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Market perspective is essential in avoiding investing mistakes. With the media constantly pushing a “Markets In Turmoil” narrative, it’s no wonder that investor sentiment recently reached some of the lowest levels since the financial crisis. The following chart is the z-score of the retail and professional investor sentiment composite index of bullish sentiment.

Notably, we are in one of the longest stretches of more extreme bearish sentiment outside structural bear markets. (Read "Death Crosses And Market Bottoms" for more detail and an explanation of the difference between event-driven corrections and structural bear markets.)

Of course, given the recent market decline and the surge in "bearish" media-driven narratives, it is unsurprising that bearish sentiment has risen. However, this is where investors start making mistakes in their investment process.

As noted, we are in one of the most extended stretches of bearish sentiment outside a structural bear market. The difference between event-driven corrections and structural bear markets is crucial to understand. However, extremely negative investor sentiment and positioning are the hallmarks of the end of corrections and bear markets. To wit:

In other words, historically speaking, the death cross, more often than not, is a potential contrarian indicator. The difference between whether the death cross is a shorter-term corrective process or a larger “bear market” decline depends mainly on whether the cause of the market decline is “event-driven” or “structural.” This context is important when examining the current decline and triggering of the “death cross.” The chart below shows the difference in the length of “event-driven” versus “structural” corrections, signified by the triggering of the “death cross.” The dot.com and financial crisis periods were structural events, as significant corporate failures and credit-market dislocations occurred amid deep economic contractions. However, outside of those two significant structural impacts, all other “events” were short-lived, and markets soon recovered."

This is because when sentiment is the most bearish and the markets trigger longer-term sell signals, much of the selling has already been exhausted. Nonetheless, now that we are constantly connected to financial media, we are inundated with headlines designed to get “clicks” more than delivering real news. “Investor Resolutions For 2025” noted that investor psychology is the most significant driver of investing failure over time. This cycle of human emotions is continually repeated through investment cycles.

While many behavioral biases significantly negatively impact investor outcomes, from herding to loss avoidance to confirmation bias, "anchoring" is one of the most important.

The Anchoring Problem

“Anchoring is a heuristic revealed by behavioral finance that describes the subconscious use of irrelevant information, such as the purchase price of a security, as a fixed reference point (or anchor) for making subsequent decisions about that security.” – Investopedia

“Anchoring,” also known as the “relativity trap,” is the tendency to compare our current situation within the scope of our limited experiences. For example, I would be willing to bet that you could tell me exactly what you paid for your first home and what you eventually sold it for. However, can you tell me exactly what you paid for your first soap bar, hamburger, or pair of shoes? Probably not.

The reason is that the home purchase was a major “life” event. Therefore, we attach particular significance to that event and remember it vividly. If there was a gain between the purchase and sale price of the home, it was a positive event, and therefore, we assume that the next home purchase will have a similar result. We are mentally “anchored” to that event and base our future decisions around very limited data.

Today, investors are trained by the financial media to “anchor” to a fixed point in the market. Such is why investors consistently measure performance, relative to the market, from January 1st to December 31st. Or, worse, we measure performance from the peak of an advance. For example:

• The market is up 140% from the March 2020 lows.
• The market is down 10% from the 2025 peak.
• Or, the market is down 6% for the year.

The problem is that most investors did not buy the 2020 bottom or sell the 2022 peak. However, one of the most significant forms of anchoring is portfolio "high water marks." The high water mark is the peak value of an investor's portfolio over a given time frame. For example, at the market's peak in 2025, an investor had a portfolio value of $1,000,000. During the recent market correction, the portfolio value declined to $950,000. While that $50,000 loss is significant and is certainly concerning for that investor, it must be put into the context of what is happening in the markets.

• First, before the correction that started in February, the market had rallied nearly 5%. Therefore, our example investor started the year with a portfolio value of roughly $960,000 that grew to $1,000,000.
• Secondly, while the $50,000 decline is significant, the investor is "anchored" to the portfolio's high-water mark.
• As noted above, the market is down 6% for the year, but the investor is at roughly the same level as he started this year.
• In other words, the portfolio return is roughly a loss of 1% versus a market decline of 6%.

Yes, a decline of $50,000 is significant, but these “anchor” points provide little perspective for the average investor regarding their relative position to their financial goals. However, these “anchors,” tied to constant media updates, feed our emotional decision-making processes driven by “greed” or “fear.”

