THE PATH TO VICTORY CAN NOW BE SEEN

Clausewitz said that war was “politics by other means.” And the only thing you can predict in war is that events will happen in unpredictable ways, in which victory goes to those who work hard and prepare themselves to seize the opportunity when it comes.

The same is true about politics. Anyone who says they know how November will turn out has their head firmly planted up their ass.

As proof, I present...

Kansas.

Tonight, Kansas voters overwhelmingly defeated an amendment designed to confuse voters and strip the Kansas State Constitution of its state Supreme Court-interpreted abortion protections, a genuinely surprising outcome that came on the heels of a wave of last-minute enthusiasm from those furious at the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

Kansas was a bellwether for te coming Civil War and its eventual outcome, and in this first state to put abortion to a vote since the Dobbs decision, the result demonstrates a compelling data point, given the built-in advantages for the pro-amendment side.

Republican lawmakers had purposefully put the amendment vote on the August primary ballot where low turnout was expected; their scam shown by slating two other unrelated amendments for the general election in November. Primary elections in Kansas historically attract a far smaller pool of far more conservative voters with independents and low-propensity voters failing to show up. However, mirroring national sentiment, polls show Kansans in general support abortion rights.

The plan for an under-the-radar constitutional amendment backfired; Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab announced earlier in the day that voter turnout was significantly higher than expected.

With 78 percent of the vote counted at the time the networks called the race, the amendment had failed by 24 points 62-38. Why?

Tuesday’s turnout came close to doubling 2018’s primary turnout. That’s how.

In 2019, the initial GOP attempt to schedule the amendment vote on a primary ballot was stopped by a legislative coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats uncomfortable with the idea that anti-abortion crusaders were purposefully seeking an election with a pool of voters more likely to vote for the amendment.

Unfortunately, the 2020 election swept out enough of those moderates and swept in more conservatives, giving the Trump Republicans the vote margin to schedule the amendment vote.

Thus, the anti-amendment coalition wasn’t just fighting the amendment, which was deliberately confusingly worded and deceptively named. Voter behavior had to completely change, since there are more Independents in Kansas than there are registered Democrats. These are voters who almost never vote in the partisan primaries.

State legislators also passed a law to make organizing against the amendment more difficult, and those in support of the abortion ban amendment pushed to remove drop boxes before the vote.

Then in over the weekend before the vote, a wave of deceptive texts identified as coming from Republican sources swept the state, urging to vote “yes” on the amendment, with the false claim that a “Yes” vote “will give women a choice.” Reporters in all major media outlets around the state reported the accuracy and identified the liars.

Given all these obstacles, the victory for abortion rights is significant. It proves that those who have said there is voter energy that has been unleashed by the Supreme Court’s decision have been proven right.

Organize and prepare. Be able to seize the opportunity when it comes.

The only way the outcome of November becomes “known” is when people decide to listen to the “common wisdom” and believe it, and not show up.

90% of any victory is just showing the hell up. Doing what it takes to do that.

We can do this!

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