He’s going to be insufferable on this on the campaign trail regardless of what Mitch McConnell will do. Bit will it help him?
Here’s an interesting thread by The Cook Report’s Dave Wasserman with some details I was unaware of:
I’ve heard some analysts argue a SCOTUS fight will help Trump by shifting “what 2020 will be about” from his mismanagement of COVID to a more straightforward partisan cage match.
That could happen, but I’ve always seen some big risks for Trump in a pre-election SCOTUS fight… Namely, the potential for the Roe v. Wade/abortion issue to tear Trump’s coalition apart.
Much of his 2016 support came from voters who disliked Hillary Clinton, liked his rhetoric on immigration/trade, but are *pro-choice* – especially secular, blue-collar women. This morning, I dove into 2016 CCES data (50,000+ person national survey).
Only 15% of Clinton’s voters at least leaned pro-life and 11% held mixed views (74% at least leaned pro-choice).
But 22% of Trump’s voters at least leaned pro-choice and another 13% held mixed views. Although Trump downplayed abortion in 2016, voters w/ mostly pro-choice attitudes made up more than a fifth of his support in plenty of battleground states:
25% in Iowa
24% in Florida
24% in Pennsylvania
24% in Michigan
21% in Arizona
20% in Wisconsin
20% in OhioFor decades, many of these blue-collar, pro-choice Trump voters had voted for Democrats because they saw Republicans as the party of “Bible thumpers” who moralized against abortion & gay marriage.
Then Trump came along, and they didn’t mind him as much. Now, there may actually be an opportunity for Dems to win back many of these voters by tying Trump to the “DC swamp:” Mitch McConnell and Rs who want to “end Roe v. Wade, cut more taxes for billionaires” etc.
In fact, Biden is *already* winning many of these blue-collar voters. The under-utilized Dem message Rs should be most scared of probably goes something like this:
“In 2016, Trump promised to drain the swamp. Instead, he became the swamp: he let Mitch McConnell and stock-dumping, ultra-far right GOP senators write his entire domestic agenda.” After all, the Obama-Trump voters Biden needs to win back may have been yearning for a political “outsider” in ’16 but are still:
1) extremely against tax cuts for wealthy Americans
2) decidedly against repealing the ACA
3) substantially pro-choice .
That’s the first time I’ve seen a description of the Obama-Trump voters that made sense to me. They didn’t think Trump was really a conservative and they hated Hillary.
I get the sense that the Biden campaign is already looking at these voters with his “Scranton vs Park Avenue” talking points. But the abortion issue is now more live than ever (although counting on John Roberts to ultimately uphold Roe vs Wade was always an extreme long shot in my view anyway.) If Trump overplays his hand on the campaign trail with extremist talk about abortion, it may seal his fate with these people.
The Democrats can help by making the ACA case, which will be heard next term, a center piece of the campaign down the stretch.