Did the Democrats pick the wrong electoral cycle to jump their particular abortion-cheering, fetus-destroying, and sensibility-unsettling shark? For a certain kind of Republican voter, who has problems with Donald Trump’s temperament and with the programmatic agenda of the national Democrats, the decision to vote”‘no” on the Democrats and on their agenda just got a whole lot easier.

For years, the polling in the U.S. and the world has been unchanged and unchanging: 60% or so of respondents support permitting abortion in the first trimester, 30% or so in the second, and down to the low teens in the third. For years, presidential candidates on both sides have threaded the needle, appeasing the base while giving those who dissent leeway enough to vote for them anyhow. Then, sometime in the winter of 2018, the needles were tossed, the goalposts upended, and the word went forth to any Democrat even dreaming of running for office that the new rules were unquestioned support for all abortions anywhere under any conditions, to the moment of birth and beyond.