Harris and the Democrats bet on abortion and lost

Among Kamala Harris’ many strategic blunders, abortion may be her greatest.

In her overemphasis of and overextension on this issue, Harris exhibited the same elitism and hubris that doomed her entire campaign.

When the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade in June 2022, Democrats saw political opportunity. The overturning undid half a century of judicial precedent. It occurred only with the assent of President Trump’s three Supreme Court picks. And it galvanized Democrats’ women supporters.

Additional factors only added to Democrats’ belief that they had a potent presidential issue. State ballot initiatives in 2022 and 2023 broke in favor of abortion. Women are the majority of presidential voters, while Trump’s connection to the overturning — plus his high unfavorable ratings — concentrated Democrats’ advantage. Finally, abortion was one of the few issues on which Harris

Yet the outcome on Election Day showed that not only had Trump won a decisive presidential victory, but that he had done so in large part by neutralizing the abortion issue. In fact,by denying Harris an issue she and Democrats had so emphasized, he effectively won the issue.

Exit polling shows 2024’s near-perfect split on abortion. Among those who thought abortion should be “legal in all cases” (33 percent of voters), Harris predictably won 88-9 percent. Among those who thought abortion should be “illegal in most cases” (25 percent of voters), Trump won 92-7 percent, and among those who thought abortion should be “illegal in all case” (5 percent of voters), Trump won 88-11 percent. Amazingly though, among those who thought that abortion “should be legal in most cases” (33 percent of voters), Harris and Trump tied with 49 percent each.

With all of Harris’ emphasis on abortion and all of Trump’s seeming political liabilities on the issue — 65 percent of Americans thought should be legal in all or most cases — how did this happen?

One answer is that Trump’s position was that abortion was an issue best left to the states, not the federal government. Trump’s position put him in concurrence with the Tenth Amendment, which reserves for the states powers not expressly delegated to the federal government.

Another is that for Harris, overturning Roe v. Wade was not about reinstatement but expansion. The decision became a stalking horse for sweeping away the abortion limitations that Roe v. Wade allowed to be in place. Harris was therefore very careful to avoid answering questions about whether she would accept such Roe v. Wade limitations. That Roe v. Wade was bad judicial reasoning — a position that former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg also held — only hurt further.

But Harris and Democrats’ failure to capitalize politically on abortion runs deeper still. It is also symptomatic of the Harris campaign’s overall failure.

Harris’ attempt to use Roe v. Wade’s overturning to extend abortion and reduce its former limitations fit her campaign’s overall extremism on a host of issues — environmentalism, illegal immigration, gender and more.

Harris also made a fundamental political miscalculation. She imagined that voters would conform to the identity groups to which Democrats unilaterally assign them. Their calculation was simple: Democratic women support abortion; all women must support abortion; women are the voting majority; therefore, I will win.

But Harris’ simple calculation was too simplistic. Yes, Harris won 53 percent of women voters, but she also lost 45 percent of them — and she lost married women 48 percent to 51 percent.

There was also an overlooked state dynamic. Presumably, states (red states) with abortion limitations also had a majority of women supporting the limitations. In states (blue states) with few to no abortion limitations, a majority of women supported few to no abortion limitations.

These basic dynamics meant that Harris was losing votes in states where she was going to lose anyway and winning votes in states that she was going to win anyway.

In short, her focus on abortion was ineffective at moving states — making it questionable for having a big electoral impact. November’s outcome underscores this. In the seven states where abortion initiatives prevailed on the 2024 ballot, Trump won four — including battleground states Arizona and Nevada.

At the core of Harris’ abortion failure was an elitist denigration. The campaign featured insulting commercials about men and women who disagreed with her on expanding abortion nationally. While the intent should have been to win these voters over, the effect was undoubtedly the opposite.

In the end, neither Harris nor Democrats could suppress their elitist disdain — not even temporarily, just for the sake of winning. It is simply too much who they are and how they see others.

Their blindness led to their mistaken belief that voters would see the world as they saw it. They were wrong, and that meant abortion’s limitations as a political issue were self-fulfilling.

J.T. Young is the author of the new book, “Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left,” from RealClear Publishing and has over three decades’ experience working in Congress, Department of Treasury, and OMB and representing a Fortune 20 company.