Are the Dems getting ready to throw us under the bus?

[atommom]

From Pandagon. The whole post is well worth reading.

Digby has a long and troubling post up about the troubling possibility that the Democrats are going to give up on protecting abortion rights, under pressure from more conservative and religious factions of the party, much like they gave up on opposing the death penalty. (Question for the hivemind: Was there ever strong Democratic opposition to the death penalty?) I'm pretty sanguine about the near future in this area, because of Nancy Pelosi's new position as Speaker. Not that I think that women are necessarily more pro-choice than men, but in this case, she has a fairly solid history of support for abortion rights—100% NARAL ratings across the board. Still, as a long-term issue, Digby's concerns are indeed troubling, because this attempt to be more open to "dialogue" on whether or not it's right for the government to force women to bear children against their wills is part of a longer trend towards the Democrats seeking ways to woo back the voters they lost when LBJ passed the 1964 Civil Right Act.

The fact that evangelicals seem to be more conservative than everyone else in the country, including all the other Christians, may just mean that they are, you know, conservatives. Since they are also more likely to be southern and hold other views that are hostile to the party that represents the rest of the country, they just don't seem like a good bet for the Democratic party. It's just insane to try to appeal to the people least likely to support you!

It's important that the Democrats realize that they're chasing a moving target by embracing the evangelicals and taking their religious blather at face value. Like Digby says in the post, the supposed surgence of religious fervor is mostly hype. Building on that, I would say that god is just the latest excuse for pushing social conservatism. It cannot be emphasized enough, apparently, but it's important to understand that the consistent theme of social conservatism is maintaining a racist, patriarchal social hierarchy and that the flavor of the week in social conservatism is just distraction and window dressing. Right now social conservatives are all about the Jeebus, but it wasn't that long ago that the big excuse for conservatism was Personal Responsibility. And just as the Democrats are trying to embrace Jeebus to get conservative votes now, they were trying to embrace Personal Responsibility then to get votes. In fact, the shift in conservative emphasis from Personal Responsibility to Jeebus is probably the direct result of Bill Clinton kicking a bunch of single mothers off welfare and making them work shitty jobs for even shittier pay under the guise of Personal Responsibility. He stole that excuse from them, and they seamlessly shifted to another one. In other words, he threw all those women under the bus for political gains that didn't really materialize.

And that's what will happen if Democrats start speaking Jeebus like the Republicans. They'll end up losing ground on an important issue—looks like abortion this time—and for no political gain as the Republicans seamlessly shift to another line of attack. So it's not worth it. Better to keep standing up for what we believe in for itself.

http://pandagon.net/2006/12/27/the-characters-and-plot-may-change-but-the-underlying-theme-is-eternal/#more-4415

[Warpy]

1. The DLC has wanted to throw us under the bus for years

and have been digging up antichoice candidates all over the place. Reid and Casey are two with high profiles.

The left has never shrunk from selling women out.

I keep putting that out in GD and getting relentlessly flamed as a single issue voter, which I am not. Fuck them if they can't stand the truth. A lot of women won't vote for an antichoice candidate, and the party needs to know it.

A party that has to struggle because it sold out its working class base is not going to get elected to anything if it sells out its women. We are over half their voters, and it's high time we let them know they can no longer take us for granted.

I won't cross the choice line, not ever. To me, it's the same as trying to bring slavery back as an economic institution.

[NMMNG]

2. Why not?

Throwing people under the bus (gays, atheists, etc.) for political gain seems to be the Dems biggest ploy of late.

[Greyhound]

3. Of course they will, they always have and I see no reason to expect

that they are going to change that anytime soon, after all, "what are you going to do, vote republik?".