June 29th, 2022 – Second Reading Podcast

[00:00:00] Welcome to the second reading podcast from the university of Texas at Austin, the Republicans were in the democratic party because there was only one party. So I tell people on  a regular basis, there is still a  land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the constitution. They have become the norm. At what point must a female Senator raise her hand or her voice to be recogniz. Over the male colleagues in the room.

Jim Henson: And welcome back to the second reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin. Very happy to be joined today by Josh blank research director of the Texas politics project. Welcome back, Josh. 

Josh Blank: Thanks for having me. 

Jim Henson: Well, what to talk about today, obviously at the top of the agenda would be, uh, the Dobbs V Jackson decision, uh, which [00:01:00] overturned Roe V.

Wade at the federal level, uh, which was handed down late last week. Uh, as we record, uh, Wednesday morning, uh, here in Texas, um, You know, we talked about this a lot. Yeah. 

Josh Blank: Um, now in 

Jim Henson: the past. Okay. Right. I mean, certainly not the first time we’ve talked about it on the podcast, you know, given, you know, what was a lot of activity around this issue in the Texas legislature?

Is it in the last session last year? You know, as it turns out that was not the case that went before the court. Right. Um, but Texas did have a trigger law on the books. Mm-hmm , uh, meaning that, you know, should you know, which had the contingency should Roe V overturned by the Supreme court that at least in the law.

Yeah. You know, 30 days after the opinion is officially issued, the opinion was officially handed down, not just the opinion itself announced, um, that abortion, that, you know, [00:02:00] the. Abortion would be, would be banned Texas. And that, you know, the operative laws in the state would then go into effect. Now, you know, that’s been complicated, right?

Um, the day of the decision, the attorney general, uh, uh, Ken Paxton issue advisory on one hand saying that. The trigger law was not quite in effect because of that 30 day provision, but also saying that localities local authorities may well begin, you know, uh, uh, enforcing a ban on abortion that had been on the, on the books in Texas.

Yeah. You know, prior to Roe V. Wade going back to the 1920s, 1925, 

Josh Blank: I think, well, this is, this is, this is an ongoing question about the fallout of this. Is that basically any case that was. Turn kind of through the logic of right. The Roe V Wade, penumbra of privacy rights, et cetera, Griswold and so on and so forth.

Do they go back and there’s sort of, I mean, this is sort of an, I think that’s my understanding. This is sort of an ongoing case of kinda like, or aspect of law they trying to understand. So these case, you know, all these laws automatically go [00:03:00] back on the 

Jim Henson: books. Right. And, and, and in fact, there’s now, right now, the, the implementation of that 1920s law has been enjoined by a court.

Right. Um, has been blocked by a court for the time being. 

Josh Blank: Well, and the thing, and the main point here is like, you know, for, I mean, the main point here is like, that may sort of, I don’t know, sort of fi I mean, it’s not, well, I don’t know that it’s the main point, but I mean, well, a point of it would just to be say like, yeah, that’s going on.

And to the extent that that’s sitting in the court system, ultimately the, the trigger law is gonna circumvent that sooner than later. I, I 

Jim Henson: think that’s the general expectation and all that. And all that that really does is roll you back to the six week ban, right. That was passed by the legislature, right.

As such. Um, when a lot of the board clinics, you know, you know, for, for what you know, would seem to be a few days, I mean, you know, per the coverage anyway, and, and it’s not even uni. And the effect of that, of that decision is not even universal across the state. Right. Uh, it only applies to a set of clinics that were.

That were plaintiffs in that, in that, and some clinics 

Josh Blank: are already [00:04:00] stopping providing services already at this point, basically because, because of the uncertain legal environment. Well, I 

Jim Henson: think my understanding is everybody had stopped. Now, those that were parties to this motion that resulted in will now go back to at least complying with the six week law that was passed the.

Limit that was passed in the last legislature to say nothing of the bounty system and all these other things that are going on. So, you know, obviously, you know, we, we have a lot of polling on this and, and one of the things that we’ve, that we’ve said going forward, and, you know, I think, you know, not to foreshadow where we arrive here, you know, this, this will be, you know, pick your term, an inflection point, a watershed.

Yeah, we think, yeah. I mean, certainly it is policy wise, whether it is attitudinally, it’s certainly gonna change the way that we pull on this. But one of the things that we’ve said all along is that the basic patterns in public attitudes have been stable for a long time. Yeah. 

Josh Blank: Remarkably. So I mean, what I would, what I’d often say, you know, [00:05:00] cause I mean, look, Texas has passed a lot of.

Laws to limit abortion over the last decade in which we’ve plus in which we’ve been polling, uh, of which in which we’ve, we’ve, we’ve tested, you know, lots of, sort of generic questions, very specific questions. And I think the thing that I always say when, when there’s sort of a reaction to a new law or something that sort of seems to really push the bounds of wherever the discussion was is either there’d be sort of this question out in the ether.

It’s like, well, does this change things? And the answer’s well, no, Most of the time the answer has been no. And the reason I would give is that, well, for the most part, people know what they think about abortion in a general sense. Uh, you know, again, whether they think deeply about it, but at a very sort of high level, we talk about, you know, generally orientations pro-life pro-choice should people be able to access abortions?

