Mulling the angst among Democrats over the continuing shrinkage of their FY 2022 budget reconciliation bill, I wrote at New York the not-so-distant time the opposition was in the same sport:

Democrats are in a state of agony over the possibility that their hard-earned governing trifecta, which is very likely to expire after the November midterm elections, will produce far less in the way of legislation than they had envisioned. And while there are, as my colleague Jonathan Chait put it, “a thousand fathers” for the disappointing end to the saga of the once-robust Build Back Better package, much of the blame for Democrats’ steadily shrinking agenda is being cast toward a tiny group of self-styled “centrists” led by West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin.

Democrats famously have a tendency to regard themselves as a party in disarray and are uniquely prone to letting down their activist base by underachievement. But the truth is that narrow congressional majorities often produce devastating legislative setbacks. Ask the Republicans who watched their own domestic policy Great White Whale, a repeal of Obamacare, go down the tubes in the wee hours of July 28, 2017. The coup de grâce was administered by the late John McCain, whose famous “thumbs-down” gesture signaling his decisive vote against the last-gasp “skinny repeal” bill became the symbol of Republican frustration (much like Manchin’s pronouncements against this or that Democratic priority today) in the 115th Congress.

But then as now, the failure was not so simple. Obamacare repeal — like the Build Back Better package, an initiative utilizing the filibuster-skirting budget reconciliation process — was beset by a host of problems. These ranged from hostage taking by Republican dissidents in both Houses who used their leverage over the bill to reshape and sometimes delay it; the nonnegotiable demands of the Senate parliamentarian who used the power to block inclusion of provisions that didn’t meet the obscure germaneness requirements of the Byrd Rule; intra-party factional fights over the scope and audacity of the legislation (which in most versions included explosive add-ons like a Medicaid spending cap); and nervous glances at polling with the upcoming midterm elections in mind. This should all sound familiar to those watching the Democratic dance over BBB.

Republicans in 2017 had the additional handicap of dealing with the most unpredictable president in recent memory, whose support for long-agreed-upon plans could never be taken for granted. And while some may think Democrats are uniquely devastated today because of the enormous possibilities that appeared to open up when their party took over the White House and the Senate in 2021 (with much debate as to whether FDR’s New Deal or LBJ’s Great Society blitz provided the best precedent), Republicans had their own sky-high expectations after winning a trifecta in 2016. As I wrote days after the 2016 election:

“With Trump in the White House and the GOP controlling Congress — the condition that will prevail in January, based on the results of Tuesday’s election — Republicans are now in a position to work a revolution in domestic policy. It will likely be at least as dramatic as anything we’ve seen since Ronald Reagan’s first year in office, and perhaps since LBJ and congressional Democrats enacted the Great Society legislation that is now in peril …

“[A]s Paul Ryan told us all in early October, he has long planned to use the budget reconciliation process — where there is no filibuster available in the Senate — to enact his entire budget in one bill. Again, a bill that cannot be filibustered. He referred to it, appropriately, as a bazooka in his pocket. And while there are some things you cannot do in a reconciliation bill, there aren’t many of them: Congressional Republicans did a trial run last year (nobody paid much attention, because they knew Barack Obama would veto it), and it aimed at crippling Obamacare, defunding Planned Parenthood, and disabling regulators, in addition to the nasty surprises for poor people mentioned above.”

Alarmist as this might sound in retrospect, it was realistic at the time … until Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and Donald Trump found out how hard it was to rush through a budget reconciliation bill with narrow majorities in both Houses.

The analogy between each party’s recent struggles with passing a reconciliation bill is hardly precise, of course. In late 2017, Republicans would bounce back from repeated failed efforts to repeal Obamacare and use reconciliation to enact the very tax cuts that most (though crucially, not all) Democrats want to revise or repeal now. Then they lost control of the House (and thus their trifecta) in November 2018. In the case of today’s Democrats, they got their successful reconciliation bill earlier, in March 2021, in the form of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that combined COVID relief and recovery measures with small bites of Biden’s economic agenda. Because so much of it was keyed to the pandemic, it was easier to enact than the various long-term measures contemplated in the second planned reconciliation bill (Build Back Better), but its luster as an accomplishment has been diminished by claims that it contributed to the current inflation crisis.

