Abortion has a way of muscling to the forefront of campaign season and so is poised, again, to shape the fairway of the 2020 presidential elections. This makes Joe Biden’s caving to the choicer’s demands for his reversal on the Hyde Amendment somewhat more than trivial.

There was really not much left to distinguish Biden as a moderate in comparison to his primary competitors — maybe he was less eager than some to rhetorically mimic Mao Tse-tung — but one contrarian and eminently sensible position he held for four decades was his support for the Hyde Amendment, which denies federal government funding of abortions. He held that estimable position as recently as two weeks ago, whereupon the liberal thought police unleashed the hounds. He stood his moral ground for almost a full 24 hours before prostrating himself before Planned Parenthood and denouncing his grievous ideological betrayal.