When Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Kamala Harris, fans of the HBO series Veep didn’t miss the similar plot twist. Harris and the Democrats have embraced the comparison, even to the point of having actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the show’s fictional vice president, lead a women governors’ panel at their convention in Chicago.
It’s awkward. Veep satirizes a vulgar and cutthroat, albeit bumbling, political culture where the players will do anything to get and keep power. Someone should remind the Democrats it isn’t a guide – especially when it comes to turning their convention into an “abortion-palooza,” complete with a Planned Parenthood bus offering free abortions and demonstrators dressed in abortion-drug costumes.
Season 3 of the show finds Vice President Selina Meyer suddenly having to confront the issue of abortion, trying to juggle emissaries from both sides while desperately conferring with staff about what her opinion should be. Years before pollster Celinda Lake advised Democrats that “Debating weeks is not where we want to be,” Veep gave us a character struggling to draw a line—any line—on how late abortion should be allowed. Twenty-two weeks? Twenty-four weeks?
Pressed to take a position but finding no help in polls, Meyer waffles until her staffers can’t stand her indecision anymore. In public, she offers substance-free platitudes about “freedom.” In private, a cynical quip reveals her actual views: “If men got pregnant, you could get an abortion at an ATM.” The vocally pro-abortion........