So what’s the lesson for Democrats? The trouble they’ve had isn’t simply about their alleged disunity, or the president’s alleged lack of leadership, or even about the pernicious use of leverage by Manchin or others to throw sand into the legislative machinery. It all comes back to the shakiness of small congressional majorities, and the power of the Senate filibuster, and the creaky imperfections of the budget process as one of the few ways around around the filibuster. Institutional reforms are ultimately the only solution — and yes, Manchin is a huge obstacle to those as well — rather than some surgery on the soul of the Democratic donkey and its various limbs and organs.

In the wake of renewed speculation about Democratic unhappiness with President Biden, I tried to offer a reality check at New York:

Joe Biden is at present an unpopular president whose performance has discouraged his party’s base. That’s a bad combination for Democrats, who are facing a 2022 midterm election with fragile control of both houses of Congress.

Just 12 days after November’s election, President Biden will turn 80, an occasion which will produce massive discussion about his age just as a new presidential-election cycle begins. If things go as badly as expected for Democrats on November 8, many in the party will quietly and not so quietly urge the 46th president to retire at the end of his term. But if he stubbornly refuses to pack it in, what then?

Such questions are being raised right now thanks to a New York Times–Siena poll showing that an imposing 64 percent of self-identified Democrats would prefer a different presidential nominee in 2024. Democrats saying Joe should go range from 47 percent among Black voters (who were so crucial to Biden in 2020) to an incredible 94 percent of voters under age 30 (who were cool to Biden in the primaries but supported him strongly in the general election).

This is just one poll, but you have to go back to Jimmy Carter to find anything like this level of intraparty disaffection with a Democratic president. One source of that discontent, Biden’s age, isn’t going to get any better; 33 percent of Democratic respondents who prefer someone else cited Biden’s age as the most important reason for wanting a new 2024 candidate — higher than any other single factor.

Other factors could actually reduce the pressure on Biden to bow out before the next election. Despite the apparent “red wave” building for November, Democrats are still even money to hang onto the Senate. Thanks to the shrinking number of competitive House seats, estimates of likely Democratic House losses are in the 20–35 range, far lower than what Democrats experienced in 2010. Concerns about the reversal of Roe v. Wade and the continued threat of a Donald Trump comeback could boost Democratic turnout and further insulate the party from disaster.

As for 2024, it’s worth remembering that the last two Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, bounced back from horrible midterms to get themselves reelected. And even in this terrible Times-Siena poll, Biden would be narrowly favored (44-41) over Donald Trump in a 2024 rematch. But Clinton was 50 years old and Obama 51 when they were reelected. Joe Biden was 50 in 1992, the year Clinton was first elected; if reelected in 2024, Biden would be 86 at the end of his second term. This cannot be wished away as anything less than problematic. As my colleague Gabriel Debenedetti concluded in May: “There is no substantial precedent for the volume of questions about Biden’s future.”

Let’s say that on Biden’s 80th birthday, there is powerful Democratic sentiment for sending him to the rest home. If he doesn’t go away quietly, can he be pushed aside?

The only Biden heir apparent, of course, is his vice-president. Kamala Harris is not going to turn on the man who placed her a heartbeat from the presidency. Even if she did, she’s currently less popular than Biden, and in fact, fears about Harris’s electability could lead some Biden disparagers to reconsider putting him on an ice floe. Meanwhile, Harris’s positioning as a future nominee could freeze some primary voters (particularly the Black voters among whom Biden already has a relative advantage) in his camp. More important, none of the many politicians being discussed as potential Biden successors (Gavin Newsom, J. B. Pritzker, Gretchen Whitmer, Chris Murphy, Roy Cooper, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg) have the combination of name ID and broad-based support to topple an incumbent president.

Since Biden circa 2022 is often compared to 1970s Jimmy Carter due to a combination of sluggish job approval ratings, unhappy progressive activists, and big-time economic problems (especially inflation), it is germane to observe that Carter managed to soundly defeat Ted Kennedy — the liberal lion of the 1970s and subsequent decades — in the 1980 nomination contest.

Are there any Ted Kennedys around right now to mobilize progressive anti-administration grievances into a successful insurgent candidacy? Someday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may have that stature — but not now. Indeed, the only potential rival from any wing of the party who is in that position is Bernie Sanders, who is older than Biden. And even if there were some Kennedy-like figure available, would the fight disable the Democratic Party (as it arguably did in 1980) more than slogging ahead with the incumbent?

The most plausible precedents for pushing Biden out are those that occurred in 1952 and 1968, when unpopular incumbent presidents performed poorly against nuisance candidates in early primaries and took a hint. But this scenario still leaves the decision to fold the tent to a wounded but not defeated president. Biden doesn’t really resemble the Harry Truman of 1952 or the Lyndon Johnson of 1968 — presidents with great landmark achievements behind them. He’s where he’s fought to be for many decades and may still consider himself a good bet — perhaps the best bet — against a vengeful Trump in 2024. It’s unclear if even an early primary defeat would deter him; after all, he lost the first three contests in 2020 (the first two very badly) and was repeatedly left for dead.

All in all, the ball remains in the 46th president’s court. If he can get through the midterms without catastrophe and past his 80th birthday with some spring in his step, he could talk himself into one more campaign. And if his inner voice continues to tell him to defy the critics one more time, he may not listen to anyone else.

It’s kind of important for Democrats to think clearly, not wishfully, about the political implications of the Dobbs decision, which aren’t as important, to be clear, as the immediate consequences for those needing abortion services. I wrote up what we know at New York:

Soon after the Supreme Court agreed to hear a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade back in May 2021, speculation began that a radical decision abolishing constitutional abortion rights not long before the midterms could affect the trajectory and outcome of those elections. “It could become a major campaign issue for supporters of both parties and rare groups of swing voters in both federal and state elections,” I said in September of that year.

And here is why, I argued, a decision reversing Roe would likely produce a net benefit for Democrats:

“Since Roe at least, anti-abortion activists and their aligned voters have been thought to be more focused on elections and motivated to turn out for them than their pro-choice counterparts. The reason is obvious if you think about it: The status quo has been largely pro-choice thanks to Roe, so all the energy associated with any movement for change has been associated with the anti-abortion cause. Pro-choice folk could rely (or so they thought) on the Supreme Court to protect their rights …

“If SCOTUS goes the whole hog and kills or seriously wounds federal abortion rights next year, the topic could become a central focus of national Democratic messaging … because the perceived status quo would switch sides.”

Well, the Court did its worst two weeks ago, and in the meantime, midterm prospects for Democrats have steadily grown darker. So while the impact of the ruling in Dobbs on short-term Democratic electoral goals is hardly among the more important consequences of the decision, it does matter in terms of a 2022 election with serious implications for all sorts of policy issues, including abortion. So, understandably, Democrats are anxiously looking at polls to determine if the road to perdition in November might take an unexpected and favorable turn.

There are two major polling questions drawing particular attention: The first is whether Dobbs may have affected the balance of opinion favoring a relatively liberal regime on abortion. And there, at least initially, it seems Dobbs has increased an already sizable pro-choice majority. One would normally wait a while before reaching such a conclusion, but what makes Dobbs unique is that the eventual decision was leaked on May 2, giving us a longer period of pro-choice anxiety to measure. And as early as May 15, NBC News was finding record-high levels of support for abortion rights, with “nearly two-thirds of Americans” opposing overturning Roe. Perhaps more importantly, there is polling evidence that both the leaked and actual Dobbs opinions have raised the salience of abortion as an issue, particularly among pro-choice voters. A Monmouth survey taken between June 23 and June 27 showed abortion going from nowhere to 5 percent (9 percent among self-identified Democrats) in a question about the “biggest concern facing your family,” far below the 33 percent registered for inflation, but still impressive before and just after Dobbs came down on June 24. And a spanking new Pew survey confirms that opponents of Dobbs feel more strongly about the matter than supporters: Of the 57 percent disapproving of Dobbs, 43 do so strongly (25 percent of the 41 percent approving of Dobbs do so strongly).