Let’s take a look at an example:

As of Friday’s close, the market is down 10% from its all-time high.

As we warned about several times in 2024 and early this year, when a 10% correction eventually came, it would “feel” worse than it was because of the long period of low volatility.

Yes, it feels terrible. However, investors are now focusing on that “high-water mark.”

But this is the goal of the Wall Street marketing machine. Getting you to focus on current gains or losses creates a “sense of urgency” for you to do something. Why?

“Money in motion creates fees and revenue for Wall Street.”

Therefore, pushing you to take action may not necessarily be “profitable” for you, but it IS profitable for Wall Street.

Changing Your Anchor Point

To reduce your “emotional action button,” step back and change your “anchor” point.

If your portfolio is down 10% from the recent peak, ask yourself two questions:

1. Am I losing money? Or,
2. Is my portfolio still aligned with my investing goals?

If my goal is to average a 6% annualized return, where am I today relative to that goal? The issue of using the “high-water mark” as the “anchor” is that it resets psychologically to measure our performance from that level. Therefore, we should look back at where we were on a trailing one-year basis. If our goal was 6% a year, we almost doubled that goal over the last 12 months. All of a sudden, the recent decline doesn't seem as significant.

However, let's assume an investor was unlucky enough to have bought the market's peak before the pandemic's onset. Despite the pandemic shutdown, surging inflation, fears of recession, the Russia/Ukraine war, and every negative headline, the portfolio is still 63% higher. In other words, the portfolio has an annualized return of roughly 12%, double what was required to meet the needed financial goals.

The point here is that where you choose to “anchor” your analysis will significantly affect your emotional psychology when managing your money.

Yes, there has been a lot of volatility this year, but if I "anchor" my view to a longer-term time frame, the recent volatility is much less concerning.

Market perspective is essential.

Stick To Your Process

Does this mean you shouldn’t pay attention to your money or take action when things go wrong? Of course, not.

With the media fueling our fears 24/7, from “Fear Of Missing Out” to “Fear Of Losing It All,” it is difficult not to let our emotions get the better of us. However, “anchoring” our market perspective to a previous high-water mark or portfolio dollar value exacerbates our fragile emotional states.

In the “heat of the moment,” it is easy to get caught up in the emotional pull of markets and portfolio valuation changes. This past weekend's #BullBearReport discussed the requirement of being more like Dr. Spock from Star Trek when managing your money.

“If I ask you what’s the risk in investing, you would answer the risk of losing money.

But there actually are two risks in investing: One is to lose money, and the other is to miss an opportunity. You can eliminate either one, but you can’t eliminate both at the same time. So the question is how you’re going to position yourself versus these two risks: straight down the middle, more aggressive or more defensive.

How do you avoid getting trapped by the devil? I’ve been in this business for over forty-five years now, so I’ve had a lot of experience.

In addition, I am not a very emotional person.In fact, almost all the great investors I know are unemotional. If you’re emotional then you’ll buy at the top when everybody is euphoric and prices are high. Also, you’ll sell at the bottom when everybody is depressed and prices are low. You’ll be like everybody else and you will always do the wrong thing at the extremes.” - Howard Marks

We all make “bad choices,” and we need guidelines to maintain our market perspective.

A sizable contingent of investors and advisors has never experienced a real bear market. After a decade-long bull market cycle fueled by central bank liquidity, mainstream analysis believes the markets can only go higher. What has always been a concern to us is the rather cavalier attitude toward risk that the media promotes.

“Sure, a correction will eventually come, but that is just part of the deal.”

What gets lost during bull cycles, and is always found most brutally, is the devastation caused to wealth during inevitable declines.

Therefore, it remains essential to follow your investment discipline. If you don’t have a process, here are the guidelines we follow during tough markets.

7-Rules To Follow

1. Move slowly. There is no rush to make dramatic changes. Doing anything in a moment of “panic” tends to be the wrong thing.
2. If you are overweight equities, DO NOT try to fully adjust your portfolio to your target allocation in one move. Again, after big declines, individuals feel like they “must” do something. Think logically above where you want to be and use the rally to adjust to that level.
3. Begin by selling laggards and losers. These positions were dragging on performance as the market rose and they led on the way down.
4. If you need risk exposure, add to sectors or positions performing with or outperforming the broader market.
5. Move “stop-loss” levels up to recent lows for each position. Managing a portfolio without “stop-loss” levels is like driving with your eyes closed.
6. Be prepared to sell into the rally and reduce overall portfolio risk. You will sell many positions at a loss simply because you overpaid for them to begin with. Selling at a loss DOES NOT make you a loser. It just means you made a mistake. Sell it, and move on with managing your portfolio. Not every trade will always be a winner. But keeping a loser will make you a loser of capital and opportunity. 
7. If none of this makes sense to you, please consider hiring someone to manage your portfolio for you. It will be worth the additional expense over the long term.

