Base mobilization is important, but it can backfire if the mobilizing position alienates or actively antagonizes other voters while also handing the opposing party material it can use to mobilize its own ranks. That’s what Democrats are in danger of doing with abortion.

It doesn’t need to be this way. A Democratic Party that placed itself near the center of public opinion by promising to codify abortion rights in federal law up through the early weeks of the second trimester would win a lot of support, even if it left the most maximalist members of the party clamoring for more. Going further might placate the maximalists, but it would likely win the party fewer votes overall, thereby decreasing the chances of the Dems accomplishing much of anything to protect reproductive rights at the national level.

Democrats need to figure out how to ride the tiger of justified rage at the Supreme Court’s looming reversal of Roe. If they fail, they run the considerable risk of being devoured by it.