Progressives, observing the party in control of Congress and the White House, have turned on their own side.
Progressives, observing the party in control of Congress and the White House, have turned on their own side.
A great irony of the leaked Dobbs draft is that Democrats, despite all their advocacy in overdrive since its release, may end up gaining very little politically — if they don’t suffer dearly.
All the punditry about the draft igniting the grassroots to defend Roe v. Wade seems to have been wrong. Yes, there was an uptick in donations to Democratic candidates, who raised $12 million in the immediate aftermath. Yes, protests broke out across the country as traditional abortion supporters demonstrated in support of Roe and jeered at the Court’s conservative majority. And yes, it’s given the president and congressional leaders a reasonable call to turn out voters in November, on which they were quick to capitalize.
Two weeks on, however, things seem rather different. After the initial outrage, criticism now seems to have devolved parabolically onto the Democrats. Progressive voters across the country, observing the party in control of both Congress and the White House, have laid at its feet the blame for Roe’s apparent fate. As an article in Teen Vogue put it, “Democrats woke up in power and only remembered how to blame the people that got them there, rather than take any responsibility.” At weekend protests, including several I observed in New York City, the rallying cry was “Democrats, we call your bluff!” The progressive rank and file, an increasing share of the party’s voter base, was angrier at its own side than the other.
The party’s current perch in Washington does give it the ability to, say, abolish the filibuster, pack the Supreme Court, federalize elections, and relent to the flood of progressive demands. It’s something they’ve attempted in the past — each time being blocked by moderate lawmakers on their side, as well as Republicans. Grassroots anger over this outcome only increased in the week after the Democrats proposed a far-reaching Senate bill that would have legalized abortion up to the moment of birth. The procedural vote failed 51–49, with Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat, voting no. It needed 60 votes to proceed and was doomed from the start. Rather than give them some action to tout in the news cycle, the entire episode instead put the party on the defensive.
Perhaps the best manifestation of this anger was on display in San Francisco, where protesters gathered outside Nancy Pelosi’s home to demonstrate against her — much in the same manner as at the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices. Apparently, her long career in Congress should have afforded ample time to cement Roe into law. “We are here because the Democratic Party and the Democrats as a whole have been complicit in this whole thing,” one announced into a microphone. “Speaker Pelosi, this will be your legacy. Why did you keep this on the table? Because this is your most effective fundraising tool,” it was added.
These responses should make Democrats shudder; they need the base to hold to even stand a chance in the midterms, which already look bleak. Republicans demonstrated this most recently, in Georgia in 2021. After Donald Trump’s claims of a “stolen election” and rigged balloting, the GOP saw its voter turnout take a nosedive for the Senate runoff races in January. They lost both those seats, ceding control of the Senate. If the Democrats — marred by apathy and disdain for leaders — cannot unite their rank and file now, the base’s passions about abortion will translate into nothing.
Beyond this, however, the party is deluded if it thinks abortion is a winning issue. Just look at the numbers. Merely 4 percent of voters, per a recent Economist/YouGov poll, consider abortion their top issue for November’s midterms. In the pre-election news cycle, there’s no escaping record-high inflation, massive illegal immigration, and a string of domestic- and foreign-policy defeats (e.g., BBB and the Afghanistan withdrawal) that have dropped Biden’s approval ratings down to about 38 percent. Even then, per a recent Harvard Harris poll, 56 percent of voters believe that abortion should be restricted in some form after 15 weeks of pregnancy. This is precisely what Mississippi’s abortion law at the heart of the Dobbs case would do, and that, per the leaked draft, the Supreme Court would have upheld. If these numbers hold, any campaign based on abortion rights will fall far short of what’s needed to turn the tide.
Democrats should take note. For them, abortion has in the past been a winning issue, but the Dobbs leak is both a policy and political defeat. It will yield them little electoral capital. Meanwhile in the Supreme Court’s leak investigation, as National Review’s Dan McLaughlin writes, the fingers are pointing to a “left-leaning law clerk” as the culprit.
Everywhere you look, it seems, Democrats are in for a “shellacking” in November. Sometimes, disaster is like a rolling freight train. Nothing can be done to stop it.