Should Dems soft-pedal reproductive rights because this writer was told abortion was a factor in 04?

[BurtWorm]

As the idiot in chief has been known to say in inappropriate contexts, I question the premise. Melinda Henneberger claims (without giving figures) that all sorts of liberal, pacifist, Catholic women either supported Bush or didn't support Kerry because of the abortion issue. Oddly enough, she admits that this group of "swing voters" went for Gore in 2000. So did they all suddenly become more committed to outlawing abortion in four years? Was it 9/11 or the Iraq war that pushed them over the edge? What a piece of claptrap!

Here it is, nevertheless:


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/22/opinion/22henneberger.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Op-Ed Contributor
Why Pro-Choice Is a Bad Choice for Democrats
By MELINDA HENNEBERGER

...

Even in the real world, a pro-choice Republican nominee would be a gift to the Democrats, because the Republican Party wins over so many swing voters on abortion alone. Which is why Fred Thompson, who is against abortion rights, is getting so much grateful attention from his party now. And why, despite wide opposition to the war in Iraq, Democrats must still win back such voters to take the White House next year.

Over 18 months, I traveled to 20 states listening to women of all ages, races, tax brackets and points of view speak at length on the issues they care about heading into ’08. They convinced me that the conventional wisdom was wrong about the last presidential contest, that Democrats did not lose support among women because “security moms” saw President Bush as the better protector against terrorism. What first-time defectors mentioned most often was abortion.

Why would that be, given that Roe v. Wade was decided almost 35 years ago? Opponents of abortion rights saw 2004 as the chance of a lifetime to overturn Roe, with a movement favorite already in the Oval Office and several spots on the Supreme Court likely to open up. A handful of Catholic bishops spoke out more plainly than in any previous election season and moved the Catholic swing vote that Al Gore had won in 2000 to Mr. Bush.

The standard response from Democratic leaders has been that anyone lost to them over this issue is not coming back — and that regrettable as that might be, there is nothing to be done. But that is not what I heard from these voters.

Many of them, Catholic women in particular, are liberal, deep-in-their-heart Democrats who support social spending, who opposed the war from the start and who cross their arms over their chests reflexively when they say the word “Republican.” Some could fairly be described as desperate to find a way home. And if the party they’d prefer doesn’t send a car for them, with a really polite driver, it will have only itself to blame.

...

[bryant69]

1. I don't think hiding what you think is the right way to go about it

I don't know if Abortion should be our key issue (I rather think the war in Iraq, and the differences in how we want to engage in foreign policy should be number one, with health care number two), but I don't think that slipping our position under the table will work for us either.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[rodeodance]

2. H Clinton's plan of "safe and rare" is a grand approach.

[unpossibles]

3. gee, everyone loves spinelessness in a candidate

don't they?

Stick with our guns.

[BurtWorm]

4. What a difference Henneberger's advice is from Dean's!

In his speech at Take Back America, he concluded with a story about an anti-abortion voter at one of his meetups who told him that despite their big difference on abortion, she was going to support him because she knew where he stood and wasn't going to pretend he was what he wasn't.

That's what Dems should take to heart. Not this abject attitude Henneberger is advocating. :eyes:

[Norquist Nemesis]

5. Democrats need to change the frame

Take "abortion" completely out of it and insert "government control". Erase the 'morality' of the issue and bring forth the history lesson: Abortion was LEGAL when the Constitution was written. The decision was in the hands of men who could legally order their wives have one. It was women and doctors who started the movement to ban it not on the basis of 'murdering a baby', but because women were dying.

The bumper sticker should be:
When Government controls that you can't,
Government can decide that you must.
Think China.

[Faux pas]

6. They shouldn't be 'soft peddling' anything. They should be

demanding all of our rights back and making it happen. They need to start with ending the war and contining on with every f-ing right that we had that's been screwed with, ie, our clean air and water standards, worker safety protections, the 40 hour work week, the social security program, the civil rights movement, the equal rights movement, the free speech movement, discrimination protections, the school lunch program, birth control, rural electrification, organized labor, child labor laws, minimum wage, employee health care benefits, public assistance, Americans with Disabilities Act, fair housing legislation, the Freedom of Information Act, the Voting Rights Act, food and drug safety regulations, federally subsidized student loans, collective barganing....and everything else we have done to put power back in the hands of the individual and out of the hands of the ruling and corporate elite.

I'm sorry, but I want a candidate who has a pair.