American politics seem to be under the domination of conservatives, and the issue on which the conservatives and liberals were opposed to each other was on the issue of abortion. The victory of Donald Trump as president of the United States in 2016 seemed to mark the pinnacle of the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States.

Trump during his tenure in the White House managed to nominate three conservative judges to the Supreme Court, and it was the three Trump appointees who helped the court to overturn the 1973 Roe vs. Wade which enabled American women to choose abortion if they wanted to. American conservatives had been wanting to overturn this for a long time, and Trump played a role in making it happen.  After the Supreme Court judgment, there was a wave of despair among the liberals in America, and it seemed that the voters had turned conservative. But in elections in three conservative states of Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia, Democrats won majorities in the state legislatures and governorships, and the issue that dominated the election was the issue of abortion. If voters in these three conservative states stand in support of abortion advocates, then it seemed to point out that the 2024 presidential election would go in favour of Joe Biden, who said that he will run for the second term.

It is also a rebuff to the Republicans, who wanted to ride the anti-abortion conservative tide. Trump in the race for Republican presidential nomination – and it looks like that he is going to get it – may have to be careful and he cannot afford to support the position of conservative ideologues in the churches and among the Republicans. And he cannot be sure that he can beat Biden, whose ratings are very poor, by supporting rigid conservative positions on abortion. It appears that conservatives in America, especially women, do not want to give up their access to abortion.

Political experts think that the election results in Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia should help the unpopular Biden to beat Trump next November. This might seem a hasty conclusion. But it is not so because Americans in general vote on domestic issue, and abortion is indeed the burning issue dividing the Americans. The Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia election results show the writing on the wall: Trump and the other conservatives in the Republican party will lose if they mechanically repeat the ani-abortion position hoping to win the conservative vote. Many Americans – and as a matter of fact a large chunk of them — are conservative but their conservatism is tinged with pragmatism.

So the position of American conservative voters is not the same as that of Trump and other Republican conservatives. Democrats have retained the Kentucky governor’s post and they have dislodged the Republicans in Virginia.

And in Ohio they have placed the right to abortion in their constitutional framework. This is indeed a wake-up call to Republican conservatives, including Trump. They have to adopt a nuanced position on issues close to the heart of majority of conservatives in the country.

There is however the nagging doubt that despite the popularity of the Biden agenda — which is to extend governmental aid to people in need in the country, and his unqualified opposition to anti-abortion movement of the Christian groups — it would be difficult to turn Biden into a nimble liberal, not just in terms of physical responses but on the liberal positions of the people. One of them is the one relating to abortion rights. Biden’s political instincts were right when he took a stand against the Supreme Court position on abortion.