Everyone knows that Donald Trump can’t be trusted on abortion policy (or many other things). But his particular lies on abortion are worth noting, as I explained at New York.
There is no exercise more exhausting and probably futile than examining a Donald Trump speech or social-media post for lies, half-truths, and incoherent self-contradictions. But it’s important on occasion to highlight some very big whoppers he tells that are central to his political strategy. It’s well known that Trump’s own position on abortion policy has wandered all over the map, and it’s plausible to suggest his approach is entirely transactional. Now that he’s staked out a “states’ rights” position on abortion that is designed to take a losing issue off the table in the 2024 presidential election, he’s telling two very specific lies to justify his latest flip-flop.
The first is his now-routine claim that “both sides” and even “legal scholars on both sides” of the abortion debate “agreed” that Roe v. Wade needed to be reversed, leaving abortion policy up to the states:
This claim was the centerpiece of Trump’s April 9 statement setting out his position on abortion for the 2024 general election, as CNN noted:
“In a video statement on abortion policy he posted on social media Monday, Trump said: ‘I was proudly the person responsible for the ending of something that all legal scholars, both sides, wanted and, in fact, demanded be ended: Roe v. Wade. They wanted it ended.’ Later in his statement, Trump said that since ‘we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint,’ states are free to determine their own abortion laws.”
This is clearly and demonstrably false. The three “legal experts” on the Supreme Court who passionately dissented from the decision to reverse Roe are just the tip of the iceberg of anguish over the defiance of precedent and ideological reasoning underlying Justice Samuel Alito in the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Society of American Law Teachers immediately and definitively issued a “condemnation” of the Dobbs decision. When the case was being argued before the Supreme Court, the American Bar Association filed an amicus brief arguing the constitutional doctrine of stare decisis required that Roe be left in place. None of these views were novel. Back in 1989 when an earlier threat to abortion rights had emerged, 885 law professors signed onto a brief defending Roe.
Sure, there was a tiny minority of “pro-choice, anti-Roe” liberals over the years who claimed resentment of the power of the unelected judges who decided Roe would eventually threaten abortion rights (not as much, it turns out, as the unelected judges that decided Dobbs). And yes, there have always been progressive critics (notably Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg) of the particular reasoning in the original Roe decision, but by no means have any of them (particularly Ginsburg) favored abandoning the federal constitutional right to abortion even if they supported a different constitutional basis for that right. So Trump’s claim is grossly nonfactual and is indeed not one that any self-respecting conservative fan of Dobbs would ever make.
The second big lie that Trump has formulated to defend his latest states’-rights position is that he’s just supporting the age-old Republican stance on the subject, as he has just asserted at Truth Social:
“Sending this Issue back to the States was the Policy of the Republican Party and Conservatives for over 50 years, due to States’ Rights and 10th Amendment, and only happened because of the Justices I proudly Nominated and got Confirmed.”
Yes, of course a growing majority of Republicans have favored reversal of Roe as a way station to a nationwide ban on abortion, but not as an end in itself. The GOP first came out for a federal constitutional amendment to ban abortion from sea to shining sea in its 1980 party platform, and every single Republican presidential nominee since then has backed the idea. There have been disagreements as to whether such a constitutional amendment should include exceptions for pregnancies caused by rape or incest. But the last GOP presidential nominee to share Trump’s position that the states should be the final arbiter of abortion policy was Gerald R. Ford in 1976, as the New York Times reported at the time:
“[Ford] said that as President he must enforce the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that forbids states to ban abortions. But he has come out in favor of a constitutional amendment that would overturn that ruling and return to the states the option of drawing up their own abortion laws.”
Ronald Reagan, who challenged Ford’s nomination in 1976 and was already a proponent of a “pro-life” constitutional amendment, and the GOP formally adopted that position in 1980; four years later, it adopted its long-standing proposal that by constitutional amendment or by a judicial ruling the protection of fetal life under the 14th Amendment should be recognized and imposed on the country regardless of what states wanted. Anti-abortion leader Marjorie Dannenfelser noted this well-known history in a not-so-subtle rebuke to Trump’s revisionist history, as NBC News reported:
“’Since 1984, the GOP platform has affirmed that 14th Amendment protections apply to unborn babies and endorsed congressional action to clarify this fact through legislation,’ Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement to NBC News. ‘Republicans led the charge to outlaw barbaric partial-birth abortions federally, and both chambers have voted multiple times to limit painful late-term abortion. The Senate voted on this most recently in 2020. In January 2023, House Republicans also voted to protect infants born alive during an abortion.’”
