Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome back to conversations. I very pleased to be joined today, September 8th, 2022.

My friend Bill Gostin, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, served in the Clinton White House.

Very intelligent, true, perceptive observer, analyst of an educational participant in American politics, particularly the politics of the Democratic Party, his piece from the late 80s, the politics of evasion.

Very important to laying the groundwork for Bill Clinton's victory in 92, which Bill was part of and served in the Clinton White House, as I think I said.

And then recently we issued the politics of evasion co-authored, I should say, with the link came work, in terms of today's Democratic Party.

And we should have a broader talk, actually, about the maybe in early 2023, about the Democratic Party and its prospects after this midterm election and where it's going.

I should also mention Bill has a weekly Wall Street Journal call, which is a must read.

But for now, I thought Bill would be a very helpful analyst of the politics of abortion, an issue that some people I guess expected to be a big deal this fall.

But I don't know if it's sort of little bit came out of the blue, or didn't come out of the blue, or came out of the Supreme Court.

And so I thought we'd begin just with the current moment and then we can have a broader discussion of where this goes.

But so with September 8th, as I mentioned, it's two months exactly before the election, has the Supreme Court's reversal of row proved to be a big deal.

We know yet if it's a big deal, politically, is it right now, at least looking like it really will be a bigger issue in the fall elections and people might have expected to talk about the current politics of abortion.

But like you, Bill, I had a hunch early on that it would be a big deal.

And I think that hunch is being born out by events.

And I'm sure everybody who's watching or listening to this is aware of what I'm about to say.

But the first indication was the amazingly wide margin by which the referendum in Kansas was defeated.

18 percentage points, I don't think anybody thought it would be like that.

I certainly didn't. I thought there was a chance.

Subsequently, some special elections that were thought to be leaning Republican have gone the Democrats way, including a special election in for congressional seat in New York, where the Democrat prevailed by two points in a district that was thought to be leaning pretty strongly Republican.

And where there was an entirely credible Republican candidate, more narrow I think his name was.

And in addition, there's all sorts of evidence from party registration figures since the Dobbs decision overturning row was handed down that women are disproportionately registering more Democrats than Republicans.

The recorded level of Democratic enthusiasm for participating in the midterms is moving up closer to the Republican level of enthusiasm eroding their advantage.

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