It’s not just me, a conservative Republican, who sees this. Matthew Yglesias, a prominent progressive writer and abortion rights supporter, recently said as much in his newsletter. He notes that more than 90 percent of all abortions are performed in the first trimester and that Democrats could preserve access for the vast majority of women who want abortions if they sacrificed the extreme views that so many Americans abhor.
That Democrats are preparing to utterly ignore this counsel is instructive. They are pushing no-limit abortion policy either because they are afraid of their base or because they believe in it. Either way, that’s not the leadership Americans want.
This is the same dilemma that sunk Democrat Stephen A. Douglas’s chance to become president in the 1860 election. Douglas tried to finesse the explosive slavery issue by arguing that people in each territory should be able to decide whether to permit slavery. He was caught between Northern popular opinion, which thought slavery was wrong, and Southern opinion, which favored it. Douglas tried to placate Southerners by saying he didn’t care whether slavery was voted up or down and to satiate Northerners by saying he would vote to admit a new state with a constitution banning the odious practice. Instead, his dodge lost the North and the South and helped elect Abraham Lincoln.
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