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Abortion and the Democrats; Gaza and History

On this episode of Start Making Sense, John Nichols analyzes Tuesday’s elections, and Fintan O’Toole considers Gaza’s past and future.

Jon Wiener

November 9, 2023

Voting signage outside a polling location in Toledo, Ohio, on Tuesday, November 7, 2023. Ohioans are considering a proposed amendment, called Issue 1, to prevent the state from interfering with reproductive decisions, including contraception, while allowing abortion bans with exceptions after fetal viability. (Photographer: Emily Elconin / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Tuesday’s vote tested the potency of abortion rights as an issue for Democrats, with a referendum in Ohio and the election of a new state legislature in Virginia. John Nichols has our analysis of those elections, and some others.

Also on this episode: What is Israel’s endgame in its war with Hamas? Over the past 50 years, it has tried two radically different strategies in Gaza, and neither succeeded. Fintan O’Toole explains that history. He teaches at Princeton and is an advising editor at The New York Review of Books, where he’s been writing about Israel, Hamas, and Gaza.

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Jon WienerTwitterJon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.


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