Editorial: Why Are Democrats Fighting Each Other Over Abortion?

[BainsBane]

Bill Scher.

Sanders managed to re-open old wounds when he explained why he was using the Democratic National Committee-sponsored tour to endorse Heath Mello, an Omaha mayoral candidate with an anti-abortion voting record, but not Georgia congressional candidate Jon Ossoff, who is pro-choice and fiscally moderate. As the Washington Post recounted: “’[Ossoff is] not a progressive,’ [Sanders] said. He was endorsing Democrats based on their economic populism; they could differ from progressives on social issues but not on the threat of the mega-rich to American politics.”

NARAL Pro-Choice President Ilyse Hogue responded with force: “If Democrats think the path forward following the 2016 election is to support candidates who substitute their own judgement and ideology for that of their female constituents, they have learned all the wrong lessons and are bound to lose. It’s not possible to have an authentic conversation about economic security for women that does not include our ability to decide when and how we have children.”

Much scrambling ensued. Sanders belatedly threw his support to Ossoff. The liberal netroots activist site Daily Kos withdrew its endorsement of Mello. Mello started talking like he was pro-choice. DNC Chairman Tom Perez tried to defend the party’s endorsement while touting the party’s pro-choice platform. By Friday, he was celebrating Mello’s pivot: “I fundamentally disagree with Heath Mello’s personal beliefs about women’s reproductive health. It is a promising step that Mello now shares the Democratic Party’s position on women’s fundamental rights.” Perez then went further, with an ultimatum to every Democratic official and candidate: “Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health. That is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state.” . . .

First, Sanders revealed his priorities. He tried to characterize his endorsement as electoral realism, telling NPR, “You just can't exclude people who disagree with us on one issue” and the Washington Post, “If you are running in rural Mississippi, do you hold the same criteria as if you’re running in San Francisco?”
True enough. But Sanders doesn’t speak in terms of electoral realism when it comes to anything on his economic populist agenda, such as single-payer health care, free college and a $15 minimum wage. Anti-abortion votes didn’t disqualify Mello, but apparently Ossoff’s pledge to cut “wasteful spending” and his rejection of “Medicare for All” was, until Sanders was pressured, insufficiently progressive to merit endorsement. By putting his favored planks on a higher plane than abortion, Sanders sends a distressing signal to reproductive rights activists about what he is willing to trade away to accomplish his desired transformation of the Democratic Party. . . .

Sometimes, voting records are more pro-choice than campaign rhetoric. It wasn’t that long ago when a self-proclaimed “pro-life” Democrat was Senate majority leader, but Harry Reid proved to be a fierce and effective legislative fighter on behalf of reproductive freedom.
Of those still in the Senate, Heitkamp and Casey have voted to protect funding for Planned Parenthood. Heitkamp helped filibuster a ban on abortions 20 weeks after conception. Casey, who, unlike the others, was in office at the beginning of Barack Obama’s first term, voted to confirm two Supreme Court justices expected to uphold Roe v. Wade. Surely the others would if given the opportunity. The same could not be said if Republicans snatched their seats. . . .

Much more. It's more even handed than the paragraphs I chose because I picked the ones I liked. (Go figure.) Read for yourselves.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/04/24/why_are_democrats_fighting_each_other_over_abortion_133687.html

[shenmue]

1. We must protect these rights

End of argument.

[Eliot Rosewater]

2. This line says it all

But Sanders doesn’t speak in terms of electoral realism when it comes to anything on his economic populist agenda,

But again, you dont want to know what his agenda actually is, I didnt either given I voted for him, before I figured it out.

nuff said

[BainsBane]

3. I didn't realize you had been a Bernie supporter

That's quite a turn around.

[Eliot Rosewater]

4. So much of what he proposed , I was in favor of, we all were as in the

college stuff and healthcare, no brainer, and before I realized what I now realize, yes, I was.

I also very much supported Hillary before and after my primary, I just opted for Bernie between the two.

But I now see a pattern with him and Thom.

[BainsBane]

8. Which Thom are you referring to?

[Eliot Rosewater]

37. Hartmann

[killbotfactory]

34. A majority of the country supports him on those issues, generally.

According to polls. The reason we don't have them is because big corporate donors fund our elections, and they don't want us to have them.

[Alpeduez21]

5. There should be no fight over the right to choose.

If a candidate says they are against choice then they should run on the Republican ticket. Without choice there is no work or wage equality for women. If you force a women to carry a fetus to full term you have violated so many of her civil rights.

[BainsBane]

10. The author makes the point that

a big tent includes red state Dems who aren't entirely on board, but he also demonstrates their voting records are better than their rhetoric. They are conservative Democrats, and no one should be proclaiming them "progressive" or the future of the party.

[tammywammy]

12. Anyone that's anti-choice isn't a progressive.

I don't see why this is a controversial statement.

[BainsBane]

18. Nor do I

Unless progressivism has come to be defined as male supremacy.

