Should have known better
I spent the last week largely avoiding writing about Donald Trump – at least directly, because I don’t think any of us really want to think about him longer than we have to. We worked hard to defeat him already in two elections and we’re unified with a campaign that MAGA can’t quite seem to flip the script on. The 2024 election also comes on the heels of a midterm election where Democrats defied expectations and made reproductive rights into a winning issue, but I feel that at this point there’s no way around it.
Even though Donald Trump likes to boast about his SCOTUS overturning Roe v. Wade, he’s desperately tried in the last few weeks to try and distance himself from a national abortion ban – something that’s been a longtime goal of the GOP. The problem is that this also backfired with the staunchest supporters of the pro-life movement, who learned the hard way what most of us saw from the beginning: Donald Trump is someone who cares only about himself and staying in power, and he flirted with the idea of throwing them under the bus so he wouldn’t lose voters in the middle.
The bigger problem, however, among people who should really know better, is that a lot of moderates really appeared to believe Donald Trump, who is somehow absolutely telling the truth on this, even if he lies every time his lips move. On Friday, however, he showed us who he really was, when as a private citizen, he announced his decision to vote in support of a near total abortion ban in Florida, signaling that if he’ll vote for one now, he’ll absolutely sign one into law if he ever occupies the Oval Office again.
Kamala Harris’ campaign was waiting for him to revert back to his old self, and sure enough he has – something they responded to and covered better than the mainstream press. Make no mistake, any Republican president will have no choice but to sign such a ban – and Donald Trump is no different.
Our job between now and Nov 5 is to make sure that the connection is made clear, and Donald Trump’s latest screwup just made our work a little easier. Let’s do everything we can to make sure Americans roundly reject Donald Trump and the GOP on Nov 5 when we make Vice President Harris our Madam President-elect with a Democratic trifecta to govern.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making