Never. Or not that kind of thing. I think people generally know where they are and the, the strategy, you know, by Republican and conservative legislators to chip away to abortion access, hasn’t doesn’t really necessarily result in a big change in the way that people think about abortion. Right. The fundamentals.

And what does that look like? You know, over, I guess, 14 [00:06:00] surveys that we conducted up until last April, no more than 17% of, of Texas voters have ever said that abortion should never be accessible. Right. And that’s sort of, I think the overarching headline kind of take away about where opinions stood kind of going up to the Eve of this decision is that, you know, very few, uh, Texans think that, you know, no one should basically no one should ever access an abortion.

Uh, the plurality of Democrats consistently, nearly 70% usually. It basically, it’s a matter of personal choice that, you know, the circumstances don’t matter, but that’s kinda where Democrats are on the flip side. You know, one in five Republican women have consistently supported access as a matter of personal choice.

So at the democratic position on this, as opposed to one in 10 Republican men, and again, this has been consistent throughout. The entirety of the time that we’ve been polling, uh, you know, the trigger law that you mentioned, uh, we’ve consistently found, we’ve asked it, uh, four times up until last April, and we found that at least 53% of Texas voters have expressed opposition to the outright ban each time with no more than 37% of voters saying they support an automatic [00:07:00] ban, uh, On abortion.

And so that’s sort of, I think what we think of as kind of the set piece, right, right. Is sort of where we are now that abortion is legal. It’s important to know that most Texans don’t think that abortion should be inaccessible. The vast majority think it should INAC, it should be accessible across. And we can also say from other polling that we’ve done.

Across a range of circumstances. Right. And that’s important. So I think that’s kind of the pattern, you know, there’s generally tends to be Republican support from most, uh, most efforts to limit abortion access. There’s certainly more Republican support for an overall ban, but again, even among Republicans, uh, usually it’s less than one in five would say that abortion should never be accessed, which is where we basically.

At this moment in 

Jim Henson: Texas? Well, I mean, I, you know, I think it’s always, you know, and, and we’ve talked about this, I, I think after the last poll, we had a discussion about the kind of standard abortion question when, when Darren Shaw was here, mm-hmm , and there’s a lot lurking in, there’s a lot lurking in these questions and the categories in that [00:08:00] question that I think, you know, are now gonna be in a sense, um, You know, brought out, you know, I, I think the ambiguities in these positions and the difficulty that we’ve had, or at least, you know, we talked about this, that I’ve had in interpreting that question and the results mm-hmm particularly along partisan lines is really gonna become is becoming more apparent at this moment and is likely to become more apparent as 

Josh Blank: we move forward.

Well, I think that’s, and I think that’s, you know, you’re talking about this inflection point piece and it’s sort of, you. And, you know, as a, I should say, first and foremost, you we’re talking about the political implications and ramifications about it. It’s not any personal ramifications. Yeah. Right. We’re just trying to understand this in sort of a broad sense.

Um, and I think, you know, but I mean, we’re talking about the inflection point there. I think that’s exactly right. You know, we talk about like kind of a quote unquote standard abortion question. Nobody’s happy with these questions because ultimately what you find is that, you know, there’s a couple, there’s two sort of, at least two axes in here that you’re automatically.

Acknowledge or ignore, which is like, what are the circumstances that are leading to the abortion? And when is the abortion being, you know, being [00:09:00] gotten being 

Jim Henson: administration. And we should say what that standard abortion question is. I mean, 

Josh Blank: we’re talking about it, right? And so we basically ask, you know, more or less, uh, Uh, you know, I actually don’t have the wording in 

Jim Henson: front of me.

Yeah. It’s a, it’s a BA it’s a BA you know, what is your opinion 

Josh Blank: on the availability? Oh, the avail version. And basically the answers are, you know, it should never be accessible. It should be accessible only in the cases in which the life of the mother is endangered or the, you know, the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

There’s a third squishier category, which says life. You know, is endangered rape incest. I mean just the word and that’s, I’ve got it 

Jim Henson: right in front of me. There’s other stuff. The wording of that third option, which is the one that’s always been, you know, problematic, suspicious and problematic in my mind.

Although you could you look at it sideways. That makes sense. Darren did a good job of defending this. As I recall, Uhhuh, the law should permit abortion for reasons other than rape incest or danger to the woman’s life, but only after the need for the abortion has been clearly established. Now to me that has always just been terrible phrasing.

I get it. And just to 

Josh Blank: decide, you know, if you’re listening to saying, why do you ask it that way? Okay. 

Jim Henson: Right. And then, and just, just so that we flesh it out and [00:10:00] then the fourth option is by law, a woman should always be able to obtain an abortion as a matter of personal choice. Right. So, you know, I mean the way, I mean, you have kind of two variations.

It’s almost as if. The scale, you know, is not, is not symmetrical. Right. Which is, well, the middle 

Josh Blank: of the scale to my, well, the issue is that the middle of the scale is not symmetrical. Right? So the idea is, and so this is, and this is in terms of interpretation. I think that the key here is that the middle’s very squishy on this.

I think the idea is the endpoints, tell you something endpoints, tell you that a, a minority of Texans, less than one in five. Think that abortion should never be permitted. Yeah, well, less 

Jim Henson: than one in five, really 

Josh Blank: consistently the plurality of Texans consistently express the position that abortions should always be permitted as a matter of personal choice.