[GulfCoast66]

20. I say this with all respect...

But please read the long history of the term Progressive and the progressive movement as a whole. It is why I do not use it to define my believes. I prefer liberal.

Progressivism was originally all about the economy and making the playing field more level for the little guy. Supporting strong Unions, strong government regulation of business, especially big business and insuring that the most needy are not forgotten. All worthy goals.

However, over the last 125 years progressives have been very quick to abandon social causes, if they ever espoused them in the first place.

That has created tension in the left of American politics for over 70 years and is at the heart of LBJ's statement that by signing the Civil Rights Act he was losing the south for generations. He well knew that had he not done so the South and Wallace Democrats would have supported the great society. It would have only helped whites.

Now I realize that many people who describe themselves as progressives in 2017 are fully on board with civil and social rights. But the last year and the migration of many DU members to other sites that do not value civil and social rights as much as we liberals proved to me that there is still a 'economy only' contingent of the progressive movement alive and well today.

And it is my opinion that many of them have made there way back here in the last 3-4 weeks.

[tammywammy]

22. You say respect but followed up with an assumption that I'm uneducated.

Bless your heart.

[GulfCoast66]

25. Geez

As a southerner I know exactly what you just told me. But unlike many people coming here lately, I'm not looking to cause alerts are give them.


I truly did not mean to demean nor criticize you.

I was explaining why I do not identify myself as a progressive. Apparently I hit a nerve.

You have a very nice evening.

[BainsBane]

23. Your history is inaccurate, but I agree about current progressives.

The Progressive movement was a middle-class urban reform movement that arose in response to immigration and turn-of-the-century urban conditions. It included Jane Adams and the Settlement House movement, reforms of city political machines like Tammany Hall, and prohibition. Southern progressivism was highly racist.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era


Union leaders at that time were anarcho-syndicalists, not progressives. After the Russian Revolution and the establishment of the USSR, communists dominated union leadership. They were systematically arrested, deported and imprisoned. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Raids

I think you are right, however, about those who call themselves progressives now. They have indeed been trickling back from other internet sites.

[GulfCoast66]

26. You obviously are more educated on the issue that I am.

I don't claim to be a scholar on them but these are not hard issues to understand. Especially for a southerner like me whose grandfather was in the southern progressive movement and also very racist. He was also a union man.

I firmly believe that separating social issues especially racism from economic issues is a losing proposition.

Racism has its heart economic oppression. It drives me crazy when supposedly liberals do not recognize that fact. Hatred of blacks in the south was ginned up for economic reasons.

For that matter sexism and has at its heart economic oppression. There is a reason teachers, secretaries, and nurses are vastly underpaid.

[BainsBane]

28. And it is the refusal to acknowledge

That connection between racism, sexism, and economic equality that so limits their reach.

[BainsBane]

27. Additionally, LBJ didn't divide the left

Southern Democrats weren't, by and large, leftists. Both parties contained liberal and conservative factions, and Southerners were more conservative.

I think part of the problem is that people assume Democrats once represented the left, and that's not really true. By the late 60s, they had become left in comparison to Republicans, but they remained liberals, seeking to assuage inequality but supportive of capitalism itself.
The left had existed outside the two party system, but the red scares of the 20th century purged them.

Now we have people who call themselves leftist but typically have never read leftist theory, like Marx, Gramsci or anarchist writings. They talk about corporatism and neoliberalism with no critique of capitalism itself. They seek to restore the white male prosperity of the 50s, imagine it has been robbed of them, and tend to be unaware or disinterested in the way in which race and gender structures even economic inequality. They imagine a simplistic economic message fits all, even as they become angry when women and people of color point out that their own experiences and concerns may differ. We see increasing hostility toward the rights or concerns of other Democrats, whom they now conveniently dismiss as bashing Bernie. I've recently come to realize that defense of Bernie is merely an excuse to block out voices and interests other than their own.

[GulfCoast66]

31. I hesitate to even discuss this issue because it is a parent you're more studied that I

I mainly have my personal experience of being raised in the south by Democrats who eventually turned into Republicans. Plus a little bit of reading.

My family had no problems with Social security, medicare, 40 hour work week, price supports for crops, the G.I. Bill, low-cost college loans and all the other federal programs. And they were all loyal democratic party voters.

That all changed when these benefits were extended to people of color. And I have seen this pattern repeated throughout the south.

It troubles me we are even having this conversation, because I have seen what is at the heart of it. You cannot separate racial issues from economic issues because racism has its roots in economic oppression.

Have a very nice evening and thank you for the conversation.

[elleng]

6. Can't help 'our'selves

?w=500&h=321

[BainsBane]

11. Some of us actually care about principle

More than acquiescence to power. No wonder ne is forcing you to concern yourself with equal rights or economic justice. The platform of the Democratic. party, however, expresses commitment to women's reproductive rights, and the DNC has now declared it central. Those who want to promote male prilege over equal rights can make their case for votes like everybody else. It won't be popular or persuasive, of course, but they can try. But to pretend failure to go along with a hard shift to the right is divisive is bullshit. The party has been pro-choice far longer than the current reactionary effort to abandon women's rights.

