There are flips, and there are flops. Then there are pizza-dough swirling acts of procrastination.
Polls suggest that Kamala Harris’ attempts to get out from under her previous opposition to fracking might be affecting her numbers in critical Pennsylvania, where fracking has created jobs. That’s a flip-flop in the classic sense.
In an age of whattaboutism, that flip-flop will inevitably be compared with Donald Trump’s attempts to make everybody on all sides of the abortion issue happy, but we’re talking about different degrees of acrobatic difficulty.
Conservative radio commentator Erick Erickson said on his program last week that if Trump loses the election, “yesterday… will be the day he lost, if he doesn’t do some damage control, pretty quickly.”
That was the day Trump said he thought the current Florida law didn’t allow enough time for an abortion. Pressed to say specifically how he intended to vote on Proposition 4, which would overturn the current law, he said, “I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks.” This was also the day he guaranteed that the costly in vitro fertilization procedure would not only be guaranteed in his administration but would be paid for, either by the federal government or insurance companies under a new mandate. This had already stirred talk among anti-abortion voters of staying home this year, Erickson said.
People on the opposite side of the issue might want to argue with Erickson and say Trump lost the election on the following day when he said when asked again that he would vote against Proposition 4. Senate Republicans have meanwhile reacted coldly to the free IVF idea. Trump has already changed his position on abortion numerous times, but last week did seem an especially precarious time for him to be dancing the sidestep.
Trump is making the calculation that the activists on both sides are wrong. He is convinced that most voters are anxious to move on from the issue and need only broad assurances to be satisfied.
Democrats shake their heads in disbelief when Trump says things like his recent claim that six states, including Tim Walz’s Minnesota, now have laws that allow babies to be executed after birth. But Trump is a strong believer in what he might call the power of partisan exaggeration. By saying something that only the most extreme partisans would be likely to believe, he is buying ground to move from their position in other ways.
There is strong pressure for the candidate who takes credit for the overthrow of Roe v. Wade to do this. This year, 10 states — Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and South Dakota — have measures on the November ballot that would enshrine abortion rights to one degree or another. For the Trump campaign, the battleground states of Arizona and Nevada, where a Fox News poll showed the measures passing with landslide numbers, are a particular concern.
While Trump has attempted to get past the issue, Democrats have become increasingly aggressive in their advertising on the issue. There are at least versions of the state patrol ad, in which a pregnant young woman is stopped by state police from crossing a state line. One version is from the Lincoln Project, and the other is from a political action committee started by California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The Associated Press ran a story last week citing numbers from a group that supports abortion rights showing the number of women getting abortions actually went up in the first three months of this year, largely due to Democratic states that have expanded access to abortion. Georgia was one of the states for which this was not true. It had an average of 2,045 fewer abortions, the greatest number behind Texas, which was listed with 3,080 fewer abortions.
If the abortion issue doesn’t come up at next Tuesday’s ABC News Presidential Debate in Philadelphia — assuming it comes off — it would certainly be noticed although in the slippery history of these things, it’s possible. JD Vance has said that Trump has “explicitly” said he would veto a national abortion ban if passed by Congress. That might be a good conversation starter next week.
It requires an Act of Congress to get anything changed on the Abortion issue. (As it should be)
Yet you activist Journalists keep making this a presidential race talking point. Please stop. Focus on getting something agreed and through Congress, by which point any sitting President will simply have to sign it. Ratification by the States, well that will be a whole ‘nother thing…
The presidential race continues. Many issues and statements are being commented on and dissected. Let’s see what the final result will be bob the robber.
Harris’s challenge, according to Baxter, is emblematic of the way politicians must often adjust their stances to appeal to key voter bases—in this case, Pennsylvanians, where fracking is a critical industry.