Dems Tone Down Pro-Abortion Rhetoric To Win Over Black Voters
Democrats are toning down their abortion rhetoric to appeal to black voters who they view as being more socially conservative, according to The New York Times.
Black Democrats are significantly less likely to find abortion morally acceptable or to support unlimited legal abortion compared to non-black Democrats, a Gallup poll found. Strategists are advising Democratic politicians to frame the abortion issue as a broader attack on civil rights and to avoid actually discussing abortion to appeal to this demographic, according to The New York Times.
I am participating in a fireside conversation with @KekePalmer at ESSENCE Festival of Culture on the most critical issues facing Black women, including the fight for reproductive rights. Tune in. https://t.co/3Gr6T5ocPx
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) July 2, 2022
“If the Democratic Party really wanted to appeal to Black Christians about reproductive rights, they would have to package it in a very specific way,” Eric McDaniel, co-director of the Politics of Race and Ethnicity Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, told the NYT. “If they’re going to talk about it, they have to frame this as, ‘This is just part of a larger assault on your rights.’”
Rev. Najuma Smith-Pollard, a pastor at a Black church in Los Angeles, had a similar message for Vice President Kamala Harris at a June roundtable of faith leaders.
The best way to message to Smith-Pollard’s community “would be like having to have the conversation without the word abortion,” she said in a later interview, according to the NYT. “We were all clear that this is about abortion, but this is not just about abortion.”
Democrats are losing non-white voters, particularly black and hispanic people, to the Republican party, in part because of social issues like abortion.
Democrats’ abortion agenda is deeply unpopular among voters; 48 out of 50 Senate Democrats were sponsors or cosponsors of a bill that would legalize elective abortions nationwide throughout the entire duration of pregnancy, a measure that 80% of voters opposed in a June Associated Press poll. Another 65% of voters believe abortion should be illegal or mostly illegal in the second trimester, the poll found, but such restrictions were considered unconstitutional under the Roe precedent.
Some analysts expected the overturning of Roe v. Wade to inspire voters to help Democrats recover some support ahead of 2022 midterm elections, but Republicans were ahead of Democrats in polls by similar margins before and after the court’s draft opinion was leaked.
The Democratic National Committee did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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