Abortion is a crucial issue in this election – and a powerful motivator for voters. Yet the president is still tiptoeing around it
For years, the beltway set had a standard line of advice for Democratic candidates: stick to the economy. The idea was that white, male, blue-collar voters – those magical creatures, somewhere out there in the windswept lands of the upper midwest, who always qualify in the pundit imagination as “real Americans” – would be turned off by so-called culture-war issues.
These guys, we were told, didn’t want to hear about civil rights or social equality: they wanted to hear about economic growth. According to this advice, Democrats could be pro-choice, pro-racial justice, or pro-LGBTQ rights, but not openly, avowedly so. They had to play their progressive social positions in a minor key.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist