotherapy and found yourself pregnant. What would you do?" Rep. Kenton Onstad, D-Parshall, wondered in 2007. "What does this law allow you to do?"

The state confronted the issue just seven years later, though, when in 2014 North Dakota voters shot down a personhood ballot measure that would have added language to the state constitution noting that the inalienable right to life of every human being at any stage of development must be recognized and protected. Politico recalls that critics had worried the measure might restrict access to abortion even before viability, criminalize in-vitro fertilization or limit end-of-life treatment choices.

One of the largest questions now about Roe v. Wade is mostly about how its aftermath will unfold; its already messy and unclear. In Florida, a judge this week moved to block a 15-week abortion ban, citing the state constitution. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joe Manchin, D-W.V., suggested in the aftermath of the ruling that justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch misled them.

Former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., suggested something similar. Heitkamp, who in 2018 lost her seat to Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., had voted for Gorsuch but against Kavanaughs confirmation.

I believed that Brett Kavanaugh repeatedly lied under oath, so I trusted nothing he said about his position on Roe v. Wade, Heitkamp texted a reporter this week. She added on Gorsuch that I think he knew at the time that he testified that he was a likely vote to overturn Roe v. Wade but hid behind veiled language on establish precedent to just get through the confirmation process.

Because I have more respect for Justice Gorsuch, its a greater disappointment that he wasnt more transparent, she said.

State Rep. Josh Boschee, D-Fargo is the House minority leader. He lamented the absoluteness of the Supreme Courts decision, he said, worrying that doctors might hesitate in some parts of the country to perform essential care on pregnancies dangerous to a pregnant mother.

But he also pointed out that the Democratic-NPL welcomes all kinds of candidates, especially when a reporter pointed out that Mark Haugen, the partys U.S. House candidate, is pro-life .

Our caucus, compared to the Republican caucus, isnt a caucus that sits down and says, you have to vote this way, Boschee said. He acknowledged, though, that there are supporters who want more litmus tests for politicians on abortion and the rights of sexual minorities and more.

But part of governing is being able to take the information you have and trying to make the best decision you can, he added. What I would say to Democratic voters is that you need to have conversations with candidates, both Republican and Democrat, about the issues that are important to you.

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15 years later, Democrats reckon with votes supporting North Dakota abortion ban - Grand Forks Herald