ANALYSIS | The strategy behind Biden's new language on Republicans

Biden would address possible overturning of Supreme Court draft on abortion rights 0:59

(CNN) --

Last week's Supreme Court scandal introduced two new terms into Joe Biden's presidential rhetoric.

One of them was abortion;

the other may further shape his prospects for the election year.

That term is "MAGA Republicans," which Biden paired with "extreme" but, significantly, not "Donald Trump."

The distinction reflects polling and analysis by Biden allies, designed to identify the most effective arguments for Democrats as they try to fend off a crushing Republican blow in the November election.

“It is very clear that the Democratic Party has not had a consistent story to tell about the Republican Party and what has happened to it,” says Anita Dunn, a top Biden adviser who was involved in the investigation and will soon rejoin the Republican Party. White House staff.

"I don't think we were looking for this particular message, but it found us."

Democrats intend to spend the final stretch of 2022 trying to redirect voters' attention from discontent with Biden's performance to a contrast with Republican opponents.

They have no choice;

century-long historical trends, reinforced by current discontent over inflation, among other issues, suggest that midterm losses will likely cost them control of the House and perhaps the Senate.

The question is what kind of contrast should be established.

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Traditionally, Democrats have used issues like fiscal and spending priorities to attack Republicans as the party of the rich.

That helped President Barack Obama win reelection in 2012 over Mitt Romney, the former private equity executive who now represents Utah in the Senate.

In 2018 and 2020, Democrats successfully ran against Trump's unpopular persona and agenda.

But he is now neither president nor on the ballot, facts that undermined Democratic attempts to use him as the frontrunner in Virginia's gubernatorial race last fall.

• ANALYSIS |

  The political environment is dire for Democrats heading into the midterms... and it could get worse

It was then that the liberal Center for American Progress began to explore different approaches.

Looking beyond the former president, his poll tested broader issues involving changes Trump hastened within the GOP that have outlasted his tenure.

"This is so much bigger than him," explains Navin Nayak, president of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

"They have been radicalized."

With an eye toward a larger picture, the Center for American Progress did not measure attitudes toward discrete issues like climate change or abortion.

Since Americans vote less for their political positions than for the party with which they personally identify, he explored defining a reshaped GOP to steer his potential supporters toward the Democrats.

In separate polls, Hart Research and the Global Strategy Group asked Americans who don't align strongly with Trump about the evolution of the GOP.

His research suggested that many saw broad changes in the last five to 10 years in the GOP, and in key sectors of the electorate -- independents, non-whites, whites without a college degree -- substantial percentages said those changes have been for the worse.

In districts and states with House, Senate and gubernatorial races, pollsters found attacking "an extreme new MAGA agenda" moved voters more than hitting the GOP's quest to "lower taxes on the rich." ".

The pollsters also concluded that there was broad agreement that Republicans were "willing to do anything for power."

Those results support the new argument that Biden and his fellow Democrats have begun to make.

It is about presenting the Republicans' quest for power as a threat not only to the economic interests of voters, but also to American values, personal rights, and democracy itself.

His prime example came on January 6, 2021. Next month, public hearings for the House committee investigating the deadly insurrection will drive the point home by showing the role of Trump and Republican allies.

Now the Supreme Court's leaked draft opinion on abortion unexpectedly provided what Nayak calls a "powerful point of proof."

As Biden demonstrated from the White House last week, Democrats will use the potential rollback of a half-century-old constitutional right to rally voters against extremism.

Highlighting how Republicans wielded power to create a conservative majority on the Supreme Court also fits the bill.

In 2016, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky fabricated an election-year excuse to block consideration of an Obama nominee for the Court, then scrapped it in 2020 to push for a Trump pick.

Since the leak, Republican Sen. Susan Collins has suggested that two Trump-appointed judges had misled her about her views on Roe v.

Wade during the confirmation process.

Did you know that abortion was legal in the 19th century in the US?

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The extremism framework encompasses veteran Democratic strategist James Carville's call to highlight "openly weird" Republicans like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina.

Dunn says the Democrats intend to "make them even better known than they've already been."

By directing the attacks at "MAGA Republicans," Biden leaves room for cooperation with more traditional GOP lawmakers.

One of them, retired Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, joined the president at a metallurgical plant here as he touted a pending bill that invests billions in semiconductor manufacturing.

But the rising partisan temperature risks complicating the negotiations.

The odds against Democrats in Congress remain long as most voters continue to disapprove of the president's performance.

What Biden advisers hope is that the "Republican MAGA" issue will give them a fighting chance.

"There is no magic formula for the party in power to win a midterm election," Dunn concludes.

"Making it an election, not a referendum, is a first step."

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