[elleng]

13. Most of us actually care about principle.

Many, however, are unable to see the 'man' behind the curtain.

I've spent my whole adult life addressing equal rights and economic justice.

[BainsBane]

17. And here you are

Arguing that pro-choice activists constitute a firing squad for failing to acquiesce to the undermining of women's rights, to succumb to efforts to abandon the equal rights you say you support.

I've seen you on this site for some time, and I don't recall your ever addressing equal rights. Have I missed it?

[elleng]

19. Not only have you missed it,

if you have misunderstood my points of view.

[Cha]

21. "..Arguing that pro-choice activists constitute a firing squad for failing to acquiesce to the

undermining of women's rights, to succumb to efforts to abandon the equal rights you say you support"

Well stated, Bains

[Vesper]

36. Some of us see the man quite clearly.

We are calling him out, since he seems to quite blinded and ignorant about what comprises equal rights and economic justice.

Basic human rights and reproductive rights cannot be excluded from equal rights or economic justice, and the men need to get that through their thick skulls. There is no excuse for this tone deaf affront to basic common sense. Calling a man who opposes thus, has introduced legislation that seeks to harm women, a progressive is wrong. One would think we would be united in calling out the band behind this curtain, but that does not seem to be the case here.

[Cha]

15. Yeah.. principle over anyone trying to power grab.. no

matter where he's hiding.

[Cha]

16. Yeah, you need to talk to BS about your little graphic there.. he's the

one who is trying to divide.. and on the Unity Tour of all venues.

"Sanders managed to re-open old wounds when he explained why he was using the Democratic National Committee-sponsored tour to endorse Heath Mello, an Omaha mayoral candidate with an anti-abortion voting record, but not Georgia congressional candidate Jon Ossoff, who is pro-choice and fiscally moderate " As the Washington Post recounted: “’ not a progressive,’ said. He was endorsing Democrats based on their economic populism; they could differ from progressives on social issues but not on the threat of the mega-rich to American politics.”

Bull.

[LisaM]

7. This was signalled during the primaries.

Rachel Maddow challenged Sanders on abortion and after giving a response (to Trump's statement) that women should not be punished for having abortions, he said - which I heard him say on the air myself - "now can we get back to what really matters, economic issues?"

Again, when Planned Parenthood endorsed Clinton, Sanders dismissed them as being (along with the Human Rights Campaign) "part of the establishment". (http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/planned-parenthood-bernie-sanders-218026)

I can't tell you how frustrated these past few weeks have made me.

[BainsBane]

9. I've read other comments by him to that effect

His voting record is strongly pro-choice, yet he too often refers to apart from "what really matters," and inexplicably apart from economic issues.

[Cha]

14. "Sanders managed to re-open old wounds when he explained why he was using

the Democratic National Committee-sponsored tour to endorse Heath Mello, an Omaha mayoral candidate with an anti-abortion voting record, but not Georgia congressional candidate Jon Ossoff, who is pro-choice and fiscally moderate."

Wow.. just what we've been saying..

Thank you for shining the Light, Bains

[McCamy Taylor]

24. The GOP is pitting Dem against Dem on the issue, because Zika Has Made Abortion A Liability for Them

The GOP can no longer make Anti-Abortion the centerpiece of their "values" campaign due to women's fears of getting Zika--and finding themselves unable to get an abortion. As a result, the GOP has gotten awfully quiet about the topic in public (though they still court to rabid, Right to Life base in private).

The Republican Party wants to make Abortion Rights a non issue. At least until there is a Zika vaccine. And so, they are attempting to scare the Democratic Party. They are playing a game of divide and conquer.

Do not fall for their game. Unite behind abortion rights. Find a Zika baby whose mother could not get an abortion, and you have won the game.

[BainsBane]

30. You can't put this on the GOP

It's coming from Democrats and Dem-leaning independents.

[NobodyHere]

29. I've said it before and I'll say it again

I'd rather have a Democrat who agrees with me 75% of the time than a Republican who agrees with me 25% of the time.

[BainsBane]

32. That's pretty much the author's point

By why create a new standard for progressive that excludes equal rights?

[NobodyHere]

33. Who said anything about creating a new standard?

We just need to realize that pushing purity tests will keep the Democratic party in the minority.

[BainsBane]

35. Are you fucking serious?

Bernie and his followers aren't interested in pushing purity tests? Give me a fucking break. How you can even say that shit with a straight face is astounding.

The purity testy is rhetoric against Wall Street (policy has always been irrelevant). It's railing about "corporate" this and that. But reducing women to second class citizenship, that's nothing to worry about.

You could not be more transparent. No one is fooled. We can't become stupid enough to fall for that.

[NobodyHere]

39. Isn't being against Wall Street part of the current standard?

[Demsrule86]

38. Great article and explains where we are better than any other...thanks. K&R