Biden making abortion a midterm issue is ‘a slap in the face’ after failing to codify Roe: liberal strategist

Democratic leaders from President Biden onward aim to make abortion a key issue in the midterms, telling voters that the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v Wade is disastrous for women’s rights. women.

But despite holding narrow majorities in Congress and controlling the White House, Democrats have failed to legalize abortion access through legislative means, a failure that some Democratic and progressive strategists see as a betrayal.

“President Biden and House Speaker Pelosi passing the buck to voters by telling them to ‘just go vote’ without doing everything in their power to fix things is a slap in the face to their voters,” said Tezlyn Figaro , political strategist and former national director of racial justice for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, I-Vt.

Biden’s failure to do everything in his power to protect abortion will continue, Figaro suggested, regardless of what happens in the November midterm elections, where Democrats face historic headwinds in their goal of preserving majorities in The congress. “On Saturday, June 25, President Biden doubled down on his position not to expand the court, so regardless of how policies change at the state level after the midterms, nothing will change at the federal level under President Biden’s leadership, Figaro said.

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Democrats began making abortion a key message in the midterm elections immediately after the Supreme Court ruling. “We must ‘remember in November’ that the rights of women, and indeed all Americans, are on the ballot,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Friday, vowing ” keep beating the drum, not just what the challenges are, but what we Democrats are doing about it.”

President Biden declared that Congress does not have enough votes to codify the right to abortion into federal law in his own message on Friday. “This fall, Roe is on the ballot. Personal freedoms are on the ballot. The right to privacy, liberty and equality are all on the ballot,” Biden said.

Democratic strategist Sascha Burns, a partner at Turner4D, told Fox News Digital she was confident that overturning Roe would inspire voters to win Democratic majorities, so they could codify federal abortion protections.

“The only supermajority in Congress is the number of votes needed to override filibuster. Democrats control the Senate 50-50 and in November we will change that; all we need is to keep the House and add 2 Senate seats and WILL CODE Roe. The Republicans just gave us the midterms back and lost a generation of voters. And they know it,” Burns said.

Following the leak of a draft opinion in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization in early May, which signaled to the world that the Supreme Court would overturn nearly 50 years of precedent guaranteeing the right to access an abortion in the landmark Roe decision of In 1973, Democrats tried to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have outlawed government restrictions on abortion. The Senate failed to advance the bill after Sen. Joe Manchin, DW.Va., voted no, calling the bill not a codification of Roe but an expansion.

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Emily Tisch Sussman, a Democratic political consultant and host of the “She Pivots” podcast, told Fox News that politicians in both parties surely believed that the newly confirmed justices would uphold Roe’s precedent.

During hearings for Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, all former President Trump nominees, Democrats asked if the nominees saw Roe as a precedent. They variously responded that the court had upheld the Roe precedent since the 1973 ruling, but did not comment on whether they would overturn the precedent.

“Democrats and Republicans both believed in good faith that the three newly confirmed justices would not overturn Roe v Wade,” Sussman said. “But they flatly lied under oath and now millions of women have lost the right to bodily autonomy. Acting in good faith, the Democrats did not blow up filibuster to confirm bodily autonomy.”

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Before Friday’s landmark Supreme Court decision, polls suggested the top issues for likely midterm voters were the economy and rising inflation. By a wide margin, rising costs were top of the minds of voters in an early June poll by Fox News, surpassing gun and abortion issues as top of mind for voters.

Republican strategist Brian Darling, a former senior adviser to Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, told Fox News that the recent push to make abortion access a midterm issue is a distraction.

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“Democrats did not codify Roe v. Wade with their current majority, nor when they had a supermajority during the first two years of the Obama administration,” Darling said.

“They want to run on the abortion issue this fall, but history shows that voters should not have confidence that they will follow through on that promise. Democrats rely on poorly informed voters to believe their empty promises that they will pass an unconstitutional bill to make Roe the law of the land if they win the midterms. They are trying to use the abortion issue to distract voters from President Biden’s dismal poll numbers, high inflation highlighted by high gas prices and a failing economy. It’s not going to work.”