"No Thanks, Bernie: Virginia Abortion Rights Advocates Know Better" (Title)

[Rilgin]

51. The problem is projection

Perrielo is not running on anti-abortion or pro-life policies and has promised not to vote to limit pro-choice positions. He is not a pro-life candidate. You want this to be a choice between someone who is pro-life and someone who is pro-choice so you can say any support for one candidate is throwing you under the bus.

It is true that Pirreilo voted for Stupak but he also voted and worked to preserve funding for Planned Parenthood. He is not pure on this issue like Northram seems to be but Perrielo has apologized for Stupak and says that his not his current belief. Like a ton of politicians (including many which I am sure you support) he says he has evolved on this issue. You just do not want to believe him because otherwise you are not being dissed. If both are currently pro-choice your criticism has no validity unless you attach his current position. But that is not being thrown under the bus, its not believing the evolution of a candidate. I don't know him or know what he will do. However, I do know a few things. You are exaggerating him to be anti-choice as a candidate so you can have outrage and I find it unlikely that Perrielo will actually vote in any way to adversely affect the right to an abortion. If Perrielo gets elected and votes anti-choice he will have no future in the democratic party. You do know this. He like Biden before him has made the choice to be pro-choice politically.

You mention LGBTQ rights. Are you prepared to use the same standards on your own favored politicians. It is not the left nor economic leftists that have been the historic opponents of civil rights, gay marriage or anti-abortion. Both Obama and Hillary were publically against gay marriage while running for political offices. Bill signed DOMA and instituted don't ask don't tell rather than support the right to be gay. Hillary's full conversion to equal rights came finally in 2013 (well after she was a senator and after her first run for president). Did or would you have supported Hillary for Senator and, if so, because she was not pure on absolute gay rights would that be throwing gay people under the bus. That is the problem with your outrage, it invents enemies, sets up strawmen to fight against and is selective as to who you target.

And economic populism is not being used by anyone on the left to "define" whether someone is progressive. You are purely making that up. I challenge you again, please find anywhere support on the left for someone who is outright anti-choice or supports a candidate that is running on an anti-choice platform. You will not find one. It is the centrists who have preached an election strategy of co-opting issues and triangulation which is why you will find centrist politicians often adding the word rarity or rate as a goal in their abortion beliefs to give credence to it being bad rather than giving pro-choice a full throated endorsement.

Personally, like Bernie, I am fully pro-choice and do not think government has a role in limiting or not funding the choice. However, there are a lot of democrats who seem ok with some limits and use their soapbox to denigrate the abortion choice (demanding rarity be included in the defense of abortion) as long as they do not challenge the compromise of Roe v. Wade. In the broad democratic party, you will find some people who have mixed histories and who profess support for some limits on abortion including big prominent democratic politicians who you have studiously avoided attacking. It is an awkward position for these people and they almost always have to disavow their personal beliefs as subsumed by a political promise to keep them separate. From the standpoint of voters and supporters in terms of supporting these candidates with mixed records it is also awkward but it is not a Bernie or Warren problem. The democratic party position is that it has accepted some personally pro-life politicians like Bob Casey and Biden and Kaine