IMPERFECT MESSENGERS? WELL, YES AND NO.

On social media, many people are criticizing this New York Times story:

I don't think the critics are reading past the headline, although even from the headline I could see where the story was going. It's not judging the rightness or wrongness of Donald Trump's and Joe Biden's approaches to the issue of abortion and finding a false equivalence. It's merely saying that people with strong Democratic leanings tend to be passionately pro-choice, while Biden, over the course of his career, hasn't been, and that people with strong Republican leanings tend to be passionately anti-abortion, while Trump used to support abortion rights and is now hedging on anti-abortion rhetoric, even though he's the guy who killed Roe.

In the summer of 2019, as a crowded Democratic primary was picking up speed, Joe Biden was on the defensive, pummeled by abortion-rights groups and his opponents for his support of the Hyde Amendment, a measure that prohibits the use of federal funds for most abortions.

He reversed his position, but the episode underlined his wobbly standing in the eyes of abortion-rights activists as he faced off in 2020 against Donald Trump, who became a hero of the anti-abortion movement by using his presidency to appoint Supreme Court justices who appeared likely to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Now, in 2024, the tables have turned.

This week, it was Trump angering abortion opponents as he sought to wash his hands of the matter and leave it to the states....

Trump’s allies on the religious right ... were deeply disappointed with what they see as a flip-flop. Their alliance with Trump had always been uneasy — Trump called himself “pro-choice” in the late 1990s, but by 2011 had reversed his position entirely, calling himself “pro-life.” He won over evangelical support during his 2016 presidential race by promising to appoint anti-abortion judges.

The story isn't really about the issue of reproductive rights. It's about the two candidates and where they've previously stood on the issue, which is not where party stalwarts wish they'd stood. The story is fine for what it is.

But if there's a problem with the story, it's that it overestimates Republican dissatisfaction with Trump's abortion posturing. I don't think Amanda Marcotte and David French agree on much, but they agree on this: Republicans are fine with what Trump is saying.

Marcotte writes:

But most telling is the muted response on the Christian right. The anti-abortion group SBA List said they were "disappointed," but promised to "work tirelessly" to elect Trump in 2024 and that "he will get there" on a national ban. Alliance Defending Freedom, which argued the Dobbs case before the Supreme Court that ended Roe, completely ignored Trump's statement. Americans United For Life, Family Research Council, the Heritage Foundation, Turning Point USA: All loudmouthed fundamentalist groups, all angrily anti-abortion, and all responded with either silence, or in some cases, eager support to Trump's video. Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America, a longstanding anti-feminist group, seemed confident Trump will stick by the forced childbirth cause.

French writes:

And how did the pro-life establishment respond? With mild criticism, but also with immediate support. As Politico reported this week, “Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Students for Life, the Faith and Freedom Coalition, the Family Research Council, National Right to Life and CatholicVote reiterated their commitment Monday morning to electing Trump.”

Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, one of the largest right-wing student and faith outreach organizations in the country, immediately posted his support, calling the statement “masterful” and said that the pro-life leaders he’d talked to were “very happy.”

To French, this is a sign that the movement is waffling on absolute opposition to abortion; to Marcotte, it's a sign that Trump is a liar who intends to ban abortion the first chance he gets. Either way, the movement seems content with Trump as a messenger.

My belief is that Trump, as a former young and middle-aged fuckboy, is still instinctively pro-choice. But he's also viscerally Republican now, as well as entirely self-serving, so he'll say whatever he thinks will get turn out enough Republican and Republican-leaning voters to get him elected. On abortion, he thinks he's a better political strategist than the Republicans who ran as no-exceptions abortion opponents in 2022, and we know he always likes feeling smarter than people who have more experience or knowledge than he does.

I don't think he'll prioritize banning abortion if he's elected -- but I also don't think he'll try to stop anyone who has a plan to do it. I think he'd sign a federal abortion ban into law. More likely, he'll sign any executive orders drafted for him that curtail or ban abortion, and he'll appoint whomever he's told to appoint to the federal bench -- and all of the recommended appointees will be anti-abortion zealots.

So he's a perfectly acceptable messenger for the GOP on abortion. As for Biden, he's doing fine for our side, despite any concerns I expressed on Tuesday. Maybe he's putting aside his concerns about abortion because he knows it's what he needs to do to beat Trump, but it's fine. He's stepping up.