If he remains the front runner
His candidacy feels a bit like Jeb's in 2016. He's in better shape than Jeb was in, but he's trying to do the same thing. He's the "safe" candidate that the party establishment likes, and he's running as such. However, he knows that the his party has run wildly Left on social issues over the years, and he's trying to keep up - sorta like how Jeb did when he said he was OK with the term "anchor baby." The problem is that it seems very contrived. If you change your position on an issue like abortion when you're over 30 or especially 40, everybody knows that it's BS.
Joe Biden is almost surely pro-life in his heart. His religion suggests that, and his past record suggests that. I don't believe he has really changed. His party has though and in a massive way. When he first was running for office and for several years, it wasn't even clear which party was the pro-life party. Keep in mind that 5 of the 7 justices who formed the Roe majority were Republican appointees, and one of the two dissenters was a Democratic appointee. The point is that there was a lot of room in the party for a pro-lifer because of the presence of southerners and blue collar Catholics.
By the 1980s, the Democrats were moving toward abortion rights, but they were careful in how they handled it. They were tolerant of those who were pro-life and those who were pro-choice but could see the argument against it and didn't think abortion was a good thing. The "safe, legal, and rare" mentality epitomized this and acceptance of the idea that tax dollars shouldn't fund abortion, and Biden pretty much worked in this framework most of his career. He could reconcile it with his personal opposition to abortion.
Nowadays, large parts of the party are wildly in favor of abortion and have extremely strong and "righteous" contempt for those who disagree with them. Not only should it not be legal to them, there are no moral implications of it at all. It's all good, and there should be no shame in it all. Furthermore, it should be funded with tax dollars if necessary. Well, nobody thinks Biden actually agrees with that, and it can't in any sane world be reconciled with his view. Accordingly, he looks like an unprincipled hack when he embraces it or pretends to.
