Why Biden and Democrats are talking so much about freedom

CNN —

When Vice President Kamala Harris rushed to Arizona late last week after the state Supreme Court upheld an 1864 law banning abortion in almost all cases, she began her speech with a stark declaration: “This fight is about freedom, and the freedom that is fundamental to the promise of America.”

In a new abortion-focused ad that the Biden campaign aired in Arizona last week, President Joe Biden somberly asks: “If Donald Trump gets back in power, what freedom will you lose next?”

Arizona residents rally for abortion rights on a street corner Tuesday on the heels of the Arizona's Supreme Court decision enacting an 1864 law banning abortion on April 16, in Phoenix.

Related article Lawmakers vote against hearing Arizona bill repealing abortion ban on House floor

For Biden, Harris and other Democrats to lean so heavily on the word “freedom” in this campaign is a historic reversal of roles. At least since the New Deal 90 years ago, Republicans have been the party most likely to frame their agenda as advancing “freedom” and “liberty” while Democrats have more often emphasized ideas such as “equality” and “justice.”

Republicans haven’t abandoned their rhetorical efforts to claim the terrain of freedom. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, for instance, used the word almost as a mantra the past few years to denounce the restrictions many states imposed to fight the spread of Covid-19 and to attack what he calls the left’s effort to impose “woke ideology.” And Trump disparages Biden’s agenda to promote the deployment of electric vehicles as an attempt to deny Americans’ freedom to continue purchasing gas-powered cars and trucks.

But the GOP push at every level of government to roll back the “rights revolution” of the past six