Dems do a course correction on abortion issue
The Democratic National Committee announced this week that it would no longer withhold campaign funds from candidates who opposed abortion.
Whereupon, the Statue of Liberty dropped her torch into the Hudson, Teddy Roosevelt’s head tumbled off of Mount Rushmore and Niagara stopped falling.
It was such a shocking turn of events that CNN had to replace its “Breaking News” about President Trump using Russian dressing on his salad with a round-table discussion entitled, “Chastity Belts or FitBits: What’s Your Lifestyle Choice?”
Apparently, the idea that there could be Democrats who actually oppose abortion rights and who deserve the backing of the national committee is one whose time has come, given how stunningly successful their pro-choice candidate was in losing the presidential election.
You can actually see the people at the table after the electoral loss going through the stages of grief:
Denial: “She won the popular vote. Lots of Americans support abortion. Is it possible none of them live in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin?”
Anger: “Freaking Tim Kaine? She picked freaking Tim Kaine?”
Bargaining: “How hard can it be to impeach him? I mean, we got rid of Spicer and Scaramucci?”
Depression: “If we impeach him, we get … Pence.”
Acceptance: “Let’s snooker a few of our antichoice people into believing we like them … and then, when they’re not looking, we’ll kidnap Gorsuch and keep him in an undisclosed location for the next decade.”
Clearly, it took a while, but the Democrats have become “woke” to the idea that not everyone worships at the Church of Cecile. I am no longer a Democrat, even though I registered with the party in 1980 right after I turned 18. Even at that young age, I was prolife, but the party wasn’t yet the party of death. There were still some Democrats in leadership positions who were able to come out and declare themselves pro-life, including the great Bob Casey Sr. and to a much, much lesser extent, Mario “I Won’t Impose My Views On You” Cuomo.
But over the intervening years, it became next to impossible to find a Democratic candidate who wasn’t forced to hide his or her sympathy for the unborn. There were, of course, Republicans who also talked about how evolved they were and how they supported choice* (*of a woman to kill, or not to kill, her developing baby).
But they were the exception and not the rule, while the opposite was true with my original party. Democrats reminded me of those flashback scenes in “The Manchurian Candidate,” where the North Koreans essentially brainwashed the American soldiers into becoming killing machines for the motherland. Democrats who had heretofore had the courage to at least acknowledge the humanity of the unborn child-orfetus-were turned into automatons who repeated the company line of wanting abortion to be safe, legal and rare (when they really meant safe, legal, and everywhere).
I stuck with it for a few decades, then just threw up my hands and left. No one sent me a fruit basket or a farewell card, either.
So imagine my surprise when I read these words from Democratic Campaign Committee Chairman Ben Ray Lujan, a Democrat from New Mexico: “There is not a litmus test for Democratic candidates … As we look at candidates across the country, you need to make sure you have candidates that fit the district that can win in these districts across America.”
Representative Lujan isn’t exactly a profile in courage here. He’s not saying that the unborn child is entitled to certain inalienable rights. He’s not expressing a desire that Roe v. Wade be overturned. He’s not even expressing a hope that Planned Parenthood will be defunded (fat chance, thanks GOP for absolutely nothing).
What he’s doing is simply stating the obvious: Not every American voter, and not every Democratic voter fits the profile of Cecile Richards groupies, the sort of women and men who read “The Handmaid’s Tale” and think it’s an operating manual for the Republican National Committee.
Of course, the people who had a stranglehold on the DNC for the past few decades are apoplectic. I would liken them to the Stasi in East Germany who watched as the Berlin Wall came crumbling to the ground. I mean, you give your life to a totalitarian philosophy (“My Body, My Self”) only to watch it destroyed by a simple phrase. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” became, “Hillary, you idiot, we’re going in a different direction!”
A lot of feminists were up in arms about the change in policy, which is really just an acknowledgement that to win elections you sometimes have to stomach ideas that make you nauseous. Feminist Jill Filipovic noted petulantly, “What better strategy than to betray their base and reaffirm that women’s basic rights are negotiable and disposable. Good luck, boys.”
This kind of thinking died out with the dinosaurs.
Good to see the Democrats don’t want to end up in the La Brea tar pits. Leave your comments online Use hashtag at