HOW BADLY IS THE WHITE HOUSE DOING? SO BADLY THAT EVEN CNN HAS NOTICED: After string of Supreme Court setbacks, Democrats wonder whether Biden White House is capable of urgency moment demands.
Debra Messing was fed up. The former “Will & Grace” star was among dozens of celebrity Democratic supporters and activists who joined a call with White House aides last Monday to discuss the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
The mood was fatalistic, according to three people on the call, which was also co-organized by the advocacy group Build Back Better Together.
Messing said she’d gotten Joe Biden elected and wanted to know why she was being asked to do anything at all, yelling that there didn’t even seem a point to voting. Others wondered why the call was happening.
That afternoon, participants received a follow-up email with a list of basic talking points and suggestions of Biden speech clips to share on TikTok.The call, three days after the decision eliminating federal abortion rights, encapsulates the overwhelming sense of frustration among Democrats with Biden. It offers a new window into what many in the President’s party describe as a mismanagement permeating the White House.
Top Democrats complain the President isn’t acting with — or perhaps is even capable of — the urgency the moment demands.
“Rudderless, aimless and hopeless” is how one member of Congress described the White House.
But why, considering the decision leaked weeks in advance? Democrats don’t know what to do after Roe overturning.
Despite having a six-week heads-up via a leaked draft of the Supreme Court’s decision, the Democratic Party appeared caught completely off foot by the Dobbs ruling, which effectively overturned Roe v. Wade.
With abortion laws now the purview of the states, there is also growing consternation in progressive media circles. They fear that President Joe Biden’s tepid response to the ruling, which centered on his offering a brief statement and then boarding an airplane and flying out of the country, has been inadequate at best. Biden mustered some anger at the NATO summit in Spain, but policy-wise, he has conceded there’s not much the White House will do.
While Biden was overseas and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was reading poems, Democratic firebrands Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren were offering incandescent but unrealistic ideas to a sympathetic national media. These included the idea of impeaching Supreme Court justices and opening abortion tents on federal lands. The closest the House and Senate Democratic majorities can come to resembling even a shell of codifying Roe would require abolishing the filibuster, a popular idea among the media intelligentsia. Unfortunately, naughty Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have already stated that this is a non-starter. Beyond that, the Democrats have no plan for a post-Roe world, an inconvenient truth that they dare not admit to a disheartened base. The base, after all, now increasingly sees a feckless aged majority and a president who seems out to lunch at all times.
However, the main problem for Democrats lies in their extreme position on abortion up to the moment of birth. Roe acted as a warm duvet over the operational procedures of abortion. It allowed Democrats to stand by a “pro-choice” talking point without having to defend it to a moderate electorate still not comfortable with a party willing to celebrate abortion. With Roe lifted, Democrats now have to go about the act of actually selling abortion by campaigning on it at state levels. For the first time in 50 years, national office seekers will have to specify their positions. Democrats will be forced either to stand firm on an unpopular extreme or moderate their positions and anger their base further. As of now, they cannot decide, and they are unprepared.
Between not being able to define “what is a woman?”, and adopting a position on abortion that almost a quarter of a century ago was parodied on South Park as abortion up to “the fortieth trimester,” the Democrats seem to be woefully positioned for the midterms. Ed Morrissey spots NBC reporting:Dems’ midterm strategy? Let Republicans bail out Biden.
Still though, don’t get cocky. As Ed writes, “It’s so crazy, it just might work. Even conservatives worry that Republicans will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in November, either by selecting fringe nominees, overplaying their hand after the end of Roe, or perhaps in some other imaginative and self-destructive manner. We’re kinda used to it by now.”
UPDATE: So is Nancy Pelosi scrambling to find a way to overcome Dobbs? On the contrary! She’s living la dolce vita: Nancy Pelosi’s Italian job. The House Speaker’s campaign war chest is raising eyebrows:
Pelosi may be on vacation in southern Europe, but that hasn’t stopped her from aggressively trying to fundraise off the fall of Roe. “I asked you Monday. I asked you Tuesday. I asked you Wednesday. I asked you Thursday. I’m truly sorry to ask you again today,” reads one Pelosi fundraising email from last week. “But my team just informed me we failed to meet yesterday’s FIRST End of Quarter Deadline since the Supreme Court’s ruling. I won’t sugarcoat this. If I don’t reach 1,387 more gifts before midnight to close the budget gap, it will be the single most devastating setback for Democrats’ chances of winning this election and protecting women’s reproductive freedoms nationwide.”
Reaction online to the photos of Pelosi was typically muted.
“If I have nightmares about Nancy Pelosi’s boobs tonight I am suing,” tweeted the Post Millennial’s Ashley St. Clair.
“Inflation has hit Nancy Pelosi,” wrote comedian Andrew Schulz.
“Please stop sharing Nancy Pelosi’s ta-tas this is a family site,” tweeted @beyondreasdoubt.
Click over for the photos — if you dare.
(Updated and boobed bumped.)