I think the politics of the issue favor the Democrats, in the sense that more people will vote for them on the issue than will vote against them on it. The people who will vote against them are already voting against them on abortion, while people who believe that taxpayer funding for the research will cure them or their relatives are a new constituency for the Democrats. That doesn’t mean that Republicans would gain votes by switching positions on the issue—they would probably lose more pro-life voters than they would gain pro-funding voters. But it makes it understandable that they want the issue to get less attention, and wish it had never arisen in the first place.

How big a political impact the issue will have is hard to say; I tend to think it will be small. As an opponent of the research, I am heartened by the fact that the people who keep saying that it will have a large, anti-Republican impact are having to rely on bogus polls.

Take Jim Pinkerton’s Newsday column. He uses an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that claims that 71 percent of people support embryonic stem-cell research and only 22 percent oppose it. The poll does not distinguish between allowing the research, and funding it. (Neither does Pinkerton, who uses the deeply misleading formulation that Bush “opposes most stem-cell research.”) The poll doesn’t mention that the research destroys human embryos. Respondents are informed only that some people oppose the research because it “uses cells” from embryos. Pinkerton also repeats advocates’ claims that the research can help Alzheimer’s patients, etc.–up to 100 million people and their families–without mentioning that plenty of authorities, including people who favor the research themselves, say that’s just not true.

Pinkerton’s column is the work of an advocate, which is fine, but not also that of a sober analyst.