Tuesday, April 09, 2024

ON TRUMP'S ABORTION VIDEO, IF DEMOCRATS ARE EXPLAINING, ARE THEY WINNING?

There's an old political saying, sometimes ascribed to Ronald Reagan: If you're explaining, you're losing. Yesterday Donald Trump released a video laying out his position on abortion.



The initial media coverage strongly suggested that Trump's position is simple and moderate:


But the Biden campaign is responding vigorously. Here's a Twitter thread that goes state by state, listing the many extreme restrictions Trump's "let the states decide" position would leave in place. An example:


Here's President Biden personally attacking Trump:


Biden says:
Donald Trump just endorsed every single state ban on reproductive care nationwide. All across the country, women are being turned away from emergency rooms, or being forced to travel hundreds of miles or ask a judge, just to get the basic care they need. That's Donald Trump's vision for this country? He said it himself: He'd punish women who seek out the care they need. If MAGA Republicans put a federal ban on his desk, he'd sign it! Donald Trump is the reason Roe was ended. If you reelect me, I'll be the reason why it's restored.
(That last sentence is aspirational, not accurate, because Democrats probably need 60 senators to codify Roe, and they'll have to be extremely lucky to come out of the next election with 50. This is what they get for never abolishing the filibuster. Nevertheless, it's good to have Biden saying this.)

The Biden campaign is even trying to meme:


Ordinarily, I'd worry that because Trump's position seems simple, Democrats must be losing if they have to keep explaining how not-simple it actually is. But the campaign is pushing back so vigorously that I think Trump might stay on the defensive.

Biden is asserting that Trump would sign a national abortion ban. I wish the president and his surrogates would dare Trump to say he'd veto a ban. If Trump won't promise to veto a national ban, or won't respond at all, doesn't that prove the Democrats' point? And if Trump says he would veto a ban, wouldn't that lose him some Evangelical support? (I agree with Amanda Marcotte that most Evangelical leaders are signaling that they still have Trump's back, even as they scold him mildly for not advocating an outright national ban. Also, I think Lindsey Graham's immediate push to criticize Trump is a pre-arranged good-cop/bad-cop act intended to make Trump look moderate.)

I also wish Democrats could be more explicit about the fact that Trump might not need to do anything to preside over a national abortion ban except appoint more and more federal judges and Supreme Court justices who are willing to rule in favor of abortion opponents (and birth control opponents, and in vitro fertlization opponents). Historically, most Democratic voters haven't understood the importance of the federal courts. Now, when it's too late for Roe, they get the importance of the Supreme Court. (I wish more liberal- and left-leaning voters had understood that during the fight over Barack Obama's final Supreme Court vacancy, and understood it during the 2016 election.) Here's a list of anti-abortion court appointees from Trump's presidency. A couple of examples:
Jeffrey Brown (Southern District of Texas) bragged about his involvement in making it more difficult for minors to seek abortion care in Texas, referred to IUDs and emergency contraceptives as “potentially life-terminating drugs and devices” and “abortifacients,” and was endorsed by major anti-choice organizations in Texas.

Liles Burke (Northern District of Alabama), as a state court judge, held in Ankrom v. State, 152 So.3d 373 (2011) that the word “child” in Alabama’s child endangerment statute applies to the unborn.

John Bush (Sixth Circuit) likened abortion to slavery: “[t]he two greatest tragedies in our country—slavery and abortion—relied on similar reasoning and activist justices at the U.S. Supreme Court, first in the Dred Scott decision, and later in Roe.”

Stephen Clark (Eastern District of Missouri) said that Roe v. Wade “gave doctors a license to kill unborn children. Like the Dred Scott decision, Roe is BAD law.”
Those are just some of the B's. I haven't even gotten to abortion pill banner Matthew Kacsmaryk. The Democratic Party needs to do a better job of educating its voters -- and swing voters -- about the importance of the federal courts.

And I have some doubts about the likely efficacy of this ad, which is widely seen as hard-hitting and effective:



It's gut-wrenching, but I wonder whether the message is muddled. This couple mourns a child they lost to a miscarriage, but they sought an abortion because of health risks to the mother? At the end we're told that delays resulting from a draconian anti-abortion law may have cost this couple the chance to have another child. Could this be clearer, or maybe mentioned at the beginning of the ad? Or are my concerns misplaced? Will voters respond to the couple's obvious pain, the invocation of sepsis, the general bureaucratic Handmaid's Tale cruelty? I don't know.

Despite my concerns, I think the Biden campaign is doing a good job of pushback. I expect to see a lot more like this. One of my main criticisms of Democrats is that I think they need to fight like this much more, in campaign seasons and out. I hope they learn that for the future. But they're clearly fighting hard now.
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