President Joe Biden will amplify what Republican majorities in Congress could mean for abortion access as the economy cements itself as a top voter concern three weeks before Election Day.
Biden underscoring abortion access during a Democratic National Committee-hosted political event in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday conflicts with party strategists who contend candidates should campaign on a broader issue set if they want to be competitive this midterm cycle.
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The GOP is confident the party will perform well in traditional Democratic strongholds because of its focus on “the issues that matter to Americans,” according to Republican National Committee spokeswoman Nicole Morales. And that could be true for House races in blue states, such as Connecticut, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island, where local laws protect abortion access, unlike the battleground of Michigan, where voters will decide whether to overturn its anti-abortion measure.
“Under Joe Biden and Democrats, Americans have less money in their wallets and more crime in their neighborhoods — that is what this election is about,” Morales told the Washington Examiner. “As Democrats continue to ignore these issues, they are alienating every family, small business, and hardworking American that is suffering because of their failed policies.”
Democratic strategists, including Stefan Hankin, concede abortion access is dissipating as a voter priority. CBS News, for instance, found last weekend that polling respondents listed the issue as their seventh most pressing. The survey also captured a 3 percentage point drop between September and October in those who consider abortion to be “very” or “somewhat” important, from 80% to 77%. Simultaneously, there was a 3-point jump during the same period in those who believe abortion is “not too” or not important “at all,” from 20% to 23%.
“But Hankin, founder and president of analytic research firm Lincoln Park Strategies, is adamant abortion access has improved Democrats’ prospects heading into what history indicates would have been a difficult election for the party in power even if the economy was better.”
“We’re also not seeing anything in the numbers that people who were going to vote for Democrats are now switching back,” he said. “People are just solidifying, especially women are decidedly solidifying for the Democratic candidate.”
Yet Mike Nellis, another Democratic strategist, agreed most voters will “default to their own pocketbooks when it comes to their politics.”
“That’s why Democrats need to talk about abortion and the economy, not one or the other,” the Authentic CEO said. “Both are salient issues dominating the midterms. Candidates that ignore that reality do so at their own peril.”
For Hankin, Democrats are “out of time” to persuade voters about Biden and the party’s economic record amid struggles to “sell” their spending packages to the public as September consumer prices increased by an annual rate of 8.2% and core inflation rose by a four-decade high of 6.6%.
“The truth of the matter is no one has cornered the market on good ideas,” he said. “So economic messaging is very murky because there is no clear yes or no, whereas abortion is very clear. … You’re either for that or you’re against that.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended Biden’s DNC address, condemning Republican’s “obsession” with “regulating women’s bodies” as not “just disturbing” but “also very dangerous.”
“When he was out west, he talked about the national bans that we’re seeing from extreme Republicans, whether it be Lindsey Graham’s proposed national ban on abortion or the effort in Arizona to enforce a law on the books from 1864 before women even had the right to vote,” she said Monday of Biden’s four-day trip to California, Colorado, and Oregon. “Republican officials are dead set on moving America backwards and stripping women of their rights.”
Last week, Jean-Pierre described Biden’s commitment to safeguarding abortion access as “strong and passionate” despite his previous opposition to commingling it with federal funds and his administration’s sluggish response to the Supreme Court‘s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which overruled Roe v. Wade, almost two months after draft opinions were leaked. Days later, the DNC announced the joint event, telling reporters Biden “will speak about the choice that voters face this November between Republicans, who want to ban abortion nationwide, and Democrats, who want to codify Roe into law to protect women’s reproductive freedom.”
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Biden’s average overall approval-disapproval rating is 43%-54%, yet his abortion approval-disapproval is 38%-56%, according to RealClearPolitics. The aggregator also provides Republicans with an average 2-point advantage over Democrats in generic congressional ballot polling. FiveThirtyEight, another election prognosticator, predicts Democrats have a 65% chance of keeping the Senate and Republicans have a 72% chance of flipping the House.
