Hoping to distract from inflation woes, Biden announced that codifying Roe will be his top priority after the midterms — if he has the votes.
Last week, this newsletter noted that Democrats across the ideological spectrum — from James Carville to Bernie Sanders — are worrying that the party is focusing too much on the issue of abortion. But not all Democrats appear to share those concerns. Take, for example, President Biden.
On Tuesday, 21 days before Election Day, Biden doubled down on the abortion campaign theme at a speech devoted to the issue at the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C. Biden promised the first bill he would sign in the next Congress (if Democrats have the votes) would be legislation to codify Roe as a federal statute. In reality, the Democrats’ federal abortion bill would require all 50 states to allow abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, and it would go beyond the radicalism of Roe by overriding religious-liberty and conscience protections, parental-notification laws, and 24-hour waiting limits. It would also likely require unlimited taxpayer funding of elective abortions for Medicaid recipients.
Biden’s abortion speech at the DNC came just one day after a fresh New York Times/Siena poll — showing Republicans leading Democrats 49 percent to 45 percent on the generic ballot — found that only 5 percent of Americans say abortion is the most important issue. That’s the exact same share who identified abortion as the top issue in September’s Siena poll. Tens of millions of dollars in Democratic campaign ads on that issue haven’t made that number budge.
By contrast, 44 percent of voters identified the economy or inflation as the top issue:
Most important issue for voters, NYT/Siena poll:
Economy 26
Inflation 18
Abortion 5 https://t.co/sj8uLAHlu5— Josh Kraushaar (@JoshKraushaar) October 17, 2022
From the New York Times’ write-up of the poll:
“It’s all about cost,” said Gerard Lamoureux, a 51-year-old Democratic retiree in Newtown, Conn., who is planning to vote Republican this fall. “The price of gas and groceries are through the roof. And I want to eat healthy, but it’s cheaper for me to go to McDonald’s and get a little meal than it is to cook dinner.”
Mr. Biden has repeatedly tried to put a positive spin on the economy and has noted that inflation is a worldwide problem. “Our economy is strong as hell,” he said Saturday at a stop at a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop in Portland, Ore.
Voters are telling President Biden that they are having a hard time affording groceries, and Biden is basically replying: Let them eat RU-486.
Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams almost literally delivered that message on Wednesday:
.@staceyabrams says abortion can help address inflation issues: “Having children is why you’re worried about your price for gas, it’s why you’re concerned about how much food costs. For women, this is not a reductive issue.” pic.twitter.com/BNHJWqKRpa
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 19, 2022
This message seems unlikely to turn things around for Democrats. The polls could be off in either direction, so the election is far from over, but Republicans have opened a three-point lead in the RealClearPolitics average of generic ballot polls.
Democrats are now wondering if they “peaked” too soon in late August, but a look at President Biden’s approval rating shows that they never really “peaked” so much as they recovered from an all-time low:
20 days until Election Day, a Biden popularity check-in.
His approval rating has risen from its summer lows and stabilized between 42-43% since the end of August, per the @FiveThirtyEight polling average.
(That’s about where Trump was at this juncture in 2018.) pic.twitter.com/MK9WJQmeMm
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) October 19, 2022
On May 3, the day that the Dobbs opinion leaked, Biden’s approval rating was 42.3 percent; it bottomed out at 37.7 percent on July 25; and bounced back to 43 percent by September 6 — about where it has stayed for the last six weeks. So Biden’s job approval today (42.5 percent) is right where it was when the Dobbs opinion leaked.
Before the 2010 GOP wave, Barack Obama’s approval rating was about 46 percent, and before the 2014 GOP wave, Obama’s approval rating was about 42 percent. Before the 2018 Democratic wave, Donald Trump’s approval rating was about 44 percent. Even if Biden’s job-approval rating ticks up a couple of points in the final weeks of the campaign, Democrats can’t feel good about it.
Anger over Dobbs likely energized Democrats in special elections over the summer; and it could — along with poor candidate quality and the prominence of Donald Trump — diminish the size of GOP gains in November. But with less than three weeks to go, the issue of abortion seems unlikely to spare House Democrats from a midterm defeat that was always the most likely outcome, given voters’ disapproval of the incumbent Democratic president and soaring inflation.
—John McCormack
Brittany’s Campaign Roundup
In just three weeks, we will find out if abortion really is a top-of-mind issue for voters, as Democrats have claimed. The party has pointed to Democrat Pat Ryan’s win in the special election for New York’s 19th congressional district as evidence that abortion is a top issue. And it may have been in August, when the special election was held, but abortion seems to have faded into the background since then. A Gallup poll last month found that just 4 percent of Americans believe it is the most important problem facing the country today. That’s a drop from 4 percent two months earlier and just a fraction of the 17 percent of Americans who said cost of living/inflation is the top issue in both polls.
