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Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice.
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The Democratic Party’s capacity to avoid a November bloodbath could come down to how energized voters are by an expected Supreme Court ruling ending abortion rights. Such a ruling would place the country in uncharted political territory. And, as such, it’s impossible to predict its electoral impact.
But there are recent precedents for Democrats waging national campaigns around abortion rights and related threats to women’s health — and the results don’t necessarily suggest it’s the elixir the party hopes.
After the 2012 election, conventional wisdom held that Republicans were damaged by their candidate’s stances on reproductive issues. A young spokeswoman for the BARACK OBAMA campaign named JEN PSAKI even described it as ipso facto reasoning for MITT ROMNEY’s loss. “The more we’re talking about women’s issues, women’s health care, the differences between the candidates, the better it is for us,” she explained.
But two political scientists, JOHN SIDES, now of Vanderbilt University, and LYNN VAVRECK, of UCLA, measured attitudes of women voters to Obama and Romney as traced over the course of media coverage of contraception and abortion issues in 11,000 publications and media outlets. They found the argument unpersuasive.
“It wasn’t clear that abortion as an issue had a real effect on persuadable voters in terms of which direction they shifted in the course of the campaign,” Sides told West Wing Playbook. “It didn’t push women in his direction. None of that really happened.”
Still, the perception stuck, and two years later, Democrats leaned in even harder. The “War on Women” mantra — built around the idea that Republican candidates would limit access to both abortion and birth control — did not prevent a huge GOP wave in 2014. That, in turn, produced a separate bit of conventional wisdom: Democrats had overestimated how much a campaign cudgel reproductive rights could be.
The reality, in retrospect, was probably somewhere in between, with murky explanations accompanying it. Among them: reproductive rights issues aren’t necessarily politically determinative and can resonate in different ways. To a voter, maintaining a right to an abortion may hold different weight than supporting legislation requiring insurance companies to cover birth control.
Still, Democratic operatives say it would be folly to look back at 2014 and conclude that reproductive rights don’t work electorally. One operative on Sen. MARK UDALL’s (D-Colo.) Senate reelection campaign said their relentless focus on birth control — an emphasis that earned him the moniker “Mark Uterus” — was actually “wildly successful” at keeping Udall in the race.
“Obama was at 37 percent in Colorado. It was a slog,” the person said. “All the modelling told us is that [CNN’s] Chris Cilliza and the pundits were getting annoyed that we were spending all this time on abortion but any decision to focus on something else would be to focus on something less salient to voters just because you find the press coverage annoying.”
Biden is in a similar polling pit as Obama in 2014. But whereas the loss of access to abortion was hypothetical threat back then, it could very well be the reality in 2022. Vavreck, for one, says that she expects far different results than the muddied cause and effect that she and Sides documented ten years ago.
“There has been a fundamental shift in the dimension we are fighting over,” she explained, noting that Democrats’ perception of the importance of abortion was heightened even before news leaked of the Supreme Court draft opinion.
But she also sounded a note of caution. If Democrats were to benefit politically from the overturning of Roe, it would be with respect to their voters being galvanized, not in moderate Republicans suddenly leaving their party.
“I think it is not so straightforward to believe that there are all these Republicans who have this issue and say, ‘How can we steal them?’” she explained. “One of the things our data shows is if you’re cross positioned with the ideology of your party, that issue is actually not that important to you.”
Put another way, if you’re a pro-choice Republican, then you probably don’t conceive of the loss of abortion rights as a top voting issue. “If it was,” Vavreck summarized, “you wouldn’t be a Republican.”
TEXT US — ARE YOU BARBARA LEAF, Biden’s nominee to serve as the State Department’s assistant secretary for Near Eastern Affairs? We want to hear from you. Or if you think we missed something in today’s edition, let us know and we may include it tomorrow. Email us at westwingtips@politico.com","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"mailto:westwingtips@politico.com","_id":"00000180-babe-d42c-abc8-babf20f40000","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"00000180-babe-d42c-abc8-babf20f40001","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>[email protected].
POTUS PUZZLER
Which president was made into a playable video game character in the classic arcade game NBA Jam?
(Answer at the bottom.)
The Oval
MAKING THE ROUNDS: The Biden White House has made its qualms ","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://deadline.com/2022/04/kim-kardashian-joe-biden-trevor-noah-white-house-correspondents-dinner-remarks-review-1235013792/","_id":"00000180-babe-d42c-abc8-babf20fa0000","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"00000180-babe-d42c-abc8-babf20fa0001","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>its qualms about Fox News ","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://twitter.com/k_jeanpierre/status/1239327596527190017?s=21&t=7oq7MbevCUiGHFz3NUY86g","_id":"00000180-babe-d42c-abc8-babf20fa0002","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"00000180-babe-d42c-abc8-babf20fa0003","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>about Fox News known","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/04/15/jen-psaki-peter-doocy-fox-biden/","_id":"00000180-babe-d42c-abc8-babf20fb0000","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"00000180-babe-d42c-abc8-babf20fb0001","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>known. But it continues to make sure daytime viewers get the administration’s perspective. Earlier this afternoon, host MARTHA MACCALLUM interviewed White House Economic Adviser JARED BERNSTEIN and Pentagon Press Secretary JOHN KIRBY. The White House also dispatched senior adviser GENE SPERLING earlier this week to debate the state of the economy with host JOHN ROBERTS (more on that in the Oppo Book).