But where the rubber meets the road is whether Dobbs and the backlash to the decision can materially help Democrats in November. Analysts peering at the congressional generic ballot (typically “Which party do you want to control the U.S. House of Representatives next year?”) have discerned an apparent immediate effect.  Actually, the polls are mixed on that topic, and the durability of any Dobbs “bounce” is unclear.

As I noted recently, the non–White House party usually gains ground on the generic ballot in midterm elections as actual voting grows nigh. So the big question is whether there is anything that can change the normal dynamics, whether it’s a potentially game-changing real-world development like Dobbs, or, say, Donald Trump announcing a 2024 presidential candidacy, as some believe he will soon do.

And to be clear, there are two distinct ways in which a “Dobbs effect,” if it exists, could help Democrats. The first and most obvious is that it could keep in the Democratic ranks a significant number of suburban swing voters who voted for the Donkey Party in 2018 and 2020 but who might swing back to the GOP without Trump totally dominating the landscape and with economic issues in the forefront. The second possible effect is to boost the turnout rates of certain pro-Democratic groups of voters who often skip non-presidential elections. It could be significant, for example, that under-30 voters most intensely support abortion rights: A recent Emerson poll showed 76 percent of voters ages 18 to 29 favor congressional action to shore up reproductive rights in the wake of Dobbs. Returning youth turnout to anything like the levels of 2020 or even 2018 could be a very big deal for Democrats, particularly given young voters’ lack of enthusiasm for Joe Biden.

But campaigns themselves will provide the real test of whether a
”Dobbs effect” is on the horizon to the benefit of Democrats. Some Democrats believe they glimpsed it in a June 28 special congressional election in Nebraska that a Republican won by a notably smaller margin than expected. But the real telltale sign will be if Democratic candidates put their money where their mouths are in talking frequently about abortion rights between now and November. Not that long ago, of course, the prevailing belief of the Democratic smart set was that the party should avoid “divisive” cultural issues like abortion and instead focus on tasty poll-tested proposals to place money in the pockets of voters. Thanks to the loss of Democratic credibility on pocketbook issues, and to the Supreme Court, that could all change. But we don’t know that just yet.

As part of my continuing effort to identify the less obvious implications of Dobbs, I considered at New York the change in perceptions of Republicans supporting abortion bans might soon experience:

Until June 24, you heard occasional talk of former vice-president Mike Pence being awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by Joe Biden for his courage in rejecting Donald Trump’s pleas and demands that he overturn the 2020 election results on January 6, 2021. Obviously, the hearings of the House Select Committee investigating the events of January 6 reinforced a sense of gratitude toward Trump’s once-sycophantic veep, and the committee itself treated the Pence staffers who testified almost reverently.

Then the U.S. Supreme Court handed down Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, abolishing a federal constitutional right to abortion, and even before the words of Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion stopped echoing, Pence was telling Breitbart News how thrilled he was that women had lost the right to choose:

“Today, Life Won. By overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court of the United States has given the American people a new beginning for life, and I commend the justices in the majority for having the courage of their convictions,” Pence said in response to the 5-4 decision from the U.S. Supreme Court in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case.”

Pence treated this as just the starting point for the forced-birth cause:

“’Having been given this second chance for Life, we must not rest and must not relent until the sanctity of life is restored to the center of American law in every state in the land.’”

And the former vice-president also wanted to make sure Breitbart readers didn’t view him as a Johnny-come-lately to the anti-abortion cause:

“Pence also released a video through his organization Advancing American Freedom, which he also provided to Breitbart News exclusively ahead of its public release. In the slightly-over-three-minutes-long video, a narrator shows Pence’s history fighting for life beginning long before he was even elected to Congress. It then details how Pence offered the first-ever bill to defund Planned Parenthood in Congress—and then later as Vice President of the United States cast the tie-breaking vote to make sure a plan that gave that right to states passed Congress.”

Does that take the shine off his January 6 heroism? Maybe just a little?