It’s pretty clear that anti-abortion activists know Trump is lying about both Roe v. Wade and the GOP tradition and will support him anyway. But the rest of us should take due notice that the once and perhaps future president’s word on this subject, including his current pledge to leave abortion policy to the states, cannot be trusted for even a moment. Absent the abolition of the Senate filibuster (which, lest we forget, Trump backed as president out of impatience with the Senate’s refusal to bend the knee to his every demand), there isn’t going to be a complete federal ban on abortion in the foreseeable future. But Trump can be counted on to use the powers of the presidency to make life miserable for women needing abortion services, among the many “enemies of the people” he wants to punish.
The premise of the argument you cite from Alan Abramowitz is flawed (“If you assume that Democrats, Republicans, and independents in their LV sample voted about the same way as Dems, Reps, and indies in their RV sample. . . .”).
Why assume that? We know that the population of registered voters is wealthier and more educated than the voting age population as a whole, and hence more economically conservative, and I think that it is a reasonable assumption that the same holds true for the difference between a wealthier and more educated group of “Likely Voters” who will eventually vote compared to everyone on the rolls (“Registered Voters”).
But this assumption is what Abramowitz’s own assumption (i.e. “if you assume”) flatly contradicts!
If RV’s are “assumed” to be as proportionately partisan as the LV’s, well, then the game is up right away. We democrats can then just “assume” that the lower polls figures for LV’s don’t matter — and ignore them!
After all, if the partisanship of LV’s and RV’s is identical, or assumed to be so, then why record the LV’s at all? Just do RV’s only and “assume” that’s such is an accurate measure of the predelictions of who will show up on Election Day!
But no pollster, certainly after Labor Day, would ever dream of doing that! Are we then to believe that concrete differences between RV’s and LV’s in the data are explained by some other factor than partisanship, and unrelated to it? And what factor might that be?
If the Democrats want the partisanship of those who will vote on Election Day to more closely resemble the partisanship of the population of Registered Voters (RV’s) as a whole, not to mention those of voting age as a group, then its candidates will do well to move the focus away from the National Security and more toward kitchen-table economics as we approach that day.
Assuming that RV’s and LV’s are of similar partisan composition is to blind oneself to the strategy needed for a good democratic turnout, and to guarantee disapppointment at the polls, when the difference between the opinions of Registered Voters and those of actual Voters is decisively and finally measured.
My main worry about this is that BCO4 have clearly been following a strategy of “activate the base”. I think they think that the swing voters are a lost cause. Maybe that’s just what they want us to think, but why else all the fuss about gay marriage? While I’ll admit that this poll seems an outlier, just how well IS the base activation plan working?
Normally, it’s a loser’s strategy, but Karl Rove is well above average when it comes to message.
It would be more effective if you simply wrote one sentence:
“Why is the Washington Post ignoring polls that show the race tied, and why it is using polls with slanted methodology?”
Like Kerry, you say too much and obfuscate your message.
If I’m offensive, I don’t mean to be, but I don’t have much time right now. I like your intention, but brief things said with PUNCH get printed and/or heard.
recognizing everthing said about the polls what i notice is the absolute inalibilty of kerry to make a simple point. listening to the sound bites on NPR today, bush made conscise points(even if they are basically lies) and kerry, even with the new W=wrong cheer, manges to deflate the emotion and add something extraneous,unneccessary, almost a non-sequitor, to each and every statement he makes, thus deadening the whole rhetorical pitch. maybe he ad libs, or the speeches are poorly written, i don’t know.
and may i add as a loyal democrat i could not tell you one thing kerry believes in , including his real opinion on iraq.
one more thing: i live on south johnson street, san marcos tx. ring any bells? LBJ lived in the house next door when he taugh school here. after 6 years as governor and 4 years as presidnt i can say with real authrity that bush exhibits all the criteria for a DSM-IV diagnoses of narcissitc and borderline persoanlity disorders.
I welcome feedback on the following draft letter to the Editor (in my case, to the WashPost), which I will probably send out tomorrow. Thanks in advance.
To the Editors:
What editorial standards does the Post use to decide which polls to report and what background information to provide to readers interested in understanding what they really show and don’t show?
It is bewildering as a reader to try to make heads or tails out of all manner of polls the Post reports, showing widely divergent results on where the race stands. Some use likely voters, some use registered voters. Is one a more reliable measure than the other? What assumptions do polling organizations use to determine at this point who is likely to vote, anyway, and are some of these more reasonable than others? What is the track record for different polling organizations in predicting past results, and does that figure into the Post’s editorial decisions about which ones to report?
