A very good night for Democrats, but...

Carl P. Leubsdorf, Tribune News Service

Democrats have every reason to be pleased with the way this year’s scattered off-year elections showed them winning key races and the abortion issue retaining its political clout.

But Tuesday’s successes came tempered with a warning of trouble ahead as yet another major poll showed President Joe Biden in serious reelection trouble, a problem likely to persist when the immediate glow wears off.

The day’s races continued the pattern since the Supreme Court last year reversed its 1973 legalisation of abortion rights: Democrats held Kentucky’s governorship with an increased margin, added Virginia’s House of Delegates to their control of the state Senate and made Ohio the latest state to guarantee the right to an abortion.

In all three states, Democratic campaigns stressed the need to protect abortion rights, a crucial factor in their victories over the past year. “We head into 2024 with the wind at our back,” tweeted longtime Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg But one year’s elections don’t take place in a vacuum. And just like the New York Times/Siena College survey a few days earlier, a new CNN poll showed Biden suffering serious voter erosion in a possible 2024 rematch against his 2020 victim, former President Donald Trump.

The bottom line: Democrats are continuing to do well. But Biden’s reelection bid is in trouble. And if that persists, party leaders won’t be able to take much solace from the fact that, since 2001, the Kentucky gubernatorial election has been an accurate prognosticator of the following year’s presidential race.

Pre-election analyses and a published poll suggested the race between Gov. Andy Beshear and GOP state Attorney General Daniel Cameron could be as close as the incumbent’s 5,000-vote victory four years ago. But just as in last year’s midterm elections, the actual Democratic showing at the ballot box proved stronger than in the polls. Beshear won by five points in a state that Trump carried in 2020 by 26 points. He did so by assailing Cameron’s support for a state law banning almost all abortions and defending his own veto of a measure curbing medical aid for transgender children, passed by the GOP-controlled legislature.

Kentuckians “sent a loud, clear message, a message that candidates should run for something and not against someone,” said Beshear, whose victory positions him as one of a number of governors who could become 2028 Democratic presidential candidates. Meanwhile, the election for Virginia’s General Assembly may have reduced the number of prospective GOP presidential candidates. Glenn Youngkin, the state’s first Republican governor in a decade, spent time and money campaigning for a GOP takeover of the state Senate in hopes of enacting a conservative agenda that would provide a possible launching pad for his presidential ambitions, either as a late entry Trump rival next year or in 2028.

Specifically, he hoped to show that the GOP could reduce its political damage from the abortion issue by pushing a 15-week abortion ban as a “consensus” measure. But Democrats seized on his promise and made it a crucial part of their campaigns in every closely fought legislative district, especially in suburban northern Virginia. Party lines were also sharply drawn on the issue in Ohio, the seventh state where voters have codified abortion rights since the 2022 Supreme Court decision. All of the state’s top Republican leaders, including Gov. Mike DeWine, campaigned against the constitutional amendment that abortion rights supporters had placed on Tuesday’s state ballot.

And despite the 4-to-3 vote in its favour, the Republican speaker of the state House of Representatives, Jason Stephens, said Tuesday’s vote “is not the end of the conversation,” adding that, “As a 100% pro-life conservative, I remain steadfastly committed to protecting life.” Democrats scored another victory with potential 2024 political implications. Daniel McCaffery won election to a vacancy on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, solidifying the Democrats’ margin on the court that has made crucial rulings in that electoral swing state against past Republican challenges to state election laws.

Tuesday’s only major election in which abortion did not play a major role was the Mississippi governor’s race. GOP incumbent Tate Reeves won re-election in the solidly Republican state against a spirited challenge by Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley, the second cousin of the late star Elvis Presley.

The White House and Biden’s reelection campaign hailed the day’s results as omens of future successes. “Voters across the political spectrum once again showed up and voted for our agenda and rejected the dangerous MAGA extremism that has come to define today’s Republican Party at every level,” said campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez. “That same choice will be before voters again next November.” But the CNN poll showed that, not only did Trump lead Biden by four points in a hypothetical 2024 matchup, but a principal factor was a decline in Biden’s margins among several key elements in the coalition that elected him — Black, Hispanic and young voters.

Perhaps more seriously, CNN said the registered voters sampled gave Trump substantial advantages on “being an effective world leader” and “having the stamina and sharpness to serve.” Rosenberg disputed the findings in the CNN and Times polls by citing other surveys. But he conceded “what we have right now is a close, competitive election with the Democratic coalition wandering a bit a year before the election, as to be expected, giving us a lot of work to do.”