Now Pence was famously the very favorite politician of the Christian Right before he stumbled over anti-LGBTQ measures in Indiana and was then lifted into the highest levels of national politics by Trump in 2016. But consider another Republican who has gained a fanbase among liberals and the center left: House Select Committee vice-chair Liz Cheney. Last year, after she defied Trump over his election lies, she soon became more popular among Democrats than Republicans. And even before the January 6 hearings that have won her further admiration from Dems, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was encouraging Joe Biden to consider dumping Kamala Harris and running for reelection on a ticket with Cheney or someone like her. But in light of the thunderbolt that has struck American politics in the form of Dobbs, it is probably relevant that in the current Congress, Liz Cheney is a co-sponsor of legislation (HR 1011) endorsing an idea that even the conservative bloc on SCOTUS hasn’t endorsed: fetal personhood.

“Life at Conception Act

“This bill declares that the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution is vested in each human being at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual comes into being.”

No, don’t think she’s going to be on any Democratic presidential ticket soon.

My point is not to minimize the good things some Republicans have done in some areas of public life. Standing up to Donald Trump is indeed important to the future of democracy, and for that matter, it’s important to the deeply endangered future of reproductive rights, since Trump is the president who produced Dobbs as part of a cynical deal he made with conservative Christians obsessed with outlawing abortion. But at the same time,
Dobbs should remind everyone there are nonnegotiable subjects in politics other than the events of January 6, and sadly, Republican officeholders are even more united in being wrong on abortion policy than they are in defending and revering the 45th president. It’s a matter of perspective and of priorities.

One realization in particular that must now come to the fore post-Dobbs involves the bad media habit of treating some Republicans as “moderate” on abortion policy because they are willing to show some compassion (or maybe just shame) on behalf the very small percentage of people needing abortion services because they are the victims of rape or incest. Now that it’s clear they have no problem with banning the other 98 percent of previously legal abortions, these “moderates” look like the anti-abortion zealots they’ve always really been.

You may object that in a dangerously polarized political environment, but the last thing we need is to shine a spotlight on one of those issues where D’s and R’s (at least among those holding or running for office) are on different planets. We should instead, I suppose, focus on celebrating every symbolic moment where even a shred of bipartisanship can be found, whether it’s a big infrastructure bill, a small tweak in federal gun policies, or the willingness of a few Republicans to own up to Trump’s crimes. But it’s far past time to understand that polarization is not always some sort of artificial phenomenon foisted on an a peace-loving electorate by politicians and other “elites.” It’s sometimes the product of deep differences of opinion on matters that affect the lives of real people. That’s definitely true of abortion policy. And now that lawmakers are in the position to respect or oppress the reproductive autonomy of women in ways that have consequences, it’s actively offensive to shrug and look the other way.

As part of the continuing discussion about the impact of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, I warned at New York that the pressure to ban abortion will only intensify:

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to eliminate the right to an abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was the culmination of the Republican Party’s long and powerful partnership with the anti-abortion movement. This is key to understanding the potential impact of the Court’s ruling; now, that alliance will likely drive even more extreme efforts to eliminate abortion access across the country. For the anti-abortion movement, overturning Roe v. Wade was a starter’s gun, not the finish line.

Prior to 1973, Republicans were about as likely as Democrats to support the decriminalization of abortion. But within three years of the Roe v. Wade decision, both leading candidates for the GOP presidential nomination favored a constitutional amendment overturning Roe. There were a lot of reasons for this sudden change of direction, including the GOP’s effort to win over previously Democratic southern conservatives and Catholic voters, and the emergence of abortion bans as a top priority of conservative evangelical leaders. After 1980, the die was cast; while pro-choice politicians and voters lingered in the GOP for some time, the Republican Party as a whole never wavered from its anti-abortion stance.

Yet for decades, the GOP couldn’t deliver. By the time the profoundly irreligious and previously pro-choice Donald Trump won the GOP presidential nomination, simmering resentment toward Republicans for failing to produce a reversal of Roe was close to boiling over; the marriage between party and movement had become loveless. So in a great irony, the unprincipled Trump made a straight transactional offer to get ’er done if the anti-abortion movement supported his candidacy. They took the deal.

As Trump’s Supreme Court appointments cleared the path for the reversal of Roe, GOP governors and state legislators went into an anticipatory frenzy. Twenty-six states passed abortion bans with provisions violating Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, ranging from laws hassling providers to pre-viability abortion bans, like the 15-week Mississippi standard that led to Dobbs. When the ruling came down on Friday, 13 states had “trigger” laws designed to take effect the minute Roe died.

