By Dave Andrusko
What an amazing revelation. Of all the publications, the last one you would expect to publish a story explaining how Democrats manipulated the abortion issue to their advantage would be the New York Times. But that was what appeared yesterday in a story written by Lisa Lerer and Elizabeth Dias.
To be sure, there were multiple stories gleefully extolling the victories in five different abortion referenda. But while “How Democrats Used the Abortion Debate to Hold Off a Red Wave” was no less triumphant, it contained an admission from Celinda Lake, the longtime Democratic pollster, that pro-lifers should listen to.
But first an explanation of how Democrats were able to take the President Biden’s miserable approval rating and galloping inflation and soaring gas prices and—strange as it seems—use it to their advantage.
Democrats “wove the issue [abortion] into broader Democratic messages that framed the election as a referendum on what they describe as Republicans’ ‘extreme’ views, and not on President Biden and Democratic control in Washington,” they wrote. “’It was all tied together,’” Representative Diana DeGette, the Colorado Democrat and longtime head of the Pro-Choice Caucus in the House, said on Wednesday morning. ‘It wasn’t like, here’s our wedge issue — abortion. People were thinking, ‘I’m worried about the economy. I’m worried about freedoms being taken away,’ and they were worried about democracy, too.’”
For the zillionth time, Democrats successfully “wove abortion” into a garment made up of other issues. But to return to the Republicans alleged “extreme’ views,” specifically on abortion.
How could that be? Is it not Democrats who, as time has gone by, have fully embraced abortion throughout the entire pregnancy? Good heavens, do they not even defend failure to treat abortion survivors?
For starters, they had money galore and used those resources to flood the airwaves. “Those wins came after a tsunami of advertising nationwide,” Lerer and Dias write. “In total, Democrats spent nearly half a billion dollars on ads mentioning abortion, more than twice what they spent on the second-closest issue, crime, according to AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm.”
Needless to say, that barrage of ads was a tissue of lies, omissions, and distortions. That‘s what Democrats do, that’s who Democrats are.
Lerer and Dias tell us that soon after the June 24 Supreme Court Dobbs decision overturning Roe, “Democratic Party committees invested in detailed polling, hoping to drill down on what exact messaging worked best. There was a clear conclusion: The most potent messaging for Democrats was to keep the conversation broad by casting Republicans as supporting a national ban on abortion, and avoid a discussion over the details about gestational week limits.”
Then this: “Debating weeks is not where we want to be,” said Celinda Lake, the longtime Democratic pollster who conducted some of the surveys” told them. “People are terrible at math and terrible at biology.”
“People are terrible at math and terrible at biology.” What that means is never, ever bring up “a discussion over the details about gestational week limits.” People might catch on to what pro-abortion Democrats stand for: unlimited abortion paid for out of the taxpayer’s pocket.
In running for office–regardless of how radical Democrats’ position on abortion was and is– they disguised their agenda by shifting the discussion to a playing field that favored them.
Here is NRL President Carol Tobias who summed it up:
“Pro-abortion groups and their allies in Congress know they cannot win with the truth. We saw unprecedented attacks using fabrications and misrepresentations against pro-life candidates. Pro-abortion Democratic leaders and their allies know that when people learn the truth about abortion, they lose, so they had to hide behind deception and spin.”