It was conventional wisdom for years that abortion was an albatross around the necks of Democrats, that they should hide and make "compromising" noises while signalling to their voters about "judges."That the elite political media does not yet seem to understand the megatonnage of the Dobbs decision out in the country is a very strange thing.
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) August 9, 2023
One can always make arguments that this was true in key swing states and districts, or that it motivated more of THEIR voters than OUR voters. I'm skeptical about this view, but even if we grant that it was true, it led everyone to believe (or pretend to believe) that abortion was overall unpopular.
The justification derived from the fact that abortion polling always gives three options. Basically: a) abortion always legal, b) SOME RESTRICTIONS ON ABORTION, c) abortion always illegal. Then you lump in b) and c) to say the Republican position is correct, instead of lumping in a) and b) and pointing out that it is (was), actually, the status quo (Casey).
Add that to years of labeling anyone who pointed out that "abortion is medical care" was a lunatic extremist. This was, actually, the knee jerk response from a Biden person (Kate Bedingfield) after Dobbs:
Joe Biden’s goal in responding to Dobbs is not to satisfy some activists who have been consistently out of step with the mainstream of the Democratic Party. It’s to deliver help to women who are in danger and assemble a broad-based coalition to defend a woman’s right to choose now, just as he assembled such a coalition to win during the 2020 campaign.That pro-choice activists were the crazy aunts you had to keep quiet as best you could was a pretty standard view among powerful Dems (electeds, donor class, pundits, affiliated). Another area where a "grand compromise" dictated by centrist dipshits was supposed to make the issue go away forever so we could go on to talking important big boy issues like who to bomb next.