As I reported today:
Colin Schmitt, a two-term Republican state assemblyman who is running against Ryan in the newly redrawn 18th congressional district, argues that is simply not true; voters are concerned about inflation and the economy.
“The main issues are economy, public safety, and the border crisis,” Schmitt told National Review. “That is what voters care about. We’ve done over 185,000 voter contacts and the abortion issue has been brought up about six times.”
“People cannot afford to live here,” he said. “They cannot afford the basic necessities. That’s what’s driving the day.”
—Brittany Bernstein
RealClearPolitics Polling Averages
Generic congressional ballot: Republicans +2.2
Republican Senate candidates lead:
Ohio: R+2.0 (Vance 46.5%, Ryan 44.5%)
North Carolina: R+2.5 (Budd 45.8%, Beasley 43.3%)
Nevada: R+1.7 (Laxalt 46.2%, Cortez Masto 44.5%)
Wisconsin: R+2.8 (Johnson 49.8%, Barnes 47.0%)
Democratic Senate candidates lead:
New Hampshire: D+5.8 (Hassan 49.8%, Bolduc 44.0%)
Pennsylvania: D+3.4 (Fetterman 46.2%, Oz 42.8%)
Arizona: D+4.5 (Kelly 48.8%, Masters 44.3%)
Georgia: D+2.4 (Warnock 47.6%, Walker 45.2%)
Race Ratings Changes
The Cook Political Report recently shifted three Senate races:
The Florida Senate race shifted from “Lean Republican” to “Likely Republican.”
The Washington Senate Race shifted from “Solid Democratic” to “Likely Democratic.”
The Iowa Senate Race shifted from “Solid Republican” to “Likely Republican.”
“Republicans are in a better place than they were in late summer and early September, with the generic ballot moving in their direction,” Cook election analyst Jessica Taylor writes. “Many of the races — even with lackluster GOP nominees — have been tightening along partisan lines, as we long expected would happen.”
Around NR
• Even though control of the Senate is on the line, Donald Trump is spurning GOP Senate candidate Joe O’Dea over hurt feelings. Charles Cooke writes: “Trump Puts Himself above the Republican Party Again”
• Nevada Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto has run as an abortion extremist, but three weeks before the election she’s released a soft-focus biographical ad that shows her sitting in front of a statue of Jesus and a painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe. John McCormack thinks the ad is a sign Cortez Masto is worried she’s alienated Latino voters with abortion extremism.
• The New York gubernatorial race, which RealClearPolitics recently designated a “toss-up,” is shaping up to be tighter than expected. Dan McLaughlin writes:
Well, Trafalgar’s most recent poll, released at the beginning of October, shows a two-point race between Kathy Hochul and Lee Zeldin, but Trafalgar isn’t on its own anymore. Now, four of the five polls in the RealClearPolitics average show a single-digit race, the other three being Quinnipiac (Hochul +4), Schoen Cooperman (Hochul +6), and Marist (Hochul +8).
• Democrats may be beginning to regret having meddled in the GOP primary for Arizona governor by drawing attention to Karrin Taylor Robson’s past donations to Democratic candidates, Jim Geraghty writes. Election-denier Kari Lake has proven a more formidable opponent than they expected:
And now Kari Lake, enjoying a small lead in recent polling, is terrifying Democrats. Axios writes, “Democratic Party strategists are watching Arizona’s Kari Lake with growing alarm.” Democrats told the New York Times that Lake’s “charisma and on-camera skills make her uniquely dangerous.”
• Georgians broke the state’s turnout record for the first day of early voting in a midterm election year on Monday. That same day, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams dodged a question on whether she’d accept the results of the election in November: “I will always acknowledge outcomes to elections but will never deny access to every voter.”
• John McCormack: After Five Cops Were Murdered in Dallas, Mandela Barnes Gave a Jaw-Dropping Anti-Police Interview to Russian State TV
Around the Web
Douglas Schoen and Andrew Stein: Brace Yourself for a Republican Wave
Alana Goodman: Mandela Barnes took to social media to celebrate world’s most notorious dictators
Bernie Sanders says Democrats are “doing rather poorly” with their appeals to working-class voters.
Politico: Democrats’ midterm hopes fade: ‘We peaked a little early’
CNN: John Fetterman said he’s ‘always supported’ fracking – he previously said ‘I don’t’ and ‘never have’
Clearer signs of movement back toward the GOP in the Senate than you had a couple of weeks ago. Getting close to tossup territory.https://t.co/GA3xa1GJaG pic.twitter.com/baWOOLoVbJ
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 19, 2022