How are Democrats like a two-year-old?
There’s a reason they call it the “terrible twos.” The poor, frustrated toddler is old enough to know what he wants but can’t verbalize his needs or desires. So the child screams and cries hysterically because it’s the only way he has to communicate.
If this reminds you of many Democrats commenting on the Dobbs decision, you’d be right.
After the decision was announced, Joe Biden gave a statement that the pro-abortion left finds extremely inadequate.
“This fall, Roe is on the ballot,” Biden said at the White House. “Personal freedoms are on the ballot. The right to privacy, liberty, equality, they’re all on the ballot.”
That may be true. But the pro-abortion lobby wants Biden to save abortion now! And they’re getting frustrated with the White House’s lack of urgency.
Biden just isn’t hysterical enough.
To an increasingly vocal group of frustrated Democrats, activists and even members of Congress, such responses by party leaders have been strikingly inadequate to meet a moment of crisis. They criticize the notion that it is on voters to turn out in November when they say Democrats are unwilling to push boundaries and upend the system in defense of hard-won civil liberties.
“We have Democrats that are doing the opposite, you know? They just aren’t fighting,” Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) said. “When people see that, what’s going to make them show up to vote? We can’t just tell people, ‘Well, just vote — vote your problems away.’ Because they’re looking at us and saying, ‘Well, we already voted for you.’”
Cue the two-year-old in the wings.
Biden was asked about the idea of packing the court or the notion that he should declare a “national emergency” because abortion wasn’t going to be absolutely legal in every case, in every state, right up to the moment of birth and beyond.
“I think the Supreme Court has made some terrible decisions,” Biden said.
A senior White House official said Biden is simply being honest with the public about what he can do unilaterally, adding that the president is “taking major actions under executive authority as he fights this extreme decision very hard — but being clear and honest that only Congress can fix the situation.”
White House officials note that the administration has moved to protect access to the so-called abortion pill even in states that try to ban it, and that the president has pledged to protect women who seek to travel across state lines to get an abortion.
The people have already spoken. They elected a Republican president in 2016 who named three justices to the Supreme Court who were conservative enough to overturn Roe if the right case came along. Dobbs turned out to be that case.
The American people also elected enough Republican senators to vote to confirm those justices to the bench. The Dobbs result was 50 years in the making and became reality because millions of ordinary people — men and women — saw a terrible wrong that needed righting and voted for the candidates who agreed with them.
But Democrats are screaming for Biden to return the world to pre-Dobbs.
In a Saturday letter led by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the No. 3 Democratic leader, 34 Senate Democrats urged Biden to “take every step available to your administration, across federal agencies, to help women access abortions and other reproductive health care.”
“I want the administration to look at all of its options here,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), who signed the letter. She added, though, that she’s most focused on “making clear to the people of my state what’s on the ballot this fall.”
Biden and his team have, indeed, “looked at all of its options” and are stymied by the Constitution that gives the president wide latitude in executing the law but no ability to make law.
But his team argues there are sharp limits to his executive powers to protect abortion access. Administration officials stress the White House needs to mount a public response that’s realistic about its limits to avoid doing long-term political or practical harm to their goals. That approach may not alleviate Hill Democrats’ concerns about the lack of a coordinated, direct pushback to Roe’s collapse.
Isn’t this why you give a two-year-old a teething ring?
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