The Democratic Party in Michigan (where I live and have a front row seat) is already making good use of Graham's gift. The party had already been saturating cable TV and social media with ads doing nothing but repeating Republican candidates' own words about how they want to ban abortion. The Democratic Party seem to be taking the tactic of exclusively letting Republicans speak for themselves in Democratic election ads.

Then, one day after Graham's federal abortion ban proposal, Democratic ads added him to the mix, again letting him speak for himself.

I'm betting this is going to be an excellent strategy. Polls show that Michigan women in very high percentages, regardless of party, support the right to choose abortion.

But the Republican Party here, as in many states, is dominated by a pretty hardcore fringe of right wingers. Hell, the Republican candidate for governor doesn't support the right of women to get an abortion even in the cases of rape and incest, even when children have been raped.

Mainstream thinking right now is that she doesn't stand a chance in hell of getting elected. I hope that's true, and I hope that opposition to the right-wing fringe means women will turn out to the polls in big numbers and vote for Democrats up and down the ticket.

We'll see.