What are "pro-choice proclivities"?

 The entire premise of this Prospect article is wrong.  

Since Dobbs, voters in Republican Kansas, Ohio, and Montana have rejected far-right overreaching ballot measures and affirmed their support for the right to abortion even with curbs in place. In last year’s midterm elections, voters’ concerns about the loss of that right helped keep the Senate in Democratic hands and blunt the Republican wave in the House that overconfident prognosticators repeatedly claimed was nigh.

This fall, upcoming gubernatorial elections in Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana will test just how deep the revulsion over these far-right Republican excesses runs in the South, and what those races may presage in abortion access politics beyond the region. All three states have Republican supermajorities in their legislatures. The Dobbs decision specifically affirmed a Mississippi statute devised to explicitly challenge Roe v. Wade. But many Republicans have been shaken by the backlash.

No. Louisiana's gubernatorial election will not test voters' aversion to GOP anti-abortion politics in any way.  I understand why national political analysts would like it to. It certainly could do that.  The mid-term results and the single ballot issue results this article cites do, indeed, indicate that abortion rights can be a winning issue for Democrats in supposedly "red" territory.  But that can only happen if the Democratic candidates run on defending those rights. The Democrat in our Governor's race is decidedly not doing that. 

The Prospect article wants to pretend that he is, or could be. But the closest it can come to achieving this pretense is to describe him as having "Pro-choice proclivities." 

Louisiana holds its open primary in mid-October. Gov. John Bel Edwards, an anti-abortion Democrat, is term-limited. Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry, who is running to succeed Edwards, sticks to the loud and proud extremes favored by the far-right Republicans on abortion. If he survives attacks from his Republican opponents in the already nasty “jungle” primary, he appears to be poised to romp over Democrat Shawn Wilson, an African American former state transportation secretary and first-time candidate with pro-choice proclivities and little statewide name recognition. Like their Mississippi neighbors, Louisianans mostly vote along racial lines.

To demonstrate those proclivities, the Prospect cites Wilson's extremely milquetoast rhetoric in support of rape and incest exceptions as well as the fact that he affirmatively answered a yes/no debate question about a hypothetical statewide referendum on abortion.  This is hardly anything.  Certainly it is not indicative of the "Post-Dobbs strategy" of full-throated support for abortion rights the article wants these elections to "test." 

In fact, in interviews, Wilson sounds very much like a 90s Third Way Democrat seeking to accommodate anti-abortion sentiment while also not posing a direct threat to an individual's "private decisions." 

In an interview last week, Wilson didn’t describe himself as being “pro-choice” like abortion rights supporters typically do.

The Democrat said he personally opposes abortion except in cases where a pregnant person was a victim of rape or incest – or their health is at risk. But he also believes his personal beliefs shouldn’t be imposed on others, and that individuals need more flexibility to make their own decisions about ending a pregnancy. 

When asked about abortion, Wilson said he is “not interested in preventing folks from making decisions that are private,” and “I dare not question their doctor’s expertise.”

But after Dobbs, those private decisions are already threatened. State laws that are on the books now criminalize them.  Wilson is not promising to do anything about that. He's meekly defending a status quo that doesn't exist anymore.  During the third debate, Wilson was asked why he had begun the campaign with the words "Pro-life" displayed on his website but then taken that down. All he said was, "I am personally a decision maker for me and my family." We can barely even understand what that means for his family members, let alone what it might mean for the people of the state.

What a waste. The thing is, it is probably true that Democrats can make up some ground in GOP dominated states by running campaigns that speak up for abortion rights rather than just hint a candidate's "pro-choice proclivities." The "Dobbs strategy" does, in fact, seem viable.  Shawn Wilson isn't running on that, though.