that is a potential checkmate for hillary clinton. if you think that has nothing to do with it...
y'all should have listened to what she's said about abortion a little more closely. the existing law is judicial, which means it depends on what the constitution states. you get around that by changing the constitution.
what has hillary said about the constitution and abortion? well, like i say - you probably should have taken the time to look that up.
trump is extremely vulnerable with catholics. clinton's coalition requires a strong turnout from hispanics.
listen - i don't like any of this. don't shoot the messenger. i'm just telling you what is tactical. and, picking a pro-life vp is just about the most tactical thing that hillary clinton could possibly do.
one of the arguments that the clinton people have been pushing for a while - and you see it show up here and there - is this idea that hillary really isn't any of the things that the left says about her, that it's just all a lot of right-wing propaganda that's been put in silly leftists' heads. every time anybody says anything critical of hillary, then, it's just right-wing propaganda. typical tactic of restricting options.
right-wing propaganda or not, it's pretty obvious that hillary is "open to influence". and, unusually so. that's usually what the argument is about and it absolutely falls apart when you're talking about corruption or most of the other mean things that leftists say about hillary. that's resolvable by appeal to evidence, and usually even with minimal real controversy.
but, i think the argument does hold very well for the things the right says about hillary. if all you've ever heard about hillary came from right-wing talk radio, you'd think she's an anti-war hippie that wants to take away your guns and put an abortion clinic in the corner of every convenience store.
the truth is that hillary has always been right-leaning on abortion. what was it? "safe, legal and rare", i think? she has been on record for opposing late-trimester abortions forever. she's really always been about reaching a kind of compromise position that respects the safety of the woman, but not necessarily her right to choose.
this is, of course, why the right goes out of it's way to skewer her on it. the result is that if you think hillary is a closet social liberal, you really have been fed the line from the right. and, the number of people that think this is not trivial.
it's not just a question of going after a demographic that is probably up for grabs, then. a substantial percentage of trump support is really voting against hillary. but, a lot of what they're voting against is really an elaborate straw man. if she just lets that run wild, and the party gets trump to shut up, then trump is going to be able to mobilize voters against her that otherwise don't really support him. that could be fatal. she must find a way to at least disarm this propaganda by attacking years of straw men arguments against her. and, one of those things is going to be setting the record straight on her views on abortion, what kind of judges she would appoint, whether she would propose such a constitutional amendment and etc.
like it or not, this is actually one of the things that she has to do to win - if not to sway pro-life voters then at least to convince them to stay home.