Generally the only background context provided in the reporting of most of these polls is the dates on which they were taken and whether they were drawn from likely voters or registered voters. I’m trying to educate myself on what conclusions can reliably be drawn. But I don’t receive any help on this from the Post or, for that matter, most of the major media print and TV outlets. Instead, they seem to act as if they are in a race to see who can “report” first the latest poll–better, worse or worthless.
(end of draft letter)
Weeell… I don’t think so.
And I don’t think any polls are heavily rigged. There’s just a huge amount of flawed methodology around. And the media are happy to go with big differences and sudden turn-arounds.
Let’s just hope they’ll soon get tired of the “Bush has already won” story. After all it’s still almost two months to go. What do write about within one week, two weeks? “Bush is ahead, and he remains ahead. Isn’t it amazing how ahead he is..?” Yawn.
I guess by now they’d happily take any poll measuring some swing to Kerry. I’m actually not that worried if Kerry comes to the first debate as the underdog. Expectation game, expectation game!
Not that I’ve got any trust in the “liberal” media, of course. But in November 2000 they almost got tangled in their own spin about “loser Gore”. Those darn 350 votes in Florida!
OK, here’s a conspiracy theory for you: the media really are on our side, just like the conservatives have been saying all along! They’ve been spinning the polls heavily in Shrub’s favor so as to make the GOP overconfident, and to try to light the fire in JFK’s belly. Fox is naturally trying to counteract that.
Any better ones?
I think it’s kind of funny that Fox/Opinion Dynamics polls have consistently given Bush a smaller-than-average lead in recent horse-race matchups. I suppose you could concoct some switcheroo reverse-psychology conspiracy theory to explain this, but I think it supports Eugene “Pollkatz” Thiel’s recent conclusion that while these polls all have systematic biases, most of them are not intentional.
Gabby’s got it right. The key is not letting these polls discourage our voters. I’ve thought for a long time that the LV sampling is wrong–but how to get it across? I think the best thing is emphasizing how wrong the polls got it last time.
Rob
Three polls show it tied, including Fox and a Republican pollster, Rasmussen.
Zogby will show Bush with a 3-4 point lead tomorrow in his.
Bush did get some kind of bounce, but the way it is being exaggerated by the media, through their choice of this poll versus that poll, and the way it is being treated as conventional wisdom that Kerry has lost because of this, it is all very disturbing.
Whether or not Bush got the kind of huge bounce that Gallup and the media are trying to portray seems less important than the way it is being spun. Bush might actually gain support and Kerry lose support because of the spin that is being put on this.
It would be nice if we could get an alternative view on this into the media, but it doesn’t seem to be happening. All we hear is Matt Dowd’s spin.
Ruy, thanks for doing what you are doing. Keep it up. Please.
Read Ruy’s comments until you understand why your premise remains faulty.
Do you have nothing to say about the latest Post/ABC poll?
In any case: I appreciate your analyses of the polls, which are accurate and teach me how to read them. But don’t you get tired of it? WHATEVER the polls say, it’s OBVIOUS that Kerry left himself open to the RNC death-fest by not taking clear and compelling positions on terror and security. It’s OBVIOUS that he’s in trouble–obvious from the way he speaks, from the way Bush speaks, from the scope and tenor of the entire debate between them.
More interesting than the polls are Kerry’s recent attempts to take firmer stands and turn his campaign around. Do you think he’s going to get traction with his new strategies? Or is it too late to convince people that he represents a real and compelling and heartfelt and angry and focused national security alternative?
If it is too late, he’ll lose in the only polls that matter.
I get the argument about LV screens giving artificial boosts to Republicans, but why would Gallup and CBS (RVs) and Time and Newsweek all oversample Republicans? Could it be that the horrifying, lie-packed, but apparently effective, GOP convention convinced some previously independent or D respondents to consider themselves Republicans when pollsters called? This would “account” for Republican “oversample” but validate their results. (Maybe when the bounce fades, they’ll go back to calling themselves Ds or Is.)
You seemed happy to accept the poll a couple months ago that had a large portion of Democrats and wasn’t balanced for that. Now that not balancing for party shows Bush doing better, this is obviously bad methodology?
The convention gave a bounce to Bush because of how positively it conveyed his message. This isn’t hard to believe. So, the convention gave a bounce to Republicanism because of how positively it conveyed the Republican message.