But then you could say, I mean, if you were to look at the categories individually, but then if you combine the category and say, well, or an equal share or a plurality, think that abortion should be allowed in some circumstances. Right. And that’s where I think, but this is the issue now. prior to the do’s decision.

The idea was well, okay. Within a [00:11:00] certain timeframe, you know, those circumstances were kind of, you know, left to sort of the personal discretion of the person, you know, their own moral beliefs, their situation, their situation, right. And then you say, and then the timeframe is become, become, becomes the issue you ultimately, even, you know, as Republicans and Texas have sort of chipped away access to abortion, it’s, you know, almost never been.

Based on the circumstance. It’s always been about, you know, the provision of how, when the abortion is going, when you can get an abortion, how it’s going to be administered, what the, what the sort of, you know, is there gonna be an ultrasound? Is there gonna be a waiting period? What kind of information we’re gonna give you?

But it hasn’t been about like, why are you here? Right. But ultimately this is fundamentally kind of like. The it of abortion, but prior to Dobbs, ultimately, if you’re just talking about, you know, within a time window and sort of these sort of, you know, it’s very abstract, but to me why this is a washer, but now we really are getting down to this sort of, well, what, when should we be able to get an abortion?

Because ultimately most Texas things that a woman should be able to get an abortion at some point, but in Texas, there’s only one circumstance in which you can, and that’s when their life is endangered. And even that’s a little bit murky in [00:12:00] terms of how you actually determine that at this point. Right?

Jim Henson: Yeah. I mean, I mean that standard, you know, the threat to a woman’s health in life has always been something. Opponents of abortion rights have attacked as too vague. Right, right. 

Josh Blank: As an exception. And so there’s a perfect example of that. I think, you know, banning abortion completely or even close to completely.

Right. So we say like, you know, including like in the case of rape or in the case of incest in incest has never had a majority of support, including among Republicans. Right. And ultimately the law makes no provision for that. So we kind of hid an interesting point. I said, like, you know, we’re talking about like our, you know, again, just as pollsters eggheads, it’s like, so.

You know, thinking about going ahead, assuming Republicans win majority of the legislatures here in Texas, which there’s no reason to assume they won’t, you know, good reason to expect Abbot’s still gonna be the governor, even if he’s not, is the legislature gonna make exceptions for rape and incest next 

Jim Henson: session.

Right. And we should say that, you know, we, you know, it. In the last session, this debate did open up more because of the extremity of the Texas law. So there was, [00:13:00] there was a more robust discussion in the floor debate and in committee on both timing and conditions, I don’t want to sort of obscure that. Um, so.

You know, this kind of returns to the returns, us to the discussion that we had throughout the 2021 session, right? As the six week ban with the, the quote unquote bounty provision was included. I mean, you know, did the leg, did the legislature and the governor did the, we should say, we should say did the Republican majority in the legislature and the governor.

Go beyond the threshold of Republican opinion and Republican support when they pass both the trigger bill and that six week ban in 2021. And, and even, you know, if they did, does you know, how much will it matter in the overall that’s two different questions, but 

Josh Blank: yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, in some sense, I think there’s sort of two answers, right?

It’s like politically. [00:14:00] because politically the way the discussion had been taking place and was continuing to take place on the trajectory that it was on before the do’s decision meant that this was, you know, another example of, I think Republican legislators passing pro-life laws as they are supposed to do.

Right. Right. I mean, as, as they’ve promised, but now we’re into the state of like the practicality piece. And I think even, and I think they pushed on that. Right. I think the bounty system was pushing on the practicality piece of this, but now I. You know, I don’t think that they necessarily went too far in kind of within their coalition piece, but now we get to the practical implementation of an outright band.

And I think now they’re starting to walk up to a place where, you know, if not too far, it’s gonna be hard not to go too 

Jim Henson: far. Well, cuz you know, but I, you know, I think I might also say add to that though that, I mean, it may be that

they did, they, I think because of that. They may, well, in retrospect have gone too far, at least with the trigger bill. Right. Because I think that, you [00:15:00] know, yeah, there is a sense of the abstract made real here. Yeah, absolutely. That I think. You know, was envisioned, but again was envisioned in the abstract and the implementation of this now, you know, is going and is going to, to involve some real political fights inside the party.

Yes. That I think are gonna resemble the political fights that we saw, you know, 15, 20 years ago. Mm-hmm when the preferred. way of dealing with abortion in the legislature for a lot of people mm-hmm , even though it went unspoken was to avoid forcing members to vote right on severe restrictions. Right.

That became sort of non-operative right under the conditions in the legislature in 2021. And, and, you know, came close in, in. [00:16:00] 2017 and 2019, but never really kind of reached critical mass. In retrospect, you could kind of see it coming. Yeah. In that more of these votes on some of these laws were, you know, getting closer to the floor.

Um, mm-hmm and it was taking more effort to keep them off the floor, I think. And those efforts, you know, didn’t take place in 2021. Yeah. But I mean, I think, you know, you had the Joe Straus period. Yeah. I think I was, I was, I mean, where that was, you know, kind of. You know, the previous con conventional approach kind of held through much of the Strout spirit.