PSAKI SPEAKS: Outgoing White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday described threats her family has received and said navigating them has been the “most personally difficult” part of her job, our QUINT FORGEY reports.
“I have had nasty letters, texts to me with my personal address, the names of my children,” she said at an event sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. “It crosses lines, and that’s when it becomes a little scary. And that has been the most personally difficult aspect of this job.”
THE BUREAUCRATS
FIRST IN WEST WING PLAYBOOK: Transportation Secretary PETE BUTTIGIEG will be in Berlin for a May 17 event, co-hosted by the German Marshall Fund and KfW Bankengruppe, recognizing the 75th anniversary of the Marshall Plan and the GMF’s 50th anniversary. Our DANIEL LIPPMAN reports that Buttigieg will speak at the event alongside CHRISTIAN LINDER, Germany’s federal minister of finance.
Agenda Setting
NIXING OFFSHORE LEASES: The Biden administration is still trying to straddle the uncomfortable divide between its need to appear it’s doing everything to reduce gas prices while remaining committed to combating climate change.
So environmental groups celebrated a win Thursday when the administration announced that it would not move forward with three major oil lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska. But as the Washington Post notes, Republicans are already attempting to use it as a political weapon against Democrats in the midterms as inflation and energy costs remain central to many voters’ dissatisfaction with the administration. Also, Sen. JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.)? NOT happy","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2022/05/just-awful-manchin-rips-biden-for-canceling-offshore-oil-lease-sales-00032151","_id":"00000180-babe-d42c-abc8-babf21060000","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"00000180-babe-d42c-abc8-babf21060001","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>NOT happy.
Filling the Ranks
SEND IT IN, AGAIN, JEROME: The Senate Thursday voted 80-19 to confirm Fed Reserve chair JEROME POWELL for a second term, securing his position at the world’s most important central bank for the next four years. The confirmation comes as the nation fights high inflation rates — a fact that Sen. JOHN OSSOFF (D-Ga.) noted in explaining why he voted no.
“I like and respect Chairman Powell,” said Ossoff. “But 8.3 percent inflation is hurting my constituents a year after the Fed predicted inflation was ‘transitory.’”
What We’re Reading
Where’s Joe
He received the President’s Daily Brief in the morning.
The president also kicked off the two day U.S.-Association of Southeast Asian Nations Special Summit by hosting ASEAN countries and secretary-general on the South Lawn. The president also held a dinner for the leaders this evening in the State Dining Room.
Where’s Kamala
She delivered remarks at the Global COVID-19 Summit with world leaders in the morning.
She also received the President’s Daily Brief in the Oval Office.
The Oppo Book
We wouldn’t have exactly pegged Gene Sperling, White House Covid-19 economic relief coordinator, to be a daredevil.
But as it turns out, back in 1999, when he worked for the Clinton administration, he and a few other White House aides decided to go bungee jumping while on a business trip in New Zealand.
Our very own JOHN HARRIS, who worked for WaPo at the time","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/daily/bungee091599.htm","_id":"00000180-babe-d42c-abc8-babf21140000","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"00000180-babe-d42c-abc8-babf21140001","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>who worked for WaPo at the time, wrote that “witnesses said a nauseated look of impending doom painted his face. It was gone moments later, as an exhilarated Sperling described his free fall.” (West Wing Playbook was reminded of this moment by a brief comment Sperling made about the ordeal during an interview this week with Fox News host John Roberts).
Harris noted that at the time, Sperling “joked that it was unclear whether stocks would plunge on the news that he was falling, or on the news that he had bounced back up.”
Verrrrrry funny, Gene!
POTUS PUZZLER ANSWER
BILL CLINTON, a fairly avid professional hoops fan who was a regular at Brooklyn Nets games before the pandemic, was made into a secret video game character that players could unlock in the iconic NBA Jam video game. His highlight reel on Youtube is pretty impressive","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4rSx5PeBAM","_id":"00000180-babe-d42c-abc8-babf21160000","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"00000180-babe-d42c-abc8-babf21160001","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>is pretty impressive.
A CALL OUT — Think you have a more difficult trivia question? Send us your best question on the presidents with a citation and we may feature it.
Edited by Eun Kyung Kim and Sam Stein
