As the 2024 election approached, Newsmax pundit and Trump toady Dick Morris continued his Trump-fluffing — with an emphasis on one certain subject, laboring hard to deny that Republicans’ anti-abortion policies would hurt them at the polls (presumably on Donald Trump’s orders). He declared in an Oct. 4 column:
On a recent day, one dominated by Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, achieving a lopsided debate victory over Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., former President Donald Trump announced that he would veto a national abortion ban if it were to be passed by Congress and make it to his desk.
That is the coup de grace for the Harris campaign.
Harris has been running on the abortion issue, conjuring up fears that Trump, once he’s re-elected, would agree with the right wing of the GOP and sign a national abortion ban.
The former president has danced around the issue in the past, arguing that no such bill could ever pass in the current environment so the question of what he would do if it did, was academic.
But now Trump has firmly and finally committed to a veto such legislation, were it to make its way to his desk.
[…]The idea that Trump would ban abortion is pure fantasy and now it’s disproven.
The Democrats can’t play the abortion card any longer.
Well, not exactly — Trump lies about everything, so his word is meaningless. Morris did some fibbing of his own, writing:
In the following year there were over one million abortions performed in the United States.
Half of these were medical via the “morning after pill” nobody seemingly wants to ban.
Morris seems to have confused the “morning after pill” — better known as emergency contraception, which is not technically banned but has been demonized by activists who falsely promote the idea that it’s an abortion pill — and mifepristone, better known as the abortion pill, which has been restricted in states that have near-total bans on abortion. Morris’ misinformation isn’t helping matters.
Morris hyped the issue again in his Oct. 22 column:
These days, you don’t hear the word consensus very often in American politics, declaring hat Turmp has reached “consensus” on the abortion issue:
Then, over the opposition of most of his own party, Trump triangulated.
He pledged to veto a ban on abortion, backed in vitro fertilization, rejected a six-week deadline for legal abortion, and carved out exceptions to any abortion ban where the life of the mother was threatened or rape or incest was involved.
And he enlisted Melania to advocate for women’s control over their own bodies.
Thus, his bright red posture on the issue began to look more like purple.
The American people are responding.
Trump began to seize leads in the popular vote and in most of the swing states.
Democrats, totally invested in the abortion issue, felt the ground eroding underneath them.
Lamely, they fell back to saying Trump was lying and that, as soon as he won, the virulent anti-abortion Democrats feared would emerge and “turn the clock back.”
But as Trump persisted in triangulating the issue, Harris lost ground and the momentum swung to Trump.
“Note that Morris doesn’t dispute the high possibility that Trump is lying to achieve that “consensus” — he simply declared that “Trump looks like he has solved the biggest conundrum in our politics — how to find a center-right middle ground.”
Morris served up even more spin in his Oct. 25 column:
A survey by National Public Radio (NPR) of 2300 young voters (aged 18-40) show that, despite Harris’ focus on the abortion issue, Trump has erased the gender gap among white men and women.
The gender gap, which has defined American politics for 50 years — ever since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) — is fading away among young white voters.
The survey, conducted Sept 26-Oct 6, showed only a one point gender gap among whites. Harris got 43% of white men and 44% of white women.
So Harris’ campaign, with its efforts to break thru with white women, using the abortion issue, is making no progress among whites.
Again, not so much — the poll also found that Americans under 40 said they trusted Harris to protect access to reproductive rights by a 36-point margin over Trump.