"‘The environment is upside down’: Why Dems are winning the culture wars Changes in public opinion may have reversed the political landscape for
the culture wars.

Abortion rights demonstrators march.
Abortion rights demonstrators march through the streets to protest the
Supreme Court's decision in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health case on
June 24, 2022 in Detroit, Michigan. | Emily Elconin/Getty Images

By DAVID SIDERS

09/09/2022 04:30 AM EDT

It’s already the consensus that abortion is going to be a good issue for Democrats in November.

What’s only now becoming clear — as Republicans scrub their campaign websites of prior positions on abortion and labor to turn the focus of
the midterms back to President Joe Biden and the economy — is just how
much the issue is altering the GOP’s standard playbook.

For the first time in years, Republican and Democratic political
professionals are preparing for a general election campaign in which
Democrats — not Republicans — may be winning the culture wars, a
wholesale reversal of the traditional political landscape that is poised
to reshape the midterms and the run-up to 2024.

“The environment is upside down,” said Michael Brodkorb, a former deputy chair of the Minnesota Republican Party. “The intensity has been reversed.”

It isn’t just abortion. Less than 20 years after conservatives used
ballot measures against same-sex marriage to boost voter turnout in 11
states, public sentiment has shifted on the issue so dramatically that Democrats are poised to force a vote on legislation to protect same-sex marriage to try to damage Republican candidates. Following the school
shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Democrats from Georgia and Wisconsin to
Illinois and California are running ads supporting gun restrictions,
once viewed as a liability for the left, while openly engaging
Republicans on crime.

In an advertising campaign shared with POLITICO, the center-left group
Third Way said the PAC it launched last year to defend moderate
Democrats, Shield PAC, will start spending at least $7 million next week
on digital and mail ads in seven competitive House districts to counter Republican attacks on crime, immigration and other culture war issues.

The advertising push follows polling in Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s
Virginia district that suggested counter-messaging by Democrats on
public safety could blunt the effect of “defund the police” attacks by Republicans. As a result, while Spanberger is airing ads tearing into
her Republican opponent on abortion, Shield PAC will be running a
digital campaign bolstering Spanberger’s credentials on police funding.

“The story is that things that used to be very dangerous for Democrats – guns and abortion – are now very good for Democrats,” said Third Way’s Matt Bennett. “Those kind of culture issues – [same-sex] marriage,
abortion and guns – have flipped. The political impact of them [has] flipped.”

Republicans, Bennett said, “are not giving up on the culture wars as a [political] opportunity” ahead of the midterms. But he said, “I think we can neutralize those issues if you correct the record.”

That’s a far cry from the GOP’s one-time strength: campaigning on God,
guns and gays. It was only a year ago that the cultural flashpoints in
American politics appeared much more favorable to the GOP, with
Republicans driving a flurry of news cycles on mask mandates, critical
race theory, transgender student athletes and the perceived excesses of
social media and big tech.

Even on abortion, voter intensity — if not overall public opinion — appeared as recently as last year to be on Republicans’ side. In the
Virginia gubernatorial race in 2021, a majority of voters who listed
abortion as the most important issue facing the state voted for the
Republican, Glenn Youngkin, according to exit polls.

Republican strategists say that the GOP will pick up “30 or 40” congressional seats in the 2022 midterm elections. With such confidence
that another red wave is on the way, we asked what exactly they’ll need
to do (and not do) to win Congress.

But just as Democrats saw the politics of guns begin to shift in 2018 —
when candidates favoring restrictions on firearms prevailed in some congressional swing districts — the rejection of an anti-abortion ballot measure in Kansas and Democratic over-performances in special elections
in Nebraska, Minnesota and New York this summer revealed the opening for
them in Roe.

“Democrats are like, ‘Eureka! We have our own culture war successes,’” said New York-based Democratic strategist Jon Reinish, a former aide to
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. This year, he said, could be a turning point
“in which the deployment of the culture war actually works for the first
time in the Democrats’ favor and not the Republicans.”
[issue]

Our 3 way race for governor should be interesting in that regard.
One of the candidates is openly gay. Neither of the other 2 candidates
are openly talking about about that. Gun rights are a big issue, but
neither the Republican or the Republican lite say the word "guns" in
their television ads. They just talk loosely about protecting your
rights. Republican lite has tried to move away a bit from her perfect
score with the NRA, but not too far. The Republican is opposed to a
woman's right to an abortion. The other two are in favor. So Oregonians
have a whole smorgasbord to choose from. <snort> The last I read on it
said the race is considered a toss up. We're just *that* "woke" here. LOL

TB

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