Since last week's election, there's been a whole lot of Monday morning quarterbacking

about what exactly went wrong for the Democrats. Did they fail to communicate the stakes of this

election? Were they to flip about the economy?

But I wanted to talk to Caroline Kitchener,

who covers abortion for the Washington Post,

because she didn't wait to understand how well the Dems were communicating

when it came to one of their signature issues.

Well, going into the election, I really wanted to know, like, is abortion going to be enough to sway people?

Is abortion actually going to be enough to change somebody's mind on the presidential race?

I actually started by looking for people that were really torn, you know, more independent or Republican-leaning

voters who cared about abortion rights and because of abortion were really torn. And I had a

really hard time finding people. What I did find a lot of were people that cared very deeply

about abortion rights, but who didn't really see that as connected to the

presidential race. And I thought that was really fascinating.

Looking back, Caroline's reporting seems prescient. She spoke with one voter after another,

who said they were all for abortion rights and the GOP, Trump in particular.

Take Emily Jones in Arizona. She was thrilled to mail in her vote early and felt strongly about preserving

the right to reproductive health care. You know, before the abortion bans took effect, she had an ectopic pregnancy.

And, you know, she did receive care that, you know, might be more difficult to get now if you're in a state with a ban.

And so she did care very deeply about this issue.

But she voted for Trump and she voted for the abortion rights ballot initiative,

both her and her husband, who I also spoke to, voted the same way.

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