Keep your market perspective in check, avoid anchoring, and focus on your investment goals rather than market volatility.

I hope this helps.

The post The Anchoring Problem And How To Solve It appeared first on RIA.

The Francists are playing defense now, fighting a rear-guard action against those who have questioned certain actions, thoughts, and even “teachings” of Pope Francis. There is an odor of desperation among them. After all, we have had a sometimes rocky 12 years. The Francists know this, though they would put all the blame on Taylor Marshall. Over the length of his papacy, those with even a slight…

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Sounds like sedevacantism…

Pope St. Gregory I on the Church just before the Antichrist: ‘Words of Doctrine are Silent, Miracles Removed’

Cutout of Pope Saint Gregory the Great by Francisco de Goya (1746-1828)

The American author, historian, former White House speechwriter, and scholar Joshua Charles appeared on an episode of Life Site‘s ‘Faith and Reason’ podcast with John-Henry Westen on Mar. 26, 2025, entitled, “End times prophecies [of] the Church fathers revealed”. Charles is a recent convert (2019) who espouses a recognize-and-resist type of traditionalism.

Yesterday, a 5-minute extract from the episode was published on YouTube with the no less intriguing title, “The Antichrist: Warnings from the Early Church”.… READ MORE

Editor’s Note: On this Memorial Day weekend, we invite you to reread Archbishop Emeritus Charles Chaput’s 2021 essay on patriotism and the sacredness of being willing to die for something.

None of us is an independent agent surfing a private island in time. Each of us belongs to a much larger continent of human experiences stretching backward over centuries, experiences that situate us within a network of home, family, clan, tribe, friends, country, religion.

These things tug on our emotions. They demand our fidelity, and rightly so. In large measure, they make us who we are. They give us the context for our lives. When the poet Horace wrote his famous line Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s homeland,” he put into words what the Roman people yearned to believe: that their struggle to survive and thrive in the ancient world had meaning.

When Spartan hoplites fought to the last man against a much larger Persian force at Thermopylae, they gave their lives defending their families, their city, and their Greek allies. And when Shakespeare wrote the words, “we few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for he today who sheds his blood with me shall be my brother,” and put them into the mouth of Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt, he touched one of the deepest chords of human loyalty. Cultures unable to inspire the ultimate sacrifice from their people for a commonly shared need or code have no future. They’re already dead without knowing it. So it has always been. And barring a miraculous change in human nature before Jesus returns, so it will always be.

Consider: In A.D. 778, rear elements of the army of Charlemagne were ambushed by Basque warriors and their Muslim masters. The engagement took place at Roncevaux Pass in the Pyrenees, near the border of what are now Spain and France. Over time, it passed into legend. In the mid-eleventh century, one thousand years ago, traveling minstrels began telling the story of a great Frankish warrior from the Roncevaux Pass battle. His name was Roland. The poem that bears his name, La Chanson de Roland (the Song of Roland), has many scenes. But the most famous recounts his heroic stand against a fierce and much larger enemy.

In the poem, Roland is revered by his king and loved by his men, for both his warrior prowess and his noble character. Thus he’s trusted with the crucial task of covering the rear of Charlemagne’s army of Franks. The army is retiring to rest in France after fighting in Spain against its Muslim conquerors. A resentful nobleman betrays him. The Muslim force learns that Roland’s men are vulnerable. They set a trap and attack. But Roland and his men, united in a brotherhood of arms, fight courageously. They ensure the safety of Charlemagne’s main body of men.

As the battle wears on, the size of the enemy force weighs against the valor of Roland and his men. In the end, enemy warriors overrun them. Only in the final moments does Roland blow his great horn Oliphant. The mountainsides echo with the sound. Charlemagne, alerted, returns to crush the enemy. But he arrives too late to save Roland and his men. They’ve given their lives, faithful to their duty.

