It’s Abortion, Stupid
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Last month, during a meeting of Democrats in rural southwestern Iowa, a man raised his hand. “What are three noncontroversial issues that Democrats should be talking about right now?” he asked the evening’s speaker, Rob Sand, Iowa’s state auditor and a minor state celebrity.
I watched from the side of the room as Sand answered quickly. The first two issues Democrats should talk about are new state laws dealing with democracy and education, he told the man. And then they should talk about their support for abortion rights. “People in the Iowa Republican Party and their activist base” want to “criminalize abortion,” Sand said.
I registered this response with a surprised blink. Noncontroversial? Democrats in competitive states, and especially committed centrists like Sand, aren’t usually so eager to foreground abortion on the campaign trail. This seemed new.
