Joe Biden’s risky bet on abortion

In a somewhat bland campaign, Joe Biden is taking a long shot. By promising on Tuesday, October 18, that he will enshrine the right to abortion into federal law in January if the Democratic Party wins the midterm elections on November 8, the US president hopes to create a groundswell of motivation among his electoral base. .

On June 24, the Supreme Court, the highest judicial instance in the United States, reversed its Roe vs. Wade, who had guaranteed for half a century the right of American women to voluntarily terminate their pregnancy, and returned to each State its freedom to decide on abortion.

“Remember what you felt that day … the anger, the worry, the disbelief,” Joe Biden said Tuesday in a speech to the Democratic Party in Washington, denouncing the “chaos” that followed the decision.

“In four months, laws banning abortion have gone into effect in 16 states,” he continued, and “Republican congressmen have followed suit” by promising to pass such a ban at the federal level if they regain control of Congress. “But let’s be clear: if such a law were passed in the next few years, I would veto it,” exhorted the White House tenant.

On the other hand, if voters bolster the Democratic majority, “the first bill I send to Congress will be to codify Roe,” he promised. “And as soon as Congress passes it, I will sign it into law in January to commemorate the 50th anniversary” of the ruling.

The economy and inflation, the main concerns of Americans

Joe Biden did not detail the text that he would send to Congress and pretended to forget that the House of Representatives had already approved a bill to protect the right to abortion. This text has been blocked for several months in the Senate, where the Democrats do not have a sufficient majority to annul the Republican filibuster.

And what is worse, “he is using the wrong strategy” to win the elections, according to Jean-Éric Branaa, a professor at the University of Paris-Panthéon-Assas. “There have been no demonstrations in the streets of the United States since the annulment of Roe vs. Wade,” said the American specialist. “Of course, this will reinvigorate a certain base among Democrats, but it won’t be enough to win in November. It’s an issue that neither Republicans nor independents care about.”

Polls show that abortion is far from the top priority for Americans. 26% cite the economy as their main concern and 18% inflation, well ahead of abortion, with 5%, according to a survey published this week by the Siena Institute with ‘The New York Times’.

And more worryingly for Democrats, independent voters also seem to have changed their preferences. In September, Democrats were 14 points ahead of Republicans in this segment of the electorate, now they are 18 points behind.

An erroneous analysis of the results of the Kansas referendum?

It is really a surprising choice by Joe Biden”, insists Jean-Éric Branaa. “The issue of abortion is not even a factor of mobilization among young people, who would have preferred that the Democrats campaigned on the environmental issue. The social issue is also ignored. There is a misunderstanding of what happened in Kansas.”

In this conservative state of Midwesta proposal to remove abortion rights from the Kansas Constitution was defeated by voters in a referendum in early August, and was seen by many Democrats as a sign that the issue could mobilize the electorate.

Since then, some Democratic strategists, such as James Carville, a well-known former adviser to Bill Clinton, have argued that abortion should be a major issue. Former President Barack Obama also supported this strategy with a video posted on social media on Wednesday. They are based on polls showing that the Supreme Court decision would push voters to the polls.

For example, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study released Oct. 12, 50% of registered voters say overturning Roe v. Wade makes them more likely to vote next month. Even more: according to the same publication, three out of five women between the ages of 18 and 49 say they are more likely to vote after the Supreme Court decision.

But beyond the conflicting polls and the importance of the abortion issue to voters, it is Biden’s own promise that seems implausible. In order to pass legislation as early as January, Democrats would have to retain the House of Representatives and win 10 seats in the Senate to reach the 60 senators needed to end Republican filibuster. This scenario is highly unlikely.

Another solution, mentioned by Joe Biden on Tuesday during his speech, is to change the filibustering rule, a technique used by Republican senators to block. But since two of the 50 Democratic senators do not want to touch it, the Democrats would have to win two new seats in the Senate, while retaining their majority in the House, to change the situation. Again, this goal seems too ambitious. According to the specialized website ‘FiveThirtyEight’, the Democrats should retain the Senate on November 8, but lose the House of Representatives.

*This is an article adapted from its French original