The Song of Roland is one of the great epic poems of Western civilization. In my high school years in the 1950s, it was essential reading. The violence in the text is lavish and bloody. At one point, Roland cleaves an attacker in two. The havoc is matched only by the intense brotherhood of Roland and his men. When Roland surveys the field where so many of his friends lie slain, he weeps at the loss of those he loved. As his own death draws near, Roland turns his face toward his homeland. He thinks “of gentle France, of his kin and line; of his nursing father, King Karl benign.” His last thoughts turn to God, whom he begs to “shield my soul from its peril.” God answers his prayer by sending Gabriel the archangel to bear Roland’s soul to paradise.

We no longer live in a warrior culture. The poem’s mix of slaughter and tender emotion can seem unsettling today, but we can still learn a great deal from the Song of Roland. The poem’s great age takes nothing away from its timeless truths about the high dignity of loyalty to one’s comrades, a loyalty closely tied to patriotic devotion.

Roland and his men share a bond that unites them. Their bond is consecrated with a spirit of sacrifice. The Song of Roland bears the language of feudal oaths and duties. But these commitments don’t create the mutual loyalty of Roland and his men. Rather, and more accurately, the words and conventions of the warriors’ fealty express something already at work in their hearts, something deeper. It is “gentle France,” the ties of “kin and line,” and memories of what they’ve done together that seal the declarations of loyalty. Our loves and loyalties desire public and durable forms. We seek to celebrate the bonds that unite us. These bonds precede formal expressions of official ties. The impulse to recognize pre-existing bonds is the key impulse of civic life. We have nation-states because we have nations, not the other way around.

The Song of Roland captures an enduring truth about the human condition: The things we’re willing to die for are tied to what we hold as sacred. In fact, the willingness to die for something also consecrates it as sacred.

Many students who’ve gone through U.S. higher education in recent years have been taught to be skeptical of patriotism. A critical, and often poisonously cynical spirit has undermined a great deal of modern life, including the nation. At the same time, a naïve kind of globalist utopianism has grown. It promises a new solidarity transcending national borders. But it’s a “solidarity” as shallow as it is wide. A peculiar free-market ideology is married to this globalist dreaming. It asks us to see ourselves almost solely in economic terms. It reduces us to stateless, homeless consumers, not citizens.

We do need to be wary of excessive national pride. It has caused great harm in the modern era. A nation can become so corrupt and Babylon-like that it’s not worth defending, and America is no exception. We also need to remember that the nation-state, however happily we conceive it, is distinct from, and finally less important than, the purpose of our life in this world. Man’s purpose is to know and love God. We should never imagine our citizenship in any nation as sufficient. Our true and lasting commonwealth is in heaven, and therein lies our real citizenship (Phil 3:20).

Thus, in civic affairs, zealotry for one’s country can be a vice. But there’s also a vice called indifference. And today, in America, we suffer from a media-driven culture that feeds this indifference while simultaneously aggravating divisions. A distorted emphasis on diversity and multiculturalism at the expense of communion and unity discourages any particular loyalty to the nations that constitute the West.

These and other efforts to weaken our love for our native land dovetail with the acquisitive consumer spirit of our time. We’re encouraged to believe that real happiness comes from satisfying our personal desires. And the rapacious individualism that this nurtures is what will dominate the world if we one day live as post-national “global citizens.” That destiny would not be the unity of a universal brotherhood. It would be life in a managed, technocratic cocoon organized to promote consumption and self-invention.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori may be too sweeping a claim for many in the twenty-first century to accept, or even to understand. But we need a healthy patriotism. We need to entertain the possibility that love for our country might lead us to sacrifice greatly, even radically, in order to preserve the best that remains in it. That love is not an evil. It’s a source of liberation. It breaks the bonds of our addiction to lesser things. It leads us to stand as brothers, sisters, and friends with others. Fidelity to the good in our nation is not our final end. It doesn’t deliver us from sin and death. It doesn’t have an absolute claim on our souls. It doesn’t replace our hunger for heaven.

But it is a natural grace; a partial but real deliverance from the prison cell of a world without loyalties, and the confines of self-love.

This essay is excerpted and adapted from the archbishop’s book, Things Worth Dying For: Thoughts on a Life Worth Living.

I consecrated my law practice, along with everything else in my life, to Our Blessed Mother long ago. She always helps, guides and protects me, despite my infidelity and ingratitude.

She showed up big for a family I represent today, and I thank her publicly.