For decades, Republican politics have been about working with anti-abortion constituencies to set the table for the end of abortion rights in America, but now GOP politicians face a very different situation. As far as what they’ll do next, here are three things to keep in mind.

Republicans leaders will now face even more pressure to enact extreme abortion bans.

You might think that having won this huge victory in the Supreme Court, Republican anti-abortion activists would give it a rest for a bit. But that isn’t happening.

Having been invited by the Supreme Court to set abortion policy without any inhibitions, the true goal of the anti-abortion movement — a ban on all abortions from the moment of conception, with few if any exceptions — will become an immediate priority for Republican lawmakers. Where there are 15-week bans like Mississippi’s, six-week bans like Georgia’s will likely emerge. Where there are six-week bans, total bans from conception like Louisiana’s and Oklahoma’s will be pursued and likely enacted. Rape and incest exceptions will be challenged. The pressure on GOP lawmakers to grow more radical will go up, not down. This isn’t a political game anymore. Republican lawmakers have been handed the power to force every pregnancy to full term, and their most powerful religious constituencies expect them to use it.

GOP tactics will become more radical.

For most anti-abortion activists and their Republican vassals, overturning Roe was never anything more than an interim step toward a total abortion ban. Now they can publicly advance more audacious goals and impose new litmus tests on GOP politicians.

The states-rights and pro-democracy rhetoric that anti-abortion activists routinely deployed to challenge what they deemed federal judicial tyranny over abortion policy will instantly vanish. Republican elected officials and candidates will begin calling for a national abortion ban by congressional statute. It won’t happen so long as there is either a Democratic president or a Senate filibuster, but Republicans with aspirations for high office will line up to pledge to make it happen someday. Mike Pence took the vow minutes after Dobbs was announced:

“Now that Roe v. Wade has been consigned to the ash heap of history, a new arena in the cause of life has emerged, and it is incumbent on all who cherish the sanctity of life to resolve that we will take the defense of the unborn and the support for women in crisis pregnancy centers to every state in America,” Pence told Breitbart News. “Having been given this second chance for Life, we must not rest and must not relent until the sanctity of life is restored to the center of American law in every state in the land.”

Meanwhile, at the state level, Republicans will do whatever they can to interfere with actions by citizens in blue states to aid people in red states. Even though Justice Brett Kavanaugh warned in his Dobbs concurrence that bans on travel to secure an abortion would represent an unconstitutional restriction on interstate commerce, that won’t keep those determined to “save all the babies” from trying to do so by hook or crook.

Most of all, you will hear more and more talk about the goal the GOP first formally embraced in its 1980 platform: an effort to convince the Supreme Court to recognize fetal personhood as a constitutional right, or to pass a fetal personhood constitutional amendment in Congress.

Anti-abortion fervor could shift the GOP’s election strategy.

Ice-cold Republican tacticians looking no further than the 2022 midterm elections or the next presidential contest will welcome the new climate as a base-energizing tonic for the troops. After all, the GOP kept its promises to its culture-war wing, and there will be much MAGA/Christian right excitement about acting on the new freedom to impose forced birth. State legislative and gubernatorial elections in November and beyond are going to be lit.

But as it happens, Republicans were already cruising toward major midterm gains thanks to economic worries, Democratic discouragement, the GOP turnout advantage in non-presidential elections, and the historical pattern of midterm losses by the party controlling the White House. All things considered, they want voters to go to the polls thinking about inflation, not abortion; about their grievances with Joe Biden, not their grievances with Samuel Alito.

Democrats have been thinking that Roe’s demise could change the dynamics of the midterms by encouraging high turnout from young voters and suburban women and giving Democratic voters something to feel more passionate about than a bipartisan infrastructure bill. Many Republicans may fear that outcome too, but they are in no position to tell their own base to stop thinking about abortion policy, which in turn means GOP candidates won’t stop talking about it. And that could complicate the anticipated GOP midterm victory, while also changing the landscape going into 2024. Potential Republican presidential candidates could go into a competitive frenzy of anti-abortion extremism, and that’s exactly what Democrats need to hang onto swing voters.