Democrats lean on abortion rights message for anniversary of end of Roe

June 25, 2024

Two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade—unleashing a cascade of state-level abortion bans and prompting angry political backlash—Democrats are marking the anniversary by highlighting the role former President Donald Trump played in ending the constitutional right to an abortion, reports The New York Times.

Through advertising, campaign events and news conferences, Democrats are fanning out across the country, working to remind voters that it was justices nominated by Trump who helped overturn Roe v. Wade.

“Donald Trump is the sole person responsible for this nightmare,” President Biden said on Monday, June 24. “My message to Americans is this: Kamala and I are fighting like hell to get your freedom back.”

The messaging push is unfolding during a tight presidential race, as Biden confronts weak approval ratings and the coalition that propelled his 2020 victory shows signs of fraying.

As they seek to reinvigorate their voters, Democrats are embracing variations of arguments that have fueled other victories in the past two years: that the Republican Party is ever more extreme and infringing, to an extraordinary degree, on some of the most personal healthcare decisions Americans can make.

“Fundamentally on this issue, it’s about freedom,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in an MSNBC interview that is set to run in full on Monday. “Every person of whatever gender should understand that if such a fundamental freedom such as the right to make decisions about your own body can be taken, be aware of what other freedoms may be at stake.”

On Monday, Harris is also expected to speak in College Park, Maryland., and in Phoenix to “remind voters that Donald Trump is responsible for overturning Roe and the chaos that has followed,” and to “highlight the threat a second Trump presidency would pose to reproductive freedom nationwide,” according to the Biden campaign.

Her husband, Doug Emhoff, is headed to Flint and Clawson, Michigan, with a similar message, and top Biden surrogates around the nation are seizing on the issue as they seek to frame the contrast in the election.

“It’ll be a binary choice on who’s going to restrict your rights,” Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, who is the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, said in an interview on Sunday, June 23. “This will just be a narrative of their extremism, but this one is baked in because it’s real. It’s not theoretical.”

Trump has said he is “proudly the person responsible” for overturning Roe v. Wade—a line that Democrats are eager to highlight—and has suggested that, if elected, he would allow states to prosecute women who violate abortion restrictions. He also has said that he believes abortion policy should be left to the states—disappointing some on the right.

Democrats successfully deployed messaging around abortion rights in critical races during the 2022 midterm elections a few months after Roe was overturned and in a number of special elections since. Campaigns, including Biden’s, are highlighting women’s personal experiences with abortion bans championed by Republicans.

But in this election, Americans are also weighing a broad range of other considerations, and polls show that on a number of key issues—although not abortion policy—voters saying that Trump would do a better job than Biden.

“Polling has consistently shown Biden and the Democrats already have an issue advantage on abortion, and yet Trump continues to lead in the battleground states,” Robert Blizzard, a Republican pollster, said. “They will certainly lean in on abortion, but unless Democrats find a way to puncture Trump’s legacy on the economy, they will continue to struggle.”

Voters are also assessing the personal characteristics of Biden, 81, the oldest American president in history; and of Trump, 78, who is the first American president convicted of a crime.

Many of these issues are likely to come up at their debate on Thursday, June 27—the first of the general-election campaign.

Research contact: @nytimes

September 26, 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris sat down with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle on Wednesday, September 25—fielding questions on her economic agenda, former President Donald Trump’s economic plans, and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D), reports The Hill

.The MSNBC interview was a friendly forum for the vice president, who has been under pressure to ramp up her media presence. Harris sat down with Ruhle in Pittsburgh, following an economic-focused speech in which she laid out a framework for her manufacturing agenda.

Here are five takeaways from Harris’s interview on MSNBC:

Harris lays out pricey agenda

Much of the interview was spent talking about the economy and involved Harris outlining her agenda. Her “opportunity economy” involves a housing plan to help first-time homebuyers, a child tax plan that involves expanding credits to families, and a plan to boost small businesseswith tax deductions for entrepreneurs, among other proposals.