Sub Tuum Praesidium…

A federal judge in Louisiana has struck down regulations that would have forced most U.S. employers to provide workers with time off and other accommodations to kill babies in abortions.

The ruling, issued Wednesday by U.S. District Judge David Joseph, invalidated a provision of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) regulations under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), which had been pushed during the Biden administration.

The PWFA, passed with bipartisan support in December 2022, was designed to ensure employers with 15 or more employees provide reasonable accommodations for pregnant workers, such as time off for medical appointments or relief from heavy lifting.

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However, the EEOC’s 2024 rule, approved in a 3-2 vote along party lines, sparked outrage among pro-life lawmakers and groups by classifying abortion as a “related medical condition” to pregnancy and childbirth.

Pro-life advocates argued this overstepped the law’s intent, forcing employers to facilitate the termination of unborn lives against their moral or religious convictions.

Judge Joseph, appointed by President Donald Trump, ruled that the EEOC exceeded its authority, stating that Congress did not explicitly include abortion in the PWFA’s scope, especially given its “enormous social, religious, and political importance.” He sided with plaintiffs, including the attorneys general of Louisiana and Mississippi, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Catholic University, and two Catholic dioceses, who argued the rule violated state sovereignty and religious freedoms.

The ruling protects employers from being compelled to support abortions.

The vacated rule had required employers to grant time off for workers to obtain, prompting lawsuits from 17 states, including Tennessee and Arkansas, alongside pro-life organizations. Pro-life advocates, including the National Right to Life Committee, condemned the EEOC’s rule as an attempt to impose a “national abortion-accommodation mandate” under the guise of pregnancy protections.

While the abortion-related provision was struck down, the rest of the PWFA remains intact, ensuring accommodations for pregnancy-related needs like prenatal care. However, pro-life leaders see the ruling as a critical step in resisting federal overreach.

The post Judge Overturns Biden Rule Forcing Employers to Allow Time Off for Abortions appeared first on LifeNews.com.

House Republicans delivered on their promise to defund Big Abortion on Thursday by passing the budget reconciliation bill that has consumed Washington’s attention for the past three months.

In the bill, the House GOP removed Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortions in the country. The effort had been supported by dozens of pro-life legislators from around the country.

The move is a monumental win for pro-lifers because Planned Parenthood receives more than one-third of its overall funding from the U.S. government through grants, contracts, and Medicaid reimbursements. That translates to about $2 million per day, which taxpayers are on the hook for. Furthermore, taxpayer funding for the organization has been on an upward trajectory for about the past dozen years, having increased by 50% since 2013.

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But the House reconciliation bill halts that trend by ending the flow of Medicaid dollars to Planned Parenthood, except in abortion cases for rape or incest. Planned Parenthood is also a major provider of hormones for so-called transgender transitions in the country, which means defunding it is also combating the organization’s efforts in that regard as well.

“One of the largest providers of hormones for gender-transition procedures can no longer receive federal funding [from Medicaid],” Connor Semelsberger, a government relations director at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal.

That gets Planned Parenthood “out of our pockets, not just, you know, for the sliver of money that would be spent on abortions, but for everything they’re doing, because they’re not a ‘good government’ partner,” Katie Glenn Daniel, director of legal affairs and policy counsel at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, told The Daily Signal.

“Planned Parenthood alone performs 400,000 abortions every year, and if you look at their own press releases, they talk about how reliant they are on our taxpayer dollars, so it’s more than time for them to get off the government dole,” Daniel said.

Semelsberger emphasized that the language defunding Planned Parenthood was for the maximum time that the House could do so under reconciliation, which is 10 years.

Planned Parenthood for its part has publicly opposed the bill, with its president, Alexis McGill Johnson, saying in part that the bill was “about punishing Planned Parenthood health centers for providing abortion care.”

A recent study found that Planned Parenthood facilities are outnumbered by community health centers at a 15-to-1 ratio across the country, meaning that many Americans can choose many other options for their health care.

“There is no excuse for forcing taxpayers to prop up a scandal-ridden industry that prioritizes abortions, gender transitions, and partisan political activism, instead of prenatal care, cancer screening, and other legitimate health services that are in continual decline,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said on Thursday.

The action in the House shows the persistence and effectiveness of pro-life advocates even after the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, a pro-family organization, praised the Republicans in a statement.

