The Supreme Court’s June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision overturning Roe v. Wade may have created a political headache for the Republican Party for years to come, but by fueling a surge of female turnout that prevented a red wave in the midterm elections, the Dobbs decision set in motion a series of events that led to President Donald Trump’s historic reelection.
Before the Supreme Court upended fifty years of abortion precedent, it looked as though the Democratic Party was heading towards possibly historic losses in the House and Senate thanks to President Joe Biden’s anemic job approval numbers. But after Dobbs, Democrats received a surge of support, predominantly from unmarried women, that turned an expected Senate loss into a Senate gain, and minimized losses in the House.
At the time it was expected that Biden would honor his promise to serve one-term and pass the torch to a new generation of Democrats by not running for reelection. But buoyed by the evaporation of a red wave, Biden began to change his mind, and he was supported by Democratic leaders.
“Boy, he literally had the Democratic Party across the country at every level, state, local, congressional, it had the best midterms of any Democratic president since J.F.K.,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said the Sunday after the election. “This victory belongs to Joe Biden,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said the same day.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who unlike Biden did pass the baton to a younger colleague, said a week after the election, “He has been a great president and he has a great record to run on.”
The Biden White House heard these voices and moved towards another run. “The same coalition President Biden built to expand the map for Democrats in 2020 powered our historic midterm wins, including unprecedented youth turnout,” said White House spokesperson Andrew Bates later that December. And by March it was clear Biden had decided to use his power of the Democratic National Committee to clear the field and set up a reelection campaign.
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Once Biden decided to run, and once the Democratic Party decided to circle the wagons around his obvious age-related infirmities, the arc of Trump’s return to power was set. By misreading the anger over Dobbs as a validation for his administration’s record, Biden denied the Democratic Party an open primary contest that would have allowed them to battle-test a new candidate untied to Biden’s record that could have developed a new vision for the country.
Would a contested primary have been painful and possibly chaotic? Yes. But nothing in life, or politics, is easy. And by avoiding the discomfort of a normal primary process, Democrats set up first Biden, and then Vice President Kamala Harris, for failure.