Democrats are being a little schizophrenic on abortion right now.
On the one hand, the 2020 Democratic primary candidates are doing everything they can to become the party of abortion, including embracing Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez’s message that pro-lifers are unwelcome. But on the other hand, Democratic lawmakers this week abandoned an attempt to strike the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal funding for abortions, from a government spending bill.
The Washington Examiner’s Susan Ferrechio reports:
Democratic leaders rejected an effort by progressives to amend a House spending bill with a provision that would strip out the Hyde Amendment, which prevents taxpayer funding of abortions.
[…]
Jayapal and other progressive Democrats acknowledged the move to eliminate the 43-year-old Hyde language would be blocked in the GOP-led Senate and would never be signed into law by President Trump.
Removing the Hyde language from the $190 billion Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill would only serve to jeopardize passage of the measure, which funds critical health and labor programs, they said.
This comes just days after 2020 front-runner Joe Biden abandoned his nearly 40-plus-year support for the Hyde Amendment. He chickened out after being confronted on the issue by a race-obsessed cable news troll and an aggressively ignorant child star from the 1980s. Though his overnight “evolution” on the matter is nothing more than a cowardly flip-flop-flip, it at least made sense. The Democratic base is out for blood, and Biden lacks the strength to say no.
But why should the party abandon attempts to do away with the Hyde Amendment now, especially as the party seems to have all but settled on becoming the party of abortion?
Two thoughts come to mind. One, it’s just polling. A majority of Americans agree that federal funds should not be used to subsidize abortion, and the Democrats do not want to run afoul of that polling so close to the 2020 presidential election. The second thought is in line with what Ferrechio reported: Any attempt to do away with the decades-old amendment would inevitably lead to an ugly fight that would both threaten Democrats’ overall agenda and lead them into a public budget battle that would most certainly hurt them in the polls ahead of the elections.
The thinking likely became, “save it for another day.” But that leaves Democrats trying to have it both ways. They want to be the party of abortion, but at the risk of angering their base, they feel the need (for now) to be at least somewhat pragmatic about it.