It, you know, but that also became one of the things that the, the far right. Dinged and, and criticized Straus for as a, as a, not real conservative, Sarah Davis, 

Josh Blank: also not in the legislature anymore long. 

Jim Henson: Exactly. And, and. that just kind of broke in 2021 and that really, you know, and so I, you know, it’s, it’s unclear to me what that is gonna look like in the next session.

I, I think [00:17:00] to me, that’s like one of the questions on one hand, we’re already hearing people talk about, you know, some of the far right legislators from very safe districts talking about what the next steps are and, and look. , you know, the advocates in, in the anti-abortion sort of organized anti-abortion universe and Texas are already telegraphing where they want to go next on, on news shows and in interviews.

And that is, they want to go up to stepping up enforcement, um, to paraphrase one of those advocates that was on at least Austin television over the weekend. You know, the, the position was very explicitly, you know, this is a big. This is a big step forward for us. We think it’s great. We still have an agenda.

And that agenda is to make sure that enforcement measures are up to, you know, enforcing, you know, what, you know, the new reality here. Right. Um, even as you’re seeing, [00:18:00] you know, some of the bigger, more liberal, urban areas, of course, Austin among them. Sure. But, but in other areas, you know, looking to 

curb 

Josh Blank: enforcement.

Yeah. And I think, you know, the, the combination of the breakdown. In leadership sort of to kind of control the discussion, you know, it does create a real, uh, a real sense of exposure. When you think about going to the next session, when the question is gonna be, whether you know, the Republican leadership is talking about enforcements on the one hand or exceptions on the other.

Neither of those are gonna be very easy discussions to have within the Republican caucus. Right. Right. And, and I mean, the thing that kind of struck me so much about this was like, you know, we talk, we keep kind of flirting with this idea of like abstract versus concrete. Yeah. You know, and to me, you know, when I think about, and again, we were talking about this earlier where, you know, your view of these sort of debates and the arc of them.

And I mean, it’s very much dependent on a lot of things about your own personal circumstances, your age, and kind of where you come from and what laws, you know. So, I mean, I just, I just think that that’s just, I just gotta put that out there. Yeah. Um, but. I guess, you know, [00:19:00] the thing that I’m, I’m sort of thinking about here is, you know, you take sort of the breakdown of leadership, the sort of difficult set of discussion you’re gonna having.

And historically the idea is this was really a top heavy discussion and it was abstract, right. You know, to the extent we’re talking about abortions, you know, and I would say this before, but you know, this was under the framework that Roe V Wade existed and there’d be some allowance for abortion, at least through the first trimester.

Even if there are little, you know, their hurdles placed right throughout, um, you know, The idea was, is that, I mean, I think the thing we talked about it, it was like, well, what kind of nominees this president going to put on the courts? Yeah. Right. And not even is sort of a side discussion to bigger issues.

Right. Um, you know, but now because the Supreme court has said not that abortion is illegal, but that it’s up to the states. I feel like this discussion becomes much more bottom up. I mean, you’ve already kind of hinted at, in the sense of. What is the most conservative Republican in the legislature talking about in their campaign at a candidate forum around this?

Yeah. You know, is there video of it because, you know, ultimately the question then becomes, well, who else [00:20:00] is for this policy? Right. I mean, there’s something where, you know, usually the idea is like, can we think about campaigns being nationalized and sort of, you know, taking in these, you know, sort of big picture kind of macro things.

And I think that’s still a debate that’s gonna go on. Republicans are definitely. Really the day of the do’s decision saying, Hey, the only thing that really matters is inflation and immigration right now. So this is like, yeah, right, sure. And we can talk about this later. They’d much rather be talking about inflation and immigration because of these factors that we’re kinda laying out here, but now all of a sudden, you know, as you said, like, yeah, Austin May go and.

You know, the da here is not gonna prosecute the six week ban right on. Yeah. I mean, 

Jim Henson: the council’s been considering a resolution, 

Josh Blank: but, but the flip side is there are 254 counties in Texas. Most of them are very rural, very conservative and have district attorneys who are kind of on their own. At the attorney General’s direction to still go and start enforcing these things and ultimately, and our elected officials.

Yeah. And the context is very different. I mean, like, again, this is, you know, , it’s not 1955, it’s not 1965. These sorts of, you know, horror stories that might come out [00:21:00] going forward around this. They’re not gonna be in the shadows because they’re gonna be people posting to TikTok. They’re gonna be posting their stories on Instagram.

And the media is going to be covering them in a way that, you know, people are gonna have to respond to and react to. And I just. I think the, the reality of sort of talking about like, you know, Texas passes, let’s say the ambulatory surgical center, you know, laws in 2013. Well, that, that kicks off a two year legal battle, right?

Two, three year legal battle. Yes. A bunch of clinics closed during that. And then it gets settled and they say, yeah, you can’t do that. well, now the legislature goes and says, okay, you know, we’re gonna start, uh, collecting data from tech companies about, you know, right about the travel of women, of childbearing years in Texas.

You know, there’s all kinds of problems that can, that are gonna, that are gonna come up with something like that. 

Jim Henson: Yeah. And I, and I think that, um, a lot of that is, you know, it’s gonna take some of that, I think a little while to, to unspool. Absolutely. If you will. I mean, there’s kind of a, there’s a short, medium.