“This morning, President [Donald] Trump and [House Speaker Mike] Johnson delivered for the American family! The One Big, Beautiful Bill that passed the House will end taxpayer funding for gender-transition surgeries, defund Planned Parenthood, and increase the Child Tax Credit—all are monumental wins for our great nation,” Schilling said, adding:

“Now it is time for the Senate to get this bill across the finish line, so we can Make Families Great Again.”

LifeNews Note: Jacob Adams is a journalism fellow at The Daily Signal, where this column originally appeared.

The post One Big Beautiful Bill Will Stop Planned Parenthood Abortion Biz From Getting $2 Million Every Day appeared first on LifeNews.com.

National Right to Life applauds the House passage of the “One, Big Beautiful Bill.” The bill would eliminate federal funds from being used to fund the multibillion-dollar abortion industry and organizations like Planned Parenthood.

The following is a statement from Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life.

We praise Speaker Mike Johnson, House leadership, and congressional members who put American taxpayers first by passing the “One, Big Beautiful Bill.” This bill would put the brakes on federal funding of the abortion industry.

Get the latest pro-life news and information on X (Twitter). Follow @LifeNewsHQ//

Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, is also one of the nation’s most successful “non-profits” – raking in over $2 billion in revenue every year. It is time that Planned Parenthood, and organizations like it, stop receiving tax dollars from hardworking Americans.

As the nation’s single largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood took the lives of over 400,000 unborn babies last year and reached this monstrous goal with the help of American taxpayers. In the 2023-2024 fiscal year for the abortion giant, $792.2 million (39%) of Planned Parenthood’s revenue came from taxpayers in the form of “Government Health Services Reimbursements & Grants.”

It is time our tax dollars stop helping the abortion industry hurt women and take the lives of their innocent preborn children.

The post Pro-Life Group Thanks Speaker Mike Johnson for Getting Planned Parenthood Defunding Bill Approved appeared first on LifeNews.com.

Democrats have suggested that everything’s on the table when it comes to rebuilding their brand. But do they mean it? Months into November’s messy autopsy, party officials might not like the ugly truths members are raising behind closed doors — especially when they threaten the far-Left’s sacred cows.

While it’s widely accepted that trans extremism cost the Democrats dearly in 2024, there are rumblings that gender ideology wasn’t the only issue dragging the party down. What if, after three years of fundraising and fearmongering, abortion has become a political liability too? It’s probably hard for DNC strategists to fathom after Dobbs, but the issue that helped them string together so many midterm and state-level wins may finally be turning voters off.

It’s not that Americans don’t share the party’s desire to keep abortion legal, too many do. But keeping it legal and celebrating the killing through all nine months of pregnancy are two very different things. Maybe in Kamala Harris, the nation finally realized that Democrats weren’t just defending abortion — they were reveling in it. What others approached with somber and appropriate seriousness, their standard-bearers gleefully embraced as another rite of womanhood. As millions of mothers grieve what abortion cost them, Harris’s party continues to respond with an outsized enthusiasm for the carnage.

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That disconnect has gotten increasingly uncomfortable, some experts believe. Regular people struggle with the moral weight of this issue — and somewhere along the way, that reality got lost. “After the 2024 election,” Family Research Council’s Mary Szoch told The Washington Stand, “Democrats realized that your average American actually hates hearing about killing an unborn child at nine months.” Even before that, in 2016, when Donald Trump described, in chilling detail, the kind of dismemberment abortion that Hillary Clinton endorsed, it was a turning point in the campaign. “With what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby,” Trump said. “Now you can say that that’s okay, and Hillary can say that that’s okay, but it’s not okay with me.”

It’s also “not okay” with the majority of Americans, who don’t share the Democratic Party’s delight in ruthlessly executing unborn children. In the most recent Marist survey (2025), 67% of the 1,387 adults surveyed agreed there should be limits on abortion, including 55% of self-described “pro-choicers.” While Harris and company proudly support the practice up to (and even after) the moment of birth — at taxpayers’ expense — the average voter isn’t an abortion zealot. Even after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, most people have a very difficult time justifying the slaughter of innocent children after the first trimester, if at all. To them, the Democrats’ eagerness to push the boundaries of this barbarity is off-putting at best and disturbing at worst.

And partygoers are taking note. When Time magazine went inside “the Democrats’ reboot” in their latest issue, some of the most revealing parts were the interviews that author Charlotte Alter had with party members that hinted at this same problem. In many ways, the Left has misread people’s concern about abortion being outlawed as a full-throated endorsement for the procedure anytime, anyhow, anywhere. This surfaced in some of Alter’s conversations with Democrats in Congress, some of whom refused to go on the record.

