Looking at the election as a contest over stability also highlights the risks Republicans face.
To start, there are Trump’s personal liabilities, which will certainly get more attention as the former president’s criminal trials get underway.
Beyond that, Trump’s policy positions, such as his vows to create massive internment camps and deport millions of unauthorized immigrants, including many who have lived in the U.S. for decades, aren’t going to sound like stability to many voters.
Trump must also contend with the more extreme efforts by his Republican allies to roll back decades of social change in the U.S., moves that could easily seem chaotic and threatening to a wide swath of voters.
The latest example comes from the Alabama Supreme Court which recently ruled that frozen embryos created by in vitro fertilization are children under state law.
“Unborn children are ‘children,’ ” under state law, the court, all of whose members are Republicans, held in its 7-2 ruling.
The court’s Chief Justice, Tom Parker, went further in a separate opinion explicitly linking the ruling to anti-abortion theology.
“Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory,” Parker wrote.
On Wednesday, five days after the ruling, the University of Alabama at Birmingham health system announced that it was suspending in vitro fertilization treatments.
“We must evaluate the potential that our patients and our physicians could be prosecuted criminally or face punitive damages for following the standard of care for I.V.F. treatments,” the hospital system said in a statement.
Even before that announcement, White House officials were warning of the disruption the ruling could cause.
“This is exactly the type of chaos that we expected when the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade and paved the way for politicians to dictate some of the most personal decisions families can make,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday.
