Joe Biden asked for a pen. Then he reversed a position he had occupied for four decades.

Joe Biden was in the car en route to a Democrat gala in Atlanta on Thursday night when he turned to a helper and asked for a pen. The former vice president began scribbling his changing ideas on Hyde's amendment, preparing to make one of the biggest changes in his 2020 presidential campaign.

Later in the evening, reading these notes and turning away from the text prepared for the teleprompter, he would reverse a position he had occupied for nearly forty years and for the first time, sought to repeal the federal law. which strongly restricts the use of taxpayer money for abortion. This was the culmination of several days of debate within his campaign and external criticism on an issue that became of fundamental importance to the Democratic Party.

This concluded the most difficult week of his campaign, a period during which he fought in the limelight after a period during which his campaign was more smoothly than had not expected many Democrats. He was attacked for voting on a 1994 crime bill, criticized for avoiding events involving multiple candidates, and was criticized when his campaign lifted unallocated lines for use in his crime documents. policy. None of these difficulties are fatal in themselves, but the allies fear that when they are considered together, Biden could begin to undermine the main argument of his campaign: that he has the best chance to beat President Trump.

"Democrats see him as a strong candidate against Trump. polls confirmed it. But the way he runs his campaign has an impact on his eligibility argument, "said Neera Tanden, president of the Liberal Center for American Progress. "Many successful campaigns have missteps, but a series of them could well hurt the election case."

Biden's campaign has so far drawn strength from the belief of a large part of the electorate that he is best placed to defeat Trump. Early polls in the industrial Midwest easily find him victorious in hypothetical confrontations, and a recent poll of Quinnipiac University revealed that Biden beat Trump by four points in Texas, a generally Republican territory safely, even though Trump had won hypothetical disputes against other Democratic candidates.

"I have never seen anyone hesitate on the part of those who say that they will support Biden," said Sen. Dick Harpootlian (D), from the state of South Carolina, said: One of the most important boosters of the vice president of the state. "Again, what motivates us, is who will beat Donald Trump. Everyone believes that Joe Biden has the best chance of doing so in 2020. The rest of these people have not been tried yet. "

But there are many precedents for an aura of eligibility for appeasement during the exhausting process of an election campaign, especially among candidates unable to skillfully adapt to changes in their party. Hillary Clinton hesitated in her 2008 presidential campaign by hesitating on issues such as driving licenses for undocumented immigrants, giving her rivals the opportunity to portray her as a shy leader.

Biden has a long political record filled with positions that could hinder his campaign in the coming months, including several problems that his rivals have already begun to target. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) Criticized Biden for supporting free trade agreements, and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) Blamed it for joining the banking sector in bankruptcy legislation.

Biden voted for the war in Iraq in 2002 – an assertion that he said later was a mistake but which led another opponent, the Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) Representative – to add a reference to it then. that he had modified Biden during the reversal of his abortion on Friday. Biden refused to give up its support for the North American Free Trade Agreement. Unlike most race candidates, he does not support the federal legalization of marijuana, but thinks possession of the drug should be decriminalized. He was also an advocate at the Obama White House of an effort to allow religious institutions to evade the contraceptive mandate provided for in the Affordable Care Act. – an issue that his campaign has refused to talk about since he announced his candidacy for the presidency.

During a recent visit to Nashua, NH, Biden claimed that the 1994 crime bill that he had written had not generated massive incarceration, which has urged its rivals to react quickly, noting that the bill clearly encouraged states to build more prisons.

For Biden, the challenge is to find a balance between the political realities of the first democratic voters and his own desire to pose as a campaign away from the largest group of Democratic candidates. During the first few weeks of his campaign, Biden spoke out on many of these topics, as his aides claimed that the debate between liberal activists on Twitter and cable TV does not reflect what they see as the core moderate of the Democratic Party.

It has so far kept a light public campaign schedule, largely avoiding the media, even as other candidates have made themselves available as part of their daily programs. When 19 presidential candidates will gather Sunday in Iowa for an event in a state party, Biden plans to travel to Washington to attend the graduation ceremony. Member of the family.

The debate over the Hyde amendment erupted on Wednesday in the public eye when the Biden campaign reaffirmed to NBC News that the former vice president was still supporting the ban on federal funding for abortion , with the exception of rape, incest or danger to the mother's life.

The campaigns of Bill Clinton in 1992, Barack Obama in 2008 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 indicated that they supported the repeal of Hyde, although all signed or voted for legislation that included this provision. Biden was immediately criticized by various abortion rights groups, reflecting the recent trend of the party to the left, and the phones began to ring out complaints.

"Everyone has called," said a councilor, who, like other assistants to Biden, requested anonymity to discuss the internal deliberations of the campaign. "All people have called. Everyone called. "

As soon as she saw the report, actress and liberal activist Alyssa Milano called Biden's campaign director, Greg Schultz.

"I said," It's not good, "said Milano in an interview. "And I'm going to have to say something in public."

Biden has always supported the amendment at that time, say the advisers, but the campaign was also at the heart of a debate on health care policy. Domestically, some counsel argued that Biden's policy had to take into account the coverage of abortion, especially for low-income women.

The advice given to Biden as part of the campaign was mixed. Some urged him to give up support for the amendment – stressing that it was a barrier to poor women's access to health care – while others said it should not change. the opinion he had been defending for decades.

"The question has become how do we deal with low-income women and women of color who would not be covered by the Hyde amendment in place?" One of the councilors recalled.

"From the point of view of the Vice President, he is a man of deep faith" who fought against the subject of abortion, added the counselor. "But I think putting the question on the table, what can we do? "Sir, we can repeal the Hyde amendment."

The councilors resisted any idea that Biden would have changed only because of political pressure, and insisted that his views had changed in recent days.

"If he had wanted to go with political whims, he would have defended Medicare for all and apologized for the crime bill," said one counselor. "That's not what he did, because that's not what he believes. But that's one thing he believes in.

There is ample preliminary evidence that the willingness of Democratic voters to deny a second term to Trump could make policy positions less critical in the 2020 primaries than in the past.

A Monmouth poll in late January found that 56 percent of Democrats would prefer to support a stronger candidate against Trump, even if they disagree on points, rather than a weaker candidate who is more in line with their expectations. convictions. A similar question posed to New Hampshire Democrats in May found that 2 out of 3 people said that beating Trump was more important.

In 2016, feelings were reversed.

A warning sign for Biden's supporters was the seemingly inability of the candidate to recognize the importance that the democratic base attaches to the right to abortion while Republicans fought to reduce them.

On Wednesday night, CID Co-Chair Cedric L. Richmond (D-La.), Launched a strong Biden defense, saying on CNN: "He is guided by his faith. Hyde's amendment was consistent. "

The next day, Richmond called the reversal a "profile in courage".

"I thought it was taking into account the climate of today and the world and not what we want," said Richmond.

Milan did not approve of a candidacy, but she advised Biden.

"I tried to be very honest with Joe about how I felt and the need to flourish to meet the party's demands on these issues," she said. "It shows that he can listen to women from all over the country who made it clear why he was wrong to take this position."

"Its ideology is changing," she said. "He's making progress."

Milano attended the speech in Atlanta and was delighted when Biden announced that he was opposed to the Hyde amendment.

She then approached him behind the scenes.

"I'm proud of you," she recalls. "Thank you for doing that."

"He said," You do not have to thank me, "she said. "It's the good thing. It would be unfair for women around the world to take this position on this issue. "