Democrats are stepping up their attacks on former President Trump’s vice presidential nominee, Senator JD Vance (R-Ohio), calling him an extremist anti-abortion activist and Trump clone who pursues a far-right, misogynistic agenda.
Democrats consider the issue of abortion to be one of Trump’s candidates’ biggest weaknesses and therefore like to highlight Vance’s past comments and positions to draw a contrast with Vice President Harris.
Immediately after Trump announced his electionThe Biden team held a press conference with officials and surrogates to highlight Vance’s alleged extremism.
“He is proud to be anti-choice and wants to set women back decades,” said Jen O’Malley Dillon, chair of President Biden’s re-election campaign.
“A Trump-Vance administration will endanger reproductive freedom in all 50 states,” Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All, said in a conference call on Monday. “This is not an abstract idea. We know they don’t plan to stop at overturning Roe.”
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) holds press conferences in Milwaukee all week to highlight Trump’s ties to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the conservative movement’s detailed plan for how the next Republican president should exercise power.
The document calls for, among other things, restrictions on abortion pills, withdrawal of Medicaid funds for Planned Parenthood, and withdrawal of Food and Drug Administration approval of abortion drugs.
On Wednesday, the DNC hosted reproductive rights activist Amanda Zurawski, who sued Texas over its 2022 abortion ban after she said she nearly died when doctors delayed a medically necessary abortion.
“I believe that health care decisions are between a woman and her doctor, but if Donald Trump and JD Vance are elected, they will make my devastating story, the stories I’ve heard across the country, a reality for far too many more American women,” Zurawski said.
Trump is Distancing from Project 2025and claimed he knew nothing about it because the Democrats Try to make it a burden.
He is also aware of the political vulnerability of abortion and tries to find a middle ground: he takes a more moderate stance on this issue, but at the same time appeals to the right-wing base.
Trump continues to hold that abortion policy is a state matter, but continues to take credit for ending Roe v. Wade and eliminating the constitutional right to the procedure.
While Trump walks a fine line on abortion, Vance has been a staunch opponent of abortion rights throughout his political career, earning an A+ rating from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a prominent anti-abortion group.
Since then, he has tried to moderate his statements and move closer to Trump, but Vance’s record so far has given Democrats plenty of fodder for their attacks.
“Vance’s rhetoric and positions have been so extreme that he overshadows Mike Pence,” said Matt Bennett, a Democratic strategist and co-founder of the center-left think tank Third Way.
Vance welcomed the overturning of Roe v. Wade and supported Texas’s abortion ban, which allows no exceptions except in cases where the mother’s life is in danger.
In a 2021 interview, he stated that he did not support exceptions, even for rape or incest. But in his 2022 Senate campaign, Vance said during a debate, “I have always believed in reasonable exceptions.”
He campaigned against Ohio’s 2023 bill guaranteeing abortion rights and advocated for a statewide ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy with certain exceptions.
Perhaps as an indication of this vulnerability, abortion has been barely mentioned during the convention. Vance did not talk about everything during his speech on Wednesday evening.
For a long time, the issue of abortion was an integral part of Republican politics, but Trump’s reluctance to openly take a position on abortion is now supported by huge parts of the Republican Party: the official party platform neither explicitly calls for a nationwide ban nor explicitly demands that fetuses be granted equal rights under the law.
Democrats are trying to go on the offensive and divert focus from lingering concerns about Biden’s fitness for office, but it’s not clear whether their attacks will cut through the noise.
Bennett said that by promoting Vance, Trump has now taken responsibility for his positions, which Democrats will defend through November. While there are many potential distractions right now, this will not be lasting, he said.
“What’s happening in the last two weeks, the assassination attempt, all the drama surrounding Biden, I think that’s drowned everything out,” Bennett said. “But we’re going to get back to the issues of the future. And abortion is certainly going to be one of the top three issues.”
