They can turn a huge win like the overturning of Roe into a loss by making abortion a central issue. In certain states banning abortion is a huge winner, in other states, it’s a huge loser.
The pro-marriage campaign in California won because they did not allow a fringe group to turn their campaign into a campaign against domestic partnerships, which was seen as not about protecting marriage but instead attacking gays and lesbians.
Most Americans are Christian but their religious sentiments are a mile wide and an inch deep. Democrats are careful to downplay anti-Christianism, Nancy Pelosi claims to be Catholic and her allies got her unbanned from Communion.
When Republicans defend Christians it is popular, when they attack non-Christians it is unpopular.
None if this is some big secret of political science or anything.
Of course ending immigration, legal and illegal, is hugely popular. But Republicans are not allowed to do that. That is the only real substantive issue.
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Banned Hipster 
“Republicans aren’t allowed to do that.” So, our representatives don’t do their jobs? Then why should I vote? I am done with all that. It is an exercise in futility.
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@KB
Well their real job isn’t representing the people unfortunately, and I agree voting is an exercise in futility. I don’t bother with it myself.
If I did I would vote strictly on looks.
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I was pleasantly surprised when gay marriage was struck down by referendum in my great state of California, then I learned about rule by judicial fiat and get gay marriage anyway soon after. This is is why “pack the court” is a thing. Our democracy, right?
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Conservatives have long pointed out how anti-democratic the Left’s Supreme Court has been. They aren’t even wrong.
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Chris Caldwell writes of gay marriage in “the Age of entitlement”: “Well into the 21st century, there was not a single state in the union where voters viewed gay marriage favorably…. It had been repudiated in referendum after referendum, 31 in all, despite the vastly superior economic resources and lobbying networks that pro-gay marriage forces drew on…. While it used a rhetoric of exclusion traditionally deployed by downtrodden ethnic minorities, gay marriage was also the single cause that united the richest and best connected people on the planet. The Human Rights campaign, which lobbied for gay rights legislation and backed gay rights litigation, was bankrolled by Amazon, American Airlines, Apple, Citibank, coca-cola, Dell, Goldman Sachs, Google, Hershey, Hyatt, IBM, Intel [list goes on]… It had moved its staff of 150 into the old head quarters of B’NAI BRITH [my emphasis] in the heart of Washington, DC… In a neighborhood where any major lobbying firm might consider it a status symbol to rent a floor, the Human Rights campaign owned an entire nine-story, two-wing building. The investors George Soros and Michael Bloomberg, tech billionaires Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, entertainers David Geffen and Brad Pitt, Republican financiers Paul Singer and Seth Klarman – all backed gay marriage with millions of donations. Support for gay marriage in Silicon Valley was almost unanimous. There was no equivalence on the other side. When it was discovered that Mozilla chief executive Brendan Eich, the designer of the web browser Firefox, had given $1,000 to support Prop 8 [a proposal to ban gay marriage] six years before, a storm of outrage forced his resignation.” Sorry for the novella, but Caldwell’s writing on this subject in particular blew my mind, his Claremont ties not withstanding (the rest of the book is really good too). Caldwell never says it, but a cursory glance at the names he listed (B’bai Brith headquarters, fucking hell) makes it clear that gay marriage was largely a Jewish-led movement oppositional to the views of an almost entirely Christian country (shaky and shallow as that faith may have become). What’s depressing is that post Obergefell, polls shifted in favor of gay marriage, which of course the intelligentsia reported as evidence that people had adopted the correct views and this had led to its legalization. Of course, this is the opposite of what happened. It was forced on people, beaten into their brains and made into law, and so people accepted it. Regardless on one’s personal views on this subject, it’s instructive.
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Rest assured, they’ll do their best (to lose).
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That wasn’t supposed to be a reply.
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