Comment on this story
Comment
Three days after the annulment of the Supreme Court Roe against WadePresident Biden used a break between meetings of the Group of Seven summit at the luxurious Schloss Elmau resort in Germany to get an update on the shocking and sudden loss of the right to abortion for millions of Americans at home his.
Gathering with top aides, including some who called from the White House, Biden stated at the beginning of the call that he wanted to support ending the Senate obstruction to coding. Roe in law, a position he had so far refused to take, and angered many Democrats in the process.
But Biden kept his decision private until three days later, during a press conference in Madrid, he unfolded the carefully crafted language he and his team had perfected a few moments earlier, denouncing the “outrageous behavior of the Supreme Court.” and calling for “an exception to the obstruction by this action to deal with the decision of the Supreme Court.”
Other voices emerge as some Democrats become impatient with Biden
For many Democrats, however, it was too little and too late, just one more example during the two weeks Biden and his team fought to come up with a muscular action plan on abortion rights, though the Supreme Court ruling had been. foreshadowed two months earlier with the leaking of a draft opinion.
Biden and his team were also unaware of the timing of the decision, and in the hours immediately following, they were unable to channel the raw, visceral rage that many Americans felt for the decision.
For many increasingly frustrated Democrats, Biden’s slow response to abortion was just the latest example of failure to meet the moment in a wave of conservative backlash, from gun control to environmental protection. environment and voting rights. Some aspects of the White House’s reaction have been felt by some Democrats as a routine response, including stakeholder calls and the creation of a working group, to an existential crisis.
“Leadership right now comes from the streets, and we would like the White House and Democrats to listen to us more broadly in this effort,” Rachel Carmona, executive director of the Women’s March, said Thursday. “I think Biden has a chance to take a step forward in a leadership role in a way that he hasn’t.”
This account of the administration’s 14-day struggle to draw up a message and a political plan following the Supreme Court’s decision to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization it is based on interviews with 26 senior White House officials, Democratic lawmakers, abortion rights activists, Democratic strategists and other Biden allies, many of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to share sincere details.
White House officials defend the urgency of Biden’s response and the actions he has taken on abortion, which they believe are in line with general opinion. “The president has been showing his deep indignation as an American and has executed his bold plan, which is the product of months of hard work, since that decision was made,” said the communications director of the White House Kate Bedingfield said in a statement Saturday.
“Joe Biden ‘s goal in responding Dobbs it is not to satisfy some activists who have been constantly out of step with the mainstream of the Democratic Party. It is to offer help to women who are in danger and to gather a broad coalition to defend the right of women to choose now, just as it gathered such a coalition to win during the 2020 campaign, ”she said.
While many Democrats and exasperated activists argue that the administration could do much more, others say they understand the White House’s view that its options are limited and that most important steps should come from Congress or states. .
“The reason it feels different is because the decision we feared for almost 50 years finally came about,” said Scott Mulhauser, a Democratic strategist who previously served as Biden’s chief trade adviser. “This moment, when the country takes a giant step back, and moments like this are too often put in the White House, as if they have a magic wand to fix everything, rather insufficient votes in Congress and a regressive majority of the Supreme Court. ”
Abortion is prohibited in these states. See where the laws have changed.
On Friday, Biden delivered an emotional speech that encouraged many Democrats with his tone of outrage and a call for combat, as he signed an executive order that strengthened abortion rights and access to contraceptives. He criticized the Supreme Court ruling, calling it “wrongdoing” and “an exercise in crude political power,” and urged women to “participate in record numbers to claim the rights the court has taken from them.” “.
However, Biden’s gentile tendencies were still in evidence, as he referred to “my Republican friends” even as he called them “extremists” and ridiculed them for “talking about getting Congress to pass a national ban.” of abortion.
“One of the reasons he was chosen was that he’s a decent, temperamental person, and there’s no doubt that he can raise his voice, but he doesn’t come out naturally and he doesn’t look good,” David said. Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama. “People got the president who voted, and I think those are good qualities that he has, but maybe they’re not the qualities that some people, especially Democratic activists, are looking for right now.”
About four hours after the decision was revoked Roe against Wade was dictated on June 24, the White House sent an email to numerous abortion rights allies asking them to join a call with senior officials that afternoon to “hear more about the Court’s ruling Supreme and the fight ahead “. Guests expected a call to fiery action and a detailed White House plan, a roadmap not only for the immediate consequences, but for the weeks and months that followed.
Instead, top White House and administration officials stressed that the issue was important to Biden and reiterated the actions the president had already outlined that day, including expanding access to the pill. abortion and the protection of women traveling across state borders to have an abortion. The call lasted about 20 minutes and officials did not answer any questions, according to an outside advisor who was on the call. Then several attendees complained to each other that the call was a waste of time, the external advisor said, and left deflated.
The sentiment was similar after the draft opinion was leaked almost two months earlier. Democratic activists then quickly contacted the White House to ask for ways to organize a response. But many of the groups felt they had encountered vague localities, a handful of listening sessions and promises the administration was working on a plan, said a Democratic strategist working with some of the groups. Following the official decision, some Democrats felt the administration had wasted valuable time in organizing the party apparatus to respond, the strategist added.
The democratic left is frustrated with Biden. How much could it matter?
The day of the decision did not unfold as White House officials expected, or as Democrats expected. White House aides expected the Supreme Court to issue the ruling as the final decision of the warrant on June 30, the day Biden was due to return from Madrid. It is not clear why they believed it. The court announces the planned release dates shortly, but does not say what opinions will be dropped on a particular day.
However, the president had already signed his prepared statements. If the decision had been published on June 30, Biden would have delivered his speech on his return to Washington, a White House official said.
Biden had been planning to appoint a conservative opponent of the right to abortion for a lifelong federal judge in Kentucky on the same day that Roe was dumped, according to emails first reported by the Louisville Courier Journal. The White House appears to have abandoned that idea after the ruling on abortion, according to those emails.
After the decision fell, the White House struggled to speed up its timeline. At an oval office meeting that morning, Biden met with key advisors to fine-tune his comments. The group focused on what actions it could take quickly to protect women’s rights, as well as the impact the ruling would have on the lives of millions of Americans and the Republicans’ nearly 50-year effort to restrict it. access to abortion. said two senior administration officials.
Democrats offer a mosaic of countermeasures with Roe overturned
They then sent the president to deliver his speech. “Make no mistake: this decision is the culmination of a deliberate effort for decades to upset the balance of our law,” Biden said at the time. “It is a finding of extreme ideology and a tragic error by the Supreme Court.”
But Biden’s handover did not have the urgent tone that many Democrats deemed necessary, and even some White House officials later said they wished the president had been more ardent, said another senior administration official. . The officer added that they felt Biden had lost the mark in part because he and his team were unprepared for the time of the decision and the reality of the sentence had not settled at all.
Vice President Harris was on his way to a previously scheduled speech in Illinois when the sentence fell. Her team printed her aboard Air Force Two, and studied her on the plane as her caravan headed to her first event, where she and her aides reviewed her comments to reflect the sudden crisis. . “This is the first time in the history of our nation that a constitutional right has been taken away from the people of the United States,” Harris said.
The White House also canceled the previously scheduled briefing of press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. Although he did an interview for MSNBC, the canceled briefing shocked some White House allies, who felt that the administration should …