Yeah. I mean, there’s, yeah, there’s a short and, and there’s a sort of [00:22:00] time horizon question here in the nearest time horizon. I, you know, people are, you know, I mean, I took a press call a couple days ago about, you know, the potential electoral consequences of this and the upcoming election. And, you know, I mean, I think the obvious response to that, which is kind of all over the place is that.

You know, for the most part, you know, in below the state level, mm-hmm , I mean, I, you know, at the state level, I think, you know, mean my sense is this is, you know, we’re already seeing this play out. I think the governor is not gonna want to talk about this a whole lot. Yeah. In general, I doubt there were gonna be a lot of campaign ads on this, on the Republican side.

No. And Democrats would like to talk about this because they see a wedge issue. Mm-hmm. Among among Republicans. And this is a mobilizing issue for Democrats given that this is a disastrous outcome, long anticipated. 

Josh Blank: I think this was one of the worst hot takes I saw in the wake of this opinion was on TV.

The number of sort of anchors saying, well, this has always been such a good mobilizing issue for Republicans. So, you know, [00:23:00] Democrats have never really mobilized and so surely, you know, right. The status quo and it’s like, yeah, that’s freaking, I don’t think so. That’s dumb. Yeah. And part of it is like, You’ve achieved what you wanted and, you know, and generally speaking, I mean, I think even a lot of recent history is a pretty good example.

It’s like, yeah, Barack Obama really gotta, gotta pay it handsomely in the midterms for passing healthcare. Huh. Right. You know? And so the idea that like, you know, you did what you said you were gonna do and now like a bunch of new super pro-life voters are gonna turn out. Yeah. I don’t think so. But the difference for Democrats is they’ve been looking in Texas, for example, for an issue to mobilize young.

Often non-white populations to turn out for the democratic party. And ultimately like, you know, this is not a bad issue for 

Jim Henson: that, right? I mean, I think, you know, you’ve got, you know, we were saying six or seven months ago and we said this AF you know, we were talking, we, the same thing came up after we, we talked about the, the shootings in yal, you know, we’ve been saying that.

The basic contextual election conditions of this election really needed, you know, to change for Democrats to be able to [00:24:00] have, and certainly for O’Rourke to have mm-hmm, a better shot at challenging Abbot in closing the gap. You know, this is another thing that breaks the Democrat’s direction. Again, I don’t too soon.

Don’t know if it’ll be decisive cetera. Right. But certainly. of the things that could have happened. And we’d said very, you know, we were anticipating the decision. Yeah. Didn’t know, this was one of the things and I, and I do wonder if that’s already been baked in mm-hmm yeah. You know, and then I think the medium longer term, I, I just don’t know at this point.

And, and I think the other thing we should say below the state level, You know, I mean, I, I think this, this potentially is an issue in some of these suburban areas that are competitive, but the problem is, you know, when you start really trying to dig in and come up with examples of that. Yeah. A it’s still a little early, so a lot of, some of those races are still taking shape.

Right? And O off the top of your head, they’re just because of redistricting there aren’t very many, no, we’re talking about less, really less than 10 reasonably competitive races or even races that are more lean [00:25:00] rather than locks for 

Josh Blank: the parties. Yeah. I don’t think this changes, you know, much if at all, you know, the likely outcome of kind of the, the legislative races.

I mean, the one thing I think it does change is the fact that, you know, if you think, look in those suburban districts, I do think that, you know, in competitive. Suburban districts where, you know, I think Republican candidates are gonna probably be forced by their challengers to answer, you know, policy, prescriptions coming out of far more conservative districts.

Right. And I think that’s gonna be a challenge. Uh, but as to your point, I mean, so maybe, you know, if that ends up leading to the Democrats wanting one or two more seats, then they would’ve already went in the house, not in the. Be clear. Well, okay then the Republicans still have a pretty solid majority. Uh, I mean, I, I gotta said this for a while.

I mean, I think, you know, the real issue is, does this make the, you know, does this make the top of the ticket races more challeng, you know, more challenging for Republicans? And I think, you know, it’s already gonna be the most challenging cycle they’ve had despite honestly the fact that everything else, if we take a take away, take away this and take away Aldi, take away the grid.

Let’s say just as just, you know, take those. [00:26:00] You know, Republicans would be cruising to Vic, you know, to victories right now, November. And they may still cruise to victories. But I mean, most of the polling that we’re seeing even before Aldi. Yeah. Just to be clear, you know, had Abbott, you know, five, you know, four to seven point lead range, let’s say, right.

And with this decision and with all the kind of talk that’s gonna. Come out after it and sort of the discussion of it, you know, it’s not like Abbot needs to all of a sudden hemorrhage, a bunch of support, but you know, if independence shift a couple points, if you know some number of the, you know, let’s see here, the let’s say, you know, 20% of Republican women who are basically believe that Republican you basically abortion access is a, is a right for women to make on their own.

Right. Decide, you know, I’m just gonna set this one out. Yeah. You, you know, these little things add up, not to necessarily flip it, but all of a sudden, you know, if you’re sitting there and you’re saying like, boy, you know, this isn’t a five or six point raise, this is a two point raise. Right. Then you get to the point where.

you know, circumstances could have an impact leading to election day. So that’s, you know, I agree. I’m not sure if it’s baked in. I [00:27:00] mean, I say I don’t, I don’t think it’s baked in just, just 

Jim Henson: yet, but yeah. I mean, I, I think, you know, part of what this raises in terms of thinking about the broader political and electoral context right now, though, is that, you know, this is one more issue mm-hmm after guns where.