“Many Democratic officials believe the party moved too far left on social issues in particular,” she wrote. “‘There are some sports where trans girls shouldn’t be playing against biological girls,’ says one lawmaker, adding that most of his fellow Democrats agree but are ‘afraid of the blowback that comes from a very small community.’” Alter adds, “Even abortion is up for a rethink. Some Democrats want a retreat from the enthusiastic embrace of abortion rights, and a return to talking about abortion as ‘safe, legal, and rare,’ as Bill Clinton put it.”

Quietly, more rank-and-file Dems worry about the party’s over-the-top appetite for a procedure that violently destroys a human life. “‘Refusing to say that even in the third trimester there’s no limits on it, it’s not where the average American is,’ says another Democratic lawmaker. ‘The really embarrassing truth is Donald Trump is closer to the median voting on abortion than Democrats were.’ Yet,” Alter noted, “the fact these lawmakers would only share these thoughts without their names attached shows how much Democrats still fear antagonizing their liberal base.”

That jives with what a lot of politicos said in the aftermath of November’s election. Unfortunately for Democrats, not only did they play the abortion card poorly, but it was also, to most people’s surprise, the only card they played. It was easier, Virginia Republican strategist Zach Roday warned, to wage war “on just one single issue that favors Democrats … in the [2022] midterms” — when the Supreme Court’s ruling was fresh on people’s minds. D.J. Quinlan, who served as a former executive director for the Arizona Democratic Party, also believes “there’s room for a conversation” on “whether talking about abortion at the expense of everything else, particularly the economy, might have been a contributing factor” in November’s shellacking.

Others in the Republican Party stressed that Americans aren’t one-dimensional voters. Maybe, Ford O’Connell suggested, women were insulted by the insinuation that their uterus is the only thing they should care about. “People don’t want to be put in boxes or told what to think,” he insisted. “They want to be heard.”

Those brave enough to challenge the radical views of the Democratic Party openly, like New York Representative Ritchie Torres (D), recognize the losing ground they’re standing on. Most of these lawmakers, Alter explains, “acknowledge that the progressive movement encouraged a kind of purity policies that hampered the party’s ability to win majorities. ‘We swung the pendulum too far to the left,’” the Bronx congressman warns. In his own district, he’s watched with alarm as Trump makes more inroads with “working-class people of color, as he did in cities around the country.”

That will only continue if the party of Biden and Harris refuses to recognize that this reckoning was about a lot more than Donald Trump. It’s about their fundamental failure to course-correct when their values veer into the diabolic. As Time reiterated, “Democrats could dismiss Trump’s first win as a fluke. His second, they know, was the product of catastrophic failure — a nationwide rejection of Democratic policies, Democratic messaging, and the Democrats themselves.” The reality is, Alter noted, “The party got skunked in every battleground state and lost the popular vote for the first time in 20 years. They lost the House and the Senate. Their support sagged with almost every demographic cohort except Black women and college-educated voters. Only 35% of Democrats are optimistic about the future of the party…”

When Harris couldn’t convince voters that the economy, illegal immigration, and crime weren’t really problems, FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter insisted to TWS, “they pivoted to pro-abortion rhetoric.” And it wasn’t just “Democratic politicians who relied heavily on the party’s pro-abortion platform, but big donors also contributed vast sums of money to pro-abortion ballot initiatives in an attempt to galvanize their base.”

And frankly, he continued, “The fact that Democratic politicians have to speak anonymously to friendly media in order to gently signal to their base: ‘Hey, maybe we need to back off a little of the extreme social policy’ shows that Democratic members know the party has crossed a line with voters. These members simply don’t have the courage to lead their party away from the extreme pro-abortion, pro-trans lobbies.”

But political expedience is just one part of the equation. “Unfortunately,” Szoch said, “it doesn’t seem that Democrats have realized the reason they need to change their position on abortion is because an unborn child is a human being. Instead, Democrats want to change their position to gain votes,” she lamented. “This lack of authenticity is what makes voters disgusted with career politicians. It’s what got President Trump elected. I hope that one day Democrats see unborn children as human beings — not as an avenue to getting more votes,” Szoch implored. “But until they do, I hope the American people are smart enough to continue voting them out of office.”

LifeNews Note: Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand, where this originally appeared.

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