“If you are hardworking, if you have the dreams and the ambitions and the aspirations I believe you do, you’re in my plan,” she said.

When it comes to how to pay for some programs, Harris reiterated that she would not raise taxes on Americans making less than $400,000—maintaining a pillar of President Joe Biden’s tax plan—but that corporations should pay their “fair share” in taxes.

Much of Harris’s economic agenda would need congressional approval, particularly when it comes to tax policy. That would make it an uphill battle, should Congress see a Republican majority; but also if either or both chambers are closely split between parties.

Ruhle questioned the vice president on polling that shows likely voters think Trump is better on the economy. Harris recently closed the gap with Trump on the economy in one survey — an Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll that found Harris and Trump with equal support on the issue.

“Donald Trump left us with the worst economy since the Great Depression,” Harris said, citing data that about 200,000 manufacturing jobs were lost during the Trump years.

Walz pick was gut decision

Toward the end of the interview, Ruhle asked Harris when was the last time she made a “gut decision,” given that decisions made by presidents take “extraordinary instinct and guts.”

“When’s the last time you had to make a gut decision? This here is very prescribed. It’s very controlled,” Ruhle asked, referring to the interview setup.

“The biggest gut decision I made most recently was to choose my running mate,” Harris responded, referring to her decision to pick Walz to run as her vice president. “There were lots of good, incredible candidates, and ultimately that came down to a gut decision.”

Harris picked Walz in August, just more than a month after she announced her presidential bid. The governor emerged as a dark horse contender for the slot just before Harris made her choice, being selected over other more high-profile names Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D) and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly (D) ,who were largely viewed for weeks as the favorites for the position.

Harris knocks Trump on tariffs

Harris bashed Trump for his suggestion to place tariffs on foreign companies, which he has laid out repeatedly on the campaign trail.

“Part of it is, you don’t just throw around the idea of just tariffs across the board, and that’s part of the problem with Donald Trump,” Harris said when Ruhle asked about the former president’s plans to expand tariffs.

“He’s just not very serious about how he thinks about some of these issues,” Harris added. “One must be serious and have a real plan that’s not just about some talking point ending in an exclamation at a political rally.”

Trump gave an economic-focused speech this week in Pennsylvania, during which he spoke about his plan to use tariffs, continuing to expand on his claims that he wants to expand the use of tariffs if he’s elected.

He also threatened Illinois-based John Deerewith massive tariffs on its products if it outsources some of its manufacturing to Mexico, as it has previously announced.

Harris defends opposition to U.S. Steel sale

Harris defended her opposition to Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel acquiring U.S. Steel, after Ruhle mentioned the potential consequences of blocking it.

U.S. Steel warned earlier this month that it may cut staff and move its headquarters from Pittsburgh, if the company’s planned sale falls apart. Nippon Steel announced it would acquire U.S. Steel in December—prompting outcry from lawmakers, including Biden and Trump, who argued the deal could undermine national security and industrial capacity.

“It’s most important that we maintain America’s ability to have American manufacturing [of] steel by American workers for a number of reasons,” Harris said, defending the opposition.

“There is not a new industry that I can imagine that is not going to require steel,” she added, noting, “And having American workers in an American company manufacturing that steel for those industries is going to be critically important.”

Ruhle interview is Harris’s deepest on policy

Harris’s interview with Ruhle went deeper into her proposed economic policies than any of the other media appearances and interviews she’s done to date as the Democratic nominee.

Ruhle questioned Harris, for example, on how she planned to pay for such proposals and how the federal government would cut through red tape to reach municipalities on matters such as the shortage of housing.

The vice president outlined incentives the federal government can create for communities to build more homes and provide transit. Harris maintains that such proposals could be paid for with an increase in corporate taxes but has not gotten into details about how such hikes could get through Congress.

“I know that we have to reduce the red tape and speed up what we need to do around building, and that is going to require working from the federal level with state and local governments,” she said.

Research contact: @thehill