Republican candidates, particular governor Abbot, statewide candidates have to thread the needle a little bit. Yeah. You know, I mean, there was this broader discussion that we’ve had here. That’s going on, you know, more broadly about, you know, whether the Republican party in Texas and, and in some cases, nationally is, is occupying positions that are.

That don’t enjoy majority support, right. Start, you know, and lead to questions like, well, you know, do you really, are you really paying attention to everybody or are you just paying attention to your constituency 

Josh Blank: now, or really the subset of your constituency, 

Jim Henson: even in some cases. Right. You know, and, and that feeds into some [00:28:00] broader things, not just about democracy, but about the mood in the state that we’ve seen intermittently.

More consist, you know, I, I think we’re gonna start seeing it, you know, we’re beginning to see it more consistently in the state in which there’s a real, you know, we were calling it sourness, but I think if we’ve gone beyond sour or dower, you know, to have a real sense that things are institutions, general conditions in the state.

Almost any institution or governing official, you ask about really not viewed very favorably by a huge part of the, the population. And if you put things in a very partisan framework. Yeah. But I mean, you know, I mean, you know, we’ve seen governor Abbot’s numbers move around his job approval numbers, including among Republicans move around quite a bit.

And one would say overall decay. um, our right track, wrong track numbers. The general, obviously a lot of this is, is, is [00:29:00] shaped by the general economy. And, and, but I think that, you know, the effort of Republican candidates, again, particular statewide candidates to blame this all on Joe Biden and to blame it all on the Democrats.

I think. Likely to become a little less effective going forward. Now whether the Democrats, because of negative person can actually exploit that, particularly in Texas, you know, beating a dead horse here where Democrats just start from a well, a weak position. Uh, but, but I think this decision is gonna feed that a 

Josh Blank: a bit more.

I agree with that. I mean, I think, you know, you know, the word that I would, you know, use, I think is just, you know, there’s there. It’s evident in the polling and this isn’t based on some sort of a short timeline or something. This is us looking, you know, through the last housing crisis, you know, over a number of.

You know, there’s a lot of dissatisfaction in the state. Yeah. Now surely of course it’s overwhelming among Democrats, but it’s also pretty overwhelming among independents. Right. And there’s not a small share and there’s a, more than a small share of Republicans who also [00:30:00] are expressing this dissatisfaction.

And I keep saying, you know, in a, in a. Sort of colloquial way. If anybody taught colloquially about polling results, it’s like, I don’t know how long you can play a negative public opinion territory and continue to enjoy, you know, right. That kind of support you need to having a governing majority. Now I do think, you know, to your point here, I mean, one aspect of this, that’s always kind a difficult for Democrats.

We’ve sort of make the connection here is, you know, not having competitive. Local races, which is kind where we are doesn’t help. Right? Yeah. You know, at the statewide level for this, ultimately, you know, in terms of turnout and that kind of thing, I mean, better O’Rourke benefited in his last run for Senate significantly by the fact that Democrats were ran candidates in every district, Trump wasn’t on the ballot, but he was an overarching factor and they were able to turn out voters, you know, whether they can do that with Biden in the white house, bad economy, uh, or, you know, high inflation, let’s say, um, these other issue.

you know, we’ll see. But I mean, to your point, and I, I sort of, you know, I sort of think about this. I mean, there’s a couple things here. I mean, I think about like, you know, you brought this up and I’m gonna [00:31:00] kind of bring it back around, but it’s like, immigration is an interesting service. There’s a bunch of different issues you can look at and think, how does this compare or not?

And. You know, there’s sort of this aspect where immigration is a great issue for Republicans Democrat. There’s no, you know, sort of sense that among the voters, that Democrats would do a better job on it in most cases, or at least broadly enough for it to be a good issue for Democrats. And it kind of raises the issue as like, you know, do you know, is it better for Republicans to solve the immigration issue or to have the immigration issue?

Right. And it’s clearly better to have the immigration issue. And I wonder about that. Like, well now they’ve solved the abortion issue, sort of at least the first stage of it. But the next stage is like a lot less advantageous for them than kind of fighting the good fight. And so now they’re in this position where, you know, now that they’ve, you know, kind of gotten what they wanted.

Yeah. Is it really as put into issue anywhere and furthermore, does it become, you know, AMA a big, big counter mobilizer and I think, you know, So 

Jim Henson: it’s gonna be, I mean, you know, look, I mean, I would be surprised if this is not a counter mobilization opportunity for Democrats to some degree, it’s just, what is that degree gonna be?[00:32:00] 

Um, and again, you know, where, you know, where are independence on this? Um, but yeah, I mean, I, you know, going back to just the larger context for, uh, another beat, I mean, I think that, you know, there’s something to the difficulty. that is accumulated over time for Republicans in Texas and being able to, you know, I mean, being able to.

To the Democrats being a threat or doing it wrong. And this, you know, we were, I think we talked about this a bit last week or the week before that, you know, at some point you own the environment. And I think we’re seeing that, you know, you raised immigration. Yeah. Which was lurking back there, but we had already brought it.

