Good news, bad news this morning First, good news courtesy of E.J. Dionne. Conservatives (with the most clout) have abandoned their opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. Why? They won’t admit it, but they caught that car and lost that fight: After gyrating from one position to another, Donald Trump simply gave up on being a pro-life candidate. The states, he said, would settle the issue, and he didn’t give a damn how they did it. The Republican Party followed along, drastically weakening the antiabortion provisions in its platform because it recognized that opposing reproductive rights after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision was an electoral loser. And it is. Abortion rights prevailed in 7 out of 10 states where voters had a choice this year — in three carried by Vice President Kamala Harris (New York, Maryland and Colorado) but also in four won by Trump (Missouri, Arizona, Montana and Nevada). Reproductive rights won 57 percent of the vote in pro-Trump Florida, but the state had a 60 percent threshold for the referendum to pass. Opponents of abortion rights fully prevailed only in Nebraska and South Dakota. So the right ginned up other bogeymen with which to frighten and activate their base and drive them to the polls: immigrants and transgender people. Even so, Trump’s narrow popular-vote margin wasn’t enough to justify “apocalyptic electoral analysis,” Dionne argues. The right will, of course. And a left still licking its wounds over the election outcome doesn’t exactly feel celebratory. The economy and immigration worked better for Trump than the defense of democracy…