CHRIS CRUCIAL: Joe Biden's secret weapon 🤫

PLUS: Fetterman's driving problems

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1. It’s the abortion issue, stupid

There’s a tendency in politics to overthink things. We — the political class of reporters, consultants and candidates — have way too much time to think about this stuff. We develop all sorts of complicated scenarios that might happen. We game out hypothetical after hypothetical.

I think that’s absolutely the case when it comes to how Joe Biden can beat Donald Trump in November.

He needs to get under Trump’s skin! Insult him!

He needs to stay about the fray and act presidential!

He needs to talk about January 6 every day!

He need to talk about Trump’s botched handling of Covid-19!

And on and on and on. Everyone has a slightly different version of the case Biden needs to make in order to win.

But, I think people are over-intellectualizing this. There is lots of evidence that the abortion issue — and, in particular, the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022 — is the issue that galvanizes many of the people Biden needs to win.

Take these new numbers from Gallup. In the poll, one in three registered voters say they would only vote for a candidate who shares their position on abortion — the highest number ever recorded by Gallup:

Which is interesting. But not as interesting as the next Gallup finding: That the increase in people saying a candidate MUST agree with them on abortion is driven by pro-choice voters.

So, three times as many pro-choice registered voters as pro-life voters say that a candidate HAS to agree with them on abortion in order to win their vote.

This seems like a no-brainer for Biden, right? He is, after all, pro-choice. And while Donald Trump has been all over the map on abortion — he was pro choice but is now pro life — one thing that is beyond debate is this: Trump, as president, appointed three conservative Supreme Court Justices who were the deciding votes in the overturning of Roe.

Like, no matter what Trump now says about abortion, that is a fact. If Hillary Clinton had beaten Trump — in the electoral college, that is — in 2016, Roe v Wade would still be the law of the land.

(Sidebar: The Court kicked the can down the road today when it said that the plaintiffs did not have standing to bring an effort to ban the abortion pill mifepristone. That does NOT mean the issue won’t come in front of the Court in the future.)

And, it’s not just this Gallup poll (or lots of other polls like it) that show how important abortion is to an increasing number of voters — especially women.

Consider the 2022 election that was, if you recall, supposed to be a Republican sweep. It was not — largely due, according to strategists involved in the races on both sides, to the Roe reversal.

As POLITICO reported in an after-action report on the 2022 midterms:

On Election Day, voters in critical states like Michigan and Pennsylvania ranked abortion — not inflation or crime — as the most important issue in the midterms, according to exit polls. The red wave never arrived. Instead, Democrats gained a seat in the Senate and Republicans, badly underperforming expectations, barely took back the House. Democrats also held onto a slew of governor’s mansions, from Wisconsin to Oregon, that otherwise may have slipped out of reach, and won control of four legislative chambers. Republicans failed to flip a single one.

And it wasn’t just 2022! As Axios reported in the wake of the 2023 election:

Tuesday’s off-year elections proved the recent staying power of abortion rights to bolster Democratic success, even in red states like Ohio and Kentucky.

Abortion rights have won every time they've been on the ballot since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Ohio voters added the right to abortion into the state constitution — a major win for abortion rights in a ballot measure.

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear kept his seat in the deep red state of Kentucky, after an election often defined by his support for abortion rights.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) failed to gain control of the state legislature. It means he will not be able to pass his 15-week "limit" on abortions — and casts a shadow over a potential 2024 presidential bid.

That seems, well, good for Biden? And something he should talk about ALL the time, right? Because if we think the election is going to come down to suburban women in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — and I think it might well — then talking about how Biden is the only major party candidate who didn’t appoint the justices who overturned Roe seems smart!

I know, I know. I am oversimplifying things a bit here. But not that much! Abortion seems to me to be the single best bet that Biden could place on this election. But will he do it?

2. John Fetterman, call your office

You might have seen over the weekend that Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman was in a car accident. He wasn’t badly injured. You probably scrolled right past it and didn’t think about it again.

But the Washington Post reported Thursday on not only the details of Fetterman’s accident but on the broader driving issues he has had over the years. And it is not a pretty picture.

