In every election since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago, voters have turned out in big numbers to protest the decision and restore abortion rights statewide where possible. Reproductive freedom remains a major rallying cause for Democrats, even as former President Donald Trump appears to have found a way to insulate himself from voters’ wrath about losing this essential right.
“Trump heard the politics of the post-Dobbs world when he made it clear almost from the beginning, he wasn’t willing to go along with some of the more extreme responses, repeating over and over the Florida six-week ban is much too restrictive, denying exceptions is a big mistake, and resisting a federal law,” says Bill Galston, a senior fellow in the Brookings Institution’s governance program.
“He positioned himself as something of a moderate,” Galston continues, “To give him credit, he found a way to neutralize an issue at least for himself. Unless he says something really stupid, he might yet get away with it. He might drive a wedge between himself and other Republicans.”
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Polls show that most voters don’t think Trump will further erode abortion rights based on his background (he was once a pro-choice Democrat), his messy personal life, and his many conflicting statements.
Reproductive freedom is more of an issue in statewide Senate races, where voters don’t trust Republican candidates to hold the line on extreme abortion policies.
Incumbent Democrats are running ahead of their GOP challengers in battleground senate races in Nevada, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. According to Amy Walter with the Cook Political Report, voters who think Trump is “likely to ban abortion” are voting against Republican David McCormick in the critical state of Pennsylvania by an equal or larger margin than they are voting against Trump. In a poll taken before President Biden’s disastrous debate performance, Biden won among these voters by 34 points while Casey wins them by 45 points.
Republican pollster Greg Strimple told The Daily Beast that the abortion dynamic that is fueling Democratic senate incumbents is not working at the top of the ticket where voter concerns about Biden’s age and the high cost of living have blunted the impact of the abortion issue and concerns about democracy.
Independent women and highly educated suburban women, college degree or better, are “conflicted about their pro-choice predilection and concern about the cost of living,” says Strimple, “so that’s how that is being neutralized on the presidential level. Almost 60 percent thought in our poll that he (Biden) has control over the cost of living. That’s a double whammy with those two issues working against him.”
On the abortion issue, voters are 2-to-1 in favor of legal abortion, but in Strimple’s polling for the Cook Political Report, Trump’s position of returning the issue to the states, 51 percent say “that’s about right.”
Trump has had such a string of victories lately that it’s no wonder that Republicans are beginning to think about a “wave” election that could sweep in an all-GOP government. Democrats are running well ahead of Biden in critical states, but with Biden’s future uncertain, Strimple asks, “Can Senate candidates stay out of the way, or will they get caught in the undertow?... Does the debate about Biden’s age overwhelm the entire ticket—and does it depress Democratic turnout? I think it will.”
With the very real possibility that Vice President Kamala Harris could step in as the Democratic nominee for president, the case for reproductive freedom would be made more forcefully than it has been made by Biden, a devout Catholic who was opposed to abortion rights earlier in his career. Harris has been out-front on the issue and brings the conviction and passion that could change the equation of its importance at the top of the ticket.
We haven’t heard the last word yet on Roe. Trump may have blunted for now the impact of voter anger against him for stacking the Supreme Court with anti-Roe justices. Abortion is still a galvanizing issue for Democrats because there are enough states that have enacted draconian restrictions. South Carolina is the latest where three elected Republican women who fought to include exceptions in the state’s abortion ban were defeated in their primaries.
Trump says he doesn’t favor a national ban, but that’s where he’s reversed himself, and nobody can trust anything he says. It’s not as if he has deep convictions either way. The Democrats can say this is the guy who gave us Dobbs. That’s a simple message.
Biden’s responses on abortion were mystifying in his debate with Trump. He launched into a confusing description of how Roe applied in each of the three trimesters, letting Trump swing wildly at Democrats for allowing abortions “in the eighth month, the ninth month, even after birth.” This is wrong and if Biden were on his game he would have used the moment to call out Trump’s lies and disinformation—and drive home the choice voters face.
