Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Dems desire action after Roe’s fall
Some accuse party of not preparing for looming situation
NEW YORK — President Joe Biden and the Democratic leadership had months to prepare for the fall of Roe v. Wade, and even after a draft ruling was leaked in May, they had weeks to muster concrete plans to counteract a once-unimaginable outcome that suddenly seemed inevitable.
Yet as Republicans celebrated the culmination last week of a methodical 50-year campaign to topple the right to an abortion in the United States, the initial response from the president and his party — exhortations to vote, calls for contributions, micro-websites portraying Republicans as extremists — struck many fellow Democrats as painfully inadequate.
“It didn’t seem like there was a game plan,” said Nina Smith, a Democratic strategist.
The Supreme Court’s back-to-back decisions last week on guns and abortion — tying the hands of blue states in regulating firearms while freeing red states to ban abortions — punctuated the degree to which the court’s solid 6-3 conservative majority is poised to remake American life.
Now an increasingly vocal cohort of Democrats is calling for the party’s leadership, starting with Biden, to broaden what is seen as politically possible, before liberal priorities are stymied or reversed by the high court for years to come. But those who want to expand the Supreme Court or move to impeach justices who once spoke of Roe as settled law are confronting an institutionalist president who has long been averse to radical changes to the judiciary.
So far, the centerpiece of Biden’s response has consisted of urging voters to rally behind Democrats in the midterms, hoping to galvanize a Democratic Party base that polls have shown is in a sour mood.
Speaking from the White House on Friday, Biden advanced virtually no new abortion-rights proposals. He acknowledged that his administrative powers were limited. And he conveyed the simple and accurate fact that Democrats do not currently have the votes in Congress to act to protect abortion rights at the national level.
“This fall, Roe is on the ballot,” he said.
The White House sees the embracing by congressional Republicans of a potential national abortion ban at 15 weeks as a potential motivator for voters. And they view as politically troublesome for the GOP the possibility, raised by Justice Clarence Thomas, that the court could eventually target past decisions establishing constitutional rights to same-sex marriage and contraception.
“The ultra-MAGA agenda on choice has never been about ‘states’ rights,’” said Jennifer Klein, executive director of the White House’s new Gender Policy Council. “This has always been about taking away women’s rights, in every single state.”
There are early signs of engagement from the Democratic base. Protests spilled into the streets in cities nationwide. And the ruling Friday unleashed a gusher of Democratic donations: $20.5 million that day on ActBlue, the Democratic online donation-processing platform. It was the single biggest day for contributions on the site since 2020, according to a New York Times analysis, with more than $45 million processed since the decision came out.
But Rebecca Katz, a Democratic operative who works with progressive candidates, demanded more from Biden and other party leaders besides simply asking for money or votes.
“This is one of those moments where the people in power have to do more than the people who are voting for them,” she said.
Those calling for the potential impeachment of Supreme Court justices are not just far-left Democrats but moderates, including Rep. Charlie Crist of Florida, a Republican-turned-Democrat who is running for governor this year.
“I’m a former attorney general of Florida, and I know what lying is,” he said in an interview, referring to testimony from Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, during their congressional confirmation hearings, on upholding abortion precedents.
And he said that while there is currently no will to act among Democratic leaders in Congress, he expected that to change. “Frustration requires action,” Crist said, “or there’s no vent for it.”
As Joshua Karp, a Democratic strategist and an adviser to Crist, put it, “If we want to inspire people to vote, we have to actually inspire them.”
The split inside the Democratic coalition is partly generational, as younger activists make the case that the Republican Party and the dynamics in the nation’s capital have fundamentally changed in the decades since Biden, 79; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 82; and Sen. Chuck Schumer, 71, the majority leader, arrived in Washington. An offhand remark Friday by Rep. James Clyburn, 81, the highest-ranking Black lawmaker in the House, that the ruling was “anticlimactic” ricocheted through younger and more progressive circles.
It is not that restive Democrats do not accept the plain reality that, with a 50-50 Senate and two Democratic senators committed to preserving the filibuster, there is little that can be done legislatively to preserve abortion rights. But they still want to hear a longer-term plan of action articulated beyond the fall midterm elections.
“Leadership had a long time to know this was coming and to prepare something more than outrage from a podium and fundraising appeals,” said David Atkins, a Democratic National Committee member from California, who wanted to hear calls for structural changes to the court or the Senate. “There needs to be more fight.”
One episode that struck Atkins and others as “tone deaf ” came Friday outside the Capitol. Pelosi and other House Democrats gathered on the Capitol steps to celebrate the passage of a historic, if piecemeal, package on guns. They sang “God Bless America” together as Roe protesters raged across the street in front of the Supreme Court.
“That moment crystallized it perfectly,” said Smith, the Democratic strategist. “The Titanic is sinking, and the band is still playing.”
On Monday, Pelosi sent a letter to Democratic lawmakers about possible upcoming votes and action: on protecting women’s data in reproductive health apps from “sinister” prosecutors targeting those who have abortions, on the right to travel across state lines and on enshrining the protections Roe v. Wade provided into law, though such a bill — which has already passed the House — lacks sufficient support in the Senate.
The list did not include some of the most ambitious items on the progressive wish list: enlarging the court or starting investigations into justices who suggested during confirmation hearings that Roe v. Wade was settled precedent. Pelosi did renew her call to eliminate the filibuster.