But now, now that it’s on there, I mean, we had this. You know, I’ve had this horrible incident in the last, you know, day and a half where we, you know, we’ve outside of Dan down, uh, outside of San Antonio or in the outskirts of San Antonio, as most people will have heard by now, you know, a. You know, we’ve got over 50 migrants that were, you know, [00:33:00] undocumented migrants probably being, you know, by all accounts, being human smuggled, probably, you know, into, into the, into Texas.

And some of the response has been, I mean, look, the initial Abbot response was very predictable, was to say, you know, this is the failure of, you know, once again, Joe Biden, you know, has failed to fix the border. And this is what happens when you have open borders. But I mean, the logic fails there pretty quickly, right.

Given that. You know, if we had an open border, actually, you wouldn’t have humans smuggling, presumably, presumably. And so the lo you know, the basic logic is there. Now look, you know, no politician ever went broke for the most part. No, but the bigger picture, you know, but the big, but the bigger picture there is, you know, you’ve been spending, you just have been spending $3 billion, 3 billion plus in the last couple of years, you know, operation lone star has now been effect for a year.

Seems like you have some ownership over. This problem. And, and over this [00:34:00] particular instance, and, you know, that’s, you know, I mean, it’s almost as if you know the advantage that we’ve been anticipating for them on border security and immigration. This was an instance that is not very good for that. I mean, it’s one thing to have people’s accumulating at the border as part of a quote unquote caravan.

It’s another thing to have 50 plus. Dead, you know, dead people, right? Um, 

Josh Blank: Diana in your horrific, horrific, horrific circumstances 

Jim Henson: in yeah. Very horrific circumstances. And you know, you try, you know, and, and the incumbents trying to blame it on. The demo, you know, blame it on Joe Biden in a way that’s not particularly 

Josh Blank: rational.

No. And that’s the thing. And in part, and that ownership thing is key. I mean, I think, you know, again, going back to the whole, this is, you know, this isn’t the media environment of the 1950s. We’re gonna hear a lot of pretty terrible stories over time. And some of that is gonna be immediate. Some of it is gonna be over time as more of, uh, these laws go in effect.

And if you say, who owns this. [00:35:00] You can’t point the finger at Democrats, you can’t point the finger at anybody else. This is Texas’s laws passed by a Republican majority. That’s been in control of the state for the entirety of this time. And the thing is, is like, you know, it’s clear that there is a lot of appetite in the state and even among Republican voters for access to legal and safe abortion in a number of circumstances up to a certain point of time.

But there’s no. Indication that there is the will or the leadership in the state to then now craft the law to allow for those exceptions. And in fact, it looks like we’re gonna go in the opposite direction. And I just, you know, again, this is the same, like I think this goes from an issue that Republicans were like, yeah, if the, you know, this is an, you know, abortion election, let’s take it to, let’s talk about the inflation, 

right?

Jim Henson: No, I think that’s right. And I, and you know, I mean, I think that it’s, um, you know, to the extent that in the broad. You know, in the broadest possible terms of, you know, what the governing coalition, you know, what the governing group is doing in the state and how they respond to voters, they put [00:36:00] themselves in a position that’s going to be very difficult to be responsive to where public opinion actually is.

Now. Talk about, we’ve talked about this on the podcast before this is gonna be a real interesting. Test of the thermostat hypothesis. Yes. , you know, associated with our, with our colleague Chrisian, which I think is, you know, very useful in a lot of, in a lot of circumstances, but whether the institutions and structures.

that we’re seeing in politics right now have changed to the extent that, you know, the thermostat may be broken on this. It’s, it’s, it’s difficult as you say. I think it’s very difficult to see responsiveness yeah. On this in particularly in the short term or even in the medium term of the, of the next legislative 

Josh Blank: session.

Yeah. And I mean, you know, the question is, you know, if the thermostat’s broke and doesn’t need to be tinkered with, or do you need to replace the unit? And I think, you know, that’s a question, you know, I think is yeah, gonna, we’re gonna keep having. Kind of going forward, but I think, you know, your point is a really good one and I wanna make this explicitly, you know, it took 50 years [00:37:00] to overturn Roe V.

Wade. Yeah, just about right. And so I think, you know, for anyone right now, who’s on the other side of this, you know, thinking about talking about like the answer’s not happening. Tomorrow, and it’s not happen in an election cycle. This is gonna happen over a number of election cycles in terms of what the fallout to this is.

And so, I mean, I think, you know, one of the things that’s not helpful, for example, I think, you know, in terms of, you know, in terms of way not to mobilize is I think Beto is immediately out after this because saying, well, if I’m governor, you know, I’ll over, you know, I’ll overturn all this. It’s like, no you won’t, sir.

But I think also there’s yeah, not likely, not likely, but there’s, but that’s an important point to be, you know, honest about this. There’s like, no, he won’t. But the other thing that won’t happen is if you don’t want, you know, further enforcement around. That’s. I mean, that’s kind of where you’re at right now.

That’s gonna be the 

Jim Henson: argument, right? That’s the argument right now. Yeah. I mean, he, you know, as you know, he would not be the first IOR candidate to over promise what he could do as governor, but that signal is an important one and how it’s received as important. And I think it, it also, you know, before we close out it also, it also raises a point that we were talking about before we started, that I think is worth raising here.

