New Numbers Give Both Sides a Wakeup Call on the Politics of Abortion
Democrats hope absolutism will save them; Republicans have convinced themselves compromise is necessary. Both are wrong.
One of the great tragedies of modern politics is that, more often than not, the compromises and capitulations on fundamental principles that politicians commit for perceived political expediency turn out to be wholly unnecessary even on purely mercenary grounds. Not that it ever stops them.
For months, Republicans have been following Donald Trump’s lead in “moderating” the GOP’s pro-life plank, based on the bogus theory that abortion, not a garbage leader foisting garbage candidates on winnable races, was the reason the 2022 midterms didn’t deliver a red wave. Perversely, this exercise in motivated reasoning has coincided with the Biden campaign’s fanatical certainty that fearmongering for “choice” will get Joe reelected.
That assumption got a reality check this week, via a CNN segment between anchor John Berman and analyst Harry Enten. From Mediaite:
ENTEN: This is nationally, look at abortion. Biden leads on this measure by 14 points. It’s by far his best issue. The economy, Trump leads. Immigration, Trump leads, foreign conflicts, Trump leads. And even on preserving democracy, which is obviously been a focal point of the Joe Biden campaign. He only leads on issue by this issue by four points. So abortion being in the news is something that Joe Biden wants, because it’s the issue that he runs most ahead of Donald Trump on.
BERMAN: What do the polls now say about how important the abortion issue could be in voting?
ENTEN: Yeah. So all right. You see this 14-point lead for Joe Biden. But will abortion be important for votes, for folks in their voting patterns? So in our new CNN poll, how does abortion affect your vote for major offices? Candidates must share your views? Only 23%, John. Only 23% of Americans say that candidates must share your views on abortion. So even if they agree with Joe Biden, it doesn’t necessarily mean they vote for him. And more than that, John, when we look at the top issues, the nation’s most urgent issues, look where abortion is on this list. It’s all the way down at 5%. The issues that are at the top of this list are immigration and the economy, which of course are Donald Trump’s best issues.
Further, that 23% encompasses both sides of the abortion debate, meaning the number who consider not supporting it a dealbreaker is even smaller. In other words, the election is going to be decided on Biden and Trump’s respective answers to the mess Biden’s made of the economy and the border, whether Democrats like it or not—and, with the election six months away, Biden’s still not done giving normal Americans fresh new reasons to want him gone.
Yet Trump still thinks he needs to be as noncommittal to life as humanly possible in order to win. This week, TIME published a lengthy interview in which the most liberal Republican nominee of a generation not only reiterated his “leave everything to the states” formulation, but refused to even take a stand on state law in his capacity as a private citizen and standard-bearer of the ostensible “pro-life” party:
How do you plan to vote in the state’s abortion referendum this November that would overturn DeSantis’s six-week ban?
Trump: Well, I said I thought six weeks is too severe.
You did.
Trump: You know, I've said that previously.
Yes.
Trump: I think it was a semi-controversial statement when I made it, and it's become less and less controversial with time. I think Ron was hurt very badly when he did this because the people—even conservative women in Florida thought it was—
Well this referendum would undo that. Are you gonna vote for it in November?
Trump: Well, it'll give something else. I don't tell you what I'm gonna vote for. I only tell you the state's gonna make a determination.
The referendum in question is not a repeal of the heartbeat law; it’s a proposed constitutional amendment that would invalidate Florida’s heartbeat law, its 15-week ban, and virtually any pro-life law the legislature would want to enact in the future. And Trump can’t even tell his followers to vote against that? The new status quo is wonderful because states will decide, but tying a state’s hands from deciding in the future is no big deal? One of the most important items on the 2024 ballot for pro-lifers and conservatives, and the guy we’re being told to vote for can’t even be bothered to help us out at all?
Oh, and for good measure, the man whose turn has been rationalized as an attempt to avoid alienating voters also walked straight into a large, neon-lit, clearly-labeled trap designed to scare those same voters in the same interview:
Do you think states should monitor women's pregnancies so they can know if they've gotten an abortion after the ban?
Trump: I think they might do that. Again, you'll have to speak to the individual states. Look, Roe v. Wade was all about bringing it back to the states.
It should come as no surprise that the lifelong “very pro-choice” liberal who initially assumed in 2016 that pro-lifers wanted to hear there should be “some form of punishment” for women who abort didn’t think twice about legitimizing a baseless demagogic caricature of the dystopian police state leftists want the public to associate with pro-life states. That we are now expected to take messaging advice from such a hopeless moron is only marginally more surprising.
The biggest irony is that Trump himself is the ultimate example of why these sellouts are politically unnecessary. He won in 2016, and is on track to win again this year, despite a mountain of negatives vastly more severe than the average presidential candidate goes into battle with.
If he wins again this year, it will be due to the simple fact that Biden is making Americans’ lives worse with no sign of changing. Selling out the pro-life cause won’t have anything to do with it, but that won’t stop the establishment-grifter alliance from giving it a share of the credit anyway, further cementing the national GOP’s transition to functionally pro-choice. Which will be the biggest tragedy of all.