First, the crash this weekend. Fetterman rear-ended a 62-year-old woman on Sunday morning in western Maryland. The woman was taken to the hospital in an ambulance (as were Fetterman and his wife).

Which is not great — and deserved more press attention than it got at the time even though Fetterman did his best to downplay the whole thing.

But this latest crash isn’t a one-off. It fits a pattern of dangerous driving from Fetterman. Here’s the Post on that:

The accident was the latest example of unsafe driving by Fetterman, according to public records and people with knowledge of the situation. He has received two speeding tickets for violations of at least 24 miles per hour above the speed limit, one in 2016 and one in March, according to Pennsylvania state records. After the ticket this year, when he was driving 34 miles per hour over the limit, he was required by the state to complete a driver’s improvement course, according to a person familiar with the outcome who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the episode. Neither record said exactly where he was driving or how fast he was going.

At other times, aides have said Fetterman has texted and FaceTimed while driving, prompting concern among his staff and fears about riding with him, according to three people with knowledge of staff discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal conversations.

Oomph.

What’s interesting to me about all of this is that Fetterman has been very transparent with the public (and the media) when it’s come to his struggles with mental illness. (I’ve written in this space before praising him for his willingness to talk openly about depression.)

But when it comes to his driving record, well, Fetterman seems much less willing to be an open book. Which, I get! It’s not a great look for an elected official to keep getting pulled over for speeding. Or to be in a crash.

Still though. This sort of headline — “Fetterman had history of speeding tickets, distracted driving before car crash” — is NOT a good one.

3. Trump endorses Hogan

Just weeks after a top aide and his daughter-in-law suggested that Larry Hogan had committed political suicide by saying that people needed to respect the decision in Donald Trump’s hush money trial, the former president unexpectedly endorsed the former Maryland GOP governor.

“I'd like to see him win,” Trump told Fox News of Hogan, who is running for an open Senate seat in Maryland. “I think he has a good chance to win… I know other people made some strong statements, but I can just say from my standpoint, I'm about the party and I'm about the country. And I would like to see him win.”

Those “other people” are Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita and Lara Trump, who is a) the co-chair of the Republican National Committee and b) married to Trump’s son Eric.

“He doesn’t deserve the respect of anyone in the Republican Party at this point, and quite frankly, anybody in America, if that’s the way you feel,” Lara Trump told CNN about Hogan’s comments on the verdict. “That’s very upsetting to hear that.”

LaCivita was even more blunt; “You just ended your campaign,” he told Hogan via X.

Trump’s decision to publicly support Hogan is smart, politically speaking. Hogan has a real chance to win in overwhelmingly Democratic Maryland this fall. He is the only Republican in the state who could possibly win this race. And the only way he can win it is to make clear that he is not walking in lock step with Trump, who is deeply unpopular with voters in the state.

Of course, the public backing of Trump cuts both ways for Hogan. You can be sure that Angela Alsobrooks, the Democratic nominee, will make sure voters are well aware of Trump’s endorsement of Hogan.

The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter currently rates the Maryland race as “Likely Democrat.”

4. Gabe Fleisher comes to Substack!

I’ve been busting at the seams keeping this secret but it’s not a secret anymore: Gabe Fleisher, the author of “Wake Up To Politics,” is now on Substack.

This is great news for Gabe — and for Substack. He is what the future of sustainable political journalism will be — individual creators who build a relationship with their community over time.

I’ve written about Gabe in this space before (he’s only 22!). If you haven’t read that, do it now! I am going to start recommending Gabe’s Substack but you should just go subscribe now!

NOTABLE QUOTABLE

“Nancy Pelosi’s daughter is a wacko, her daughter told me if things were different Nancy and I would be perfect together, there’s an age difference though.” — Donald Trump to House Republicans. Yes, really.

ONE GOOD CHART

Sometimes a chart is worth 1,000 words.

SONG OF THE DAY

Waxahatchee (aka Katie Crutchfield) is the frontrunner for my album of the year with “Tigers Blood.” In a recent session at SiriusXM studios, she did a cover of “Outfit” — a Drive-By Truckers song written by Jason Isbell. You can here a snippet of it here. And this is Isbell doing it. Incredible.

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