And it is about. [00:38:00] You know what goes on in the, you know, the areas of public opinion that are harder to plum. Yeah. And that is, there may very well be. And I think this gets to both the. Goes back to the dissatisfaction with the abortion question. Mm-hmm, that the standard abortion question, but also points to, you know, another way that we’ve asked this question to foreshadow in a poll that we just got out of the field that we’ll be releasing next week, data collected just before this decision, just before in the data was collected just before the decision.

And that is, you know, I think there may have been some folks out there, particularly Republican voters. Who may have said, yeah, I’m okay with Roe V. Wade being repealed. Right. But may not have quite been fully aware of what the consequences of that were. Oh. But that would mean no abortion exception for rape and 

Josh Blank: incest.

Well, right. And the answer is gonna have to get better. I mean, the answer that Abbot originally had months ago, too, we’re gonna eliminate [00:39:00] rape that’s the answer is gonna have to get a 

Jim Henson: lot better. Right. And I, and I think that, you know, once you really. You know, it’s going to be interesting to see, like, if that was the case.

Right. And, and, and when, what I mean by that was the case, you know, when we ask people and when we’ve been asking people, when in polling for, you know, decades, us and others about Roe V Wade, how much, what did people really read into that? And when they get, when they get what they thought they wanted, how many people are gonna go, oh, well, I.

Well, yeah, 

Josh Blank: I didn’t think it was that well, Roe V Wade. I mean, if anything, to your point, I mean, RO V Wade is like a marker. You know, it’s not that people know what the legal rationale and Roe V. Wade is on average, what it is is it’s sort of a it’s, you know, to some extent for a lot of people, it’s, you know, your orientation toward is, is some version of a statement on whether you consider yourself pro-life or pro-choice right.

Even within those groups, there’s a lot of gray area, and that’s the main point I think, you know, take away from this overall. . Yeah. You know, there’s a lot of gray area about what people think about abortion attitudes and part of that’s, because it’s hard to ask about part of that’s because there’s a lot of [00:40:00] dimensionality to it, as we say, a lot of various aspects that matter time, right.

Circumstance people’s own individual morality, et cetera. Um, but the takeaway, regardless of how you ask it is that. Very few people would say never. Right. Which is basically where we are right now. 

Jim Henson: And, and, you know, it’s been, you know, the, a lot of the standard questions, you know, I mean, we’ve asked, we’ve broken the stand before in the past.

Yeah. We’ve now tried to do it again, but you know, it at a very practical level, just to be Frank, you know, it takes a lot of space on a pole to do that. Mm-hmm and it’s difficult to do it. Right. And I think, you know, we’re, and I think the fact that we’re gonna see a lot more. Detailed polling on this going forward is gonna be an artifact of that.

And that detailed polling is also gonna have to now engage a whole range of new conditions and new questions 

Josh Blank: about this. It’s gonna be a lot different polling on abortion now, because we are gonna have to start asking about enforcement questions about, you know, specific exceptions and it’s gonna be, yeah, I mean, it’s gonna take a lot of [00:41:00] space and a lot of surveys, but ultimately the part of it is like, it’s a pretty big thicket.

Jim Henson: Yeah. And, and there’s gonna be some, you know, and there are gonna be. I suspect. So, you know, we’re gonna have to sort of be patient on this. It’s one of those things where I think we’re gonna have to be very careful, you know, to not, you know, as we always are, but it’s gonna, this is gonna be one of those areas.

I’d be very careful to not create opinion before it’s pulled. It’s true before 

Josh Blank: it’s formed. Yeah. And I think another important thing for people to take away, you know, since your, the podcast with the pollsters here is just because this is a really big issue and a big decision, and it’s gonna have a lot of foal ramifications doesn’t mean that it’s going to become the driving factor.

Instead of the economy, right. Or instead of something else, it may not. 

Jim Henson: And, you know, uh, and, and it’s almost, you know, I mean, I think the other point about, you know, to follow up on the previous point, I mean, I, it’s almost as if you know, this is gonna shake and, and we started with this and this is a good place to end, you know, we’ve noted that these, these attitudes, as we’ve asked about them have been stable for a [00:42:00] very long time.

Mm-hmm . It will be interesting. We’re gonna ha you know, it’s gonna be tricky to be able to track that stability and whether that’s disrupted in a way that has continuity with previous questions, we’ve asked mm-hmm , but also cover these new areas. And so that’s, that’s gonna be a big challenge moving forward.

So I think with that, um, I’m gonna thank Josh for being here. Uh, thank you for listening as always. I want to thank our crew in the audio studio here in the liberal arts development studio at the university of Texas at Austin. We’ve talked about a lot of data here. You can find that data@ourwebsiteattexaspoliticsdotutexas.edu.

Uh, as I suggested we will have. Uh, some fresh polling coming out soon. Look for that right after the 4th of July holiday. Um, in the meantime, enjoy that 4th of July holiday take a breather. It has been, if you are listening to this and you follow politics, it has been a brutal few weeks, you know, no matter what side you’re on it’s been [00:43:00] or what your view or what you’re focused on issue.

They’ve been a very busy few weeks, uh, enjoy the 4th of July and we’ll be back soon with another second reading podcast. The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin.