US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

actually, i'll backpedal slightly & suggest that the truth is in between / inclusive of both of our arguments here

when your strategy is "concede parts of woman's constitutionally protected right to choose abortion," that's not strategic, it's platform. what part of "I work with NARAL" did you not read? I work for them, their whole fuckin shpiel is get people to vote Dem, don't worry, your beloved can count on the votes of the people they constantly betray

meant to write "beloved party," which only dials back the snot by 1/4 but anyway.

when your strategy is "concede parts of woman's constitutionally protected right to choose abortion," that's not strategic, it's platform. what part of "I work with NARAL" did you not read? I work for them, their whole fuckin shpiel is get people to vote Dem, don't worry, your beloved can count on the votes of the people they constantly betray

― five gone cats from Boston (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, April 28, 2011 7:34 PM (31 seconds ago) Bookmark

disingenuous. the strategy is 'change the courts electorally but dont let us lose roe v wade until we're stronger there' vs. 'challenge now, gamble that court wont overturn it.' it must be weird to live in a world where everyone who disagrees w/ you about strategy secretly wants to kowtow to the opposition

i mean, realize that im saying i agree w/ you about strategy, i just think your interpretation is unfair to many pro-abortion ppl who may have been doing this for what they thought were good reasons

as a gen. rule pro-abortion rights activists have pursued a path of not challenging the smaller chips at abortion because theyve been afraid of roe v wade being overturned if it went to the current supreme court.

And if overturned, authority over abortion would revert to the States. This should be a fight everywhere.

yeah man it is very difficult for me to accept "good reasons" for women presently in Indiana who learn in, say, the 22nd week, that something is wrong with the fetus they were hoping to carry to term and now it's either abort or carry a guaranteed stillborn birth to term and they can't do shit because of "strategy." This strategy, which the Democrats have now been practicing since Reagan, has the practical effect of denying poor women the right to abortion. If it weren't for NNAF who knows how fucked women in Michigan, Indiana, Oklahoma, NC, Nebraska, I know I'm missing some too, would be. I am really tunnel-visioned about this. I work closely with some of these abortion-rights orgs and hear directly the stories of what the immediate costs of this "strategy" is. They are human costs and it is unconscionable to tell these women that their stories are part of some broader abortion-rights narrative when most Democrats, again, won't even put the word "abortion" in their campaign lit. There is a time to place your principles right up front or admit that they're not your principles; that time, with abortion, for the Democratic party, was thirty years ago, and they took a pass on it.

i guess i just get tired of everything being made into a real left vs. sissy dems fight -- for the left to be successful imo its easier to not call names & instead convince the 'weak-willed' members of the party that the sensible thing to do is the one we're right about by, like, reasoning, rather than deriding them as panderers.

what if they're panderers tho

yeah man it is very difficult for me to accept "good reasons" for women presently in Indiana who learn in, say, the 22nd week, that something is wrong with the fetus they were hoping to carry to term and now it's either abort or carry a guaranteed stillborn birth to term and they can't do shit because of "strategy." This strategy, which the Democrats have now been practicing since Reagan, has the practical effect of denying poor women the right to abortion. If it weren't for NNAF who knows how fucked women in Michigan, Indiana, Oklahoma, NC, Nebraska, I know I'm missing some too, would be. I am really tunnel-visioned about this. I work closely with some of these abortion-rights orgs and hear directly the stories of what the immediate costs of this "strategy" is. They are human costs and it is unconscionable to tell these women that their stories are part of some broader abortion-rights narrative when most Democrats, again, won't even put the word "abortion" in their campaign lit. There is a time to place your principles right up front or admit that they're not your principles; that time, with abortion, for the Democratic party, was thirty years ago, and they took a pass on it.

― five gone cats from Boston (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, April 28, 2011 7:43 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

i agree w/ all this btw, i think

what if they're panderers tho

― cop a cute abdomen (gbx), Thursday, April 28, 2011 7:45 PM (16 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

what does that even mean? they're happy w/ the status quo? imo it just means they're scared roe v wade's overturn would have negative consequences that would be worse. which, i think the risk is worth it, you dont have to convince me. but this seems like a misread of their motives

Understand also that the level of my passion on this issue is extreme and I lose all my fuckin marbles when I think about Democrats selling out abortion rights, which is exactly how it has looked to me since the health care bill, which was the foot in the door that has led to this state of actual abortion-rights peril in so many states. It's not pansy dems vs real left or anything for me at that point. It's people who support the right to choose abortion on this side, and I don't care who else over on the other side.

that is it I have said my piece on this I said I wasn't gonna derail the politics thread with my single-issue business!

^^^i'm basically the same way, + death penalty

i get pretty unreasonable about strategy/politics/etc and am inclined (perhaps unfairly) to think that anyone that doesn't share my zeal is toady and a sell-out

deej i assume you're referring to not voting for democrats -> republicans choose court members and not we shouldn't challenge new anti-abortion laws in court because the supreme court could overturn roe. because again the latter is not going to happen

otherwise i don't get what "risk" you're talking about?

http://www.slate.com/id/2291596/

^^good piece

because again the latter is not going to happen

― k3vin k., Thursday, April 28, 2011 7:50 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

i agree i dont think it would, although you're far too certain imo

There's talk itt about the two party system falling somehow. It will not. If one of the parties fail (the Whigs), most of their voters will join some newly calibrated bloc (the Republicans). Look at the South. As the Democrats (in league w/liberal Republicans) started to address Civil Rights, the South turned to the Republicans. As long as they were sufficiently racist or turned a blind eye, the Democrats could be the party of farmers and 'ordinary men' in the Dixie but when that changed, they lost their old bastion.

k cool read 300 posts ago

deej got to the Lithwick article before I did -- a good read indeed.

we shouldn't challenge new anti-abortion laws in court

Regardless, I'd like to see some real politcal opposition.

i get pretty unreasonable about strategy/politics/etc and am inclined (perhaps unfairly) to think that anyone that doesn't share my zeal is toady and a sell-out

― cop a cute abdomen (gbx), Thursday, April 28, 2011 7:50 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dont think its an issue of 'degree of zeal' though, its simply a matter of disagreeing over the smarter way to accomplish your goals

that slate piece is making a smart argument for 'our side' on this issue, and hopefully that becomes our CW about these debates going forward. but notice how it doesnt frame the debate as being about toady moderate dems

well toady mod dems do exist, which is another issue completely

i dont think its an issue of 'degree of zeal' though, its simply a matter of disagreeing over the smarter way to accomplish your goals

yeah but understand this - my imagined 22-week pregnancy that has run into disaster above, that is presently real in a number of states for a number of women, today. Actual people who can't get the abortions they need on 4/28/2011. So the other side has accomplished their goal of denying actual live women, today, their right to an abortion. The goal to protect these woman's rights is the exact place where the line in the sand ought to have been drawn.

im certainly no advocate of ends-means morality, but i do think ethical dilemmas like this -- where either option has the potential very bad outcome -- it makes sense that ppl who believe as strongly as you might disagree here

that said, i do think the evidence is building that they are wrong. i just think questioning their loyalty to the cause is a pointless / juvenile way to go about changing things

i don't think anyone who believes in exercising extreme (undue) caution in lobbying against/challenging anti-abortion laws can really be classified as an "activist", and yeah these people probably care about the issue less than some other people

i don't think anyone who believes in exercising extreme (undue) caution in lobbying against/challenging anti-abortion laws can really be classified as an "activist", and yeah these people probably care about the issue less than some other people

― k3vin k., Thursday, April 28, 2011 8:08 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you dont think someone worried that if the wrong case comes up in front of the supremes it will actually cause an even faster rollback is sufficiently with the cause, got it.

reality is complicated!

my thirdhand take on this -- from a young lawyer friend who has talked with a lot of the counsels who keep an eye on & litigate abortion laws across the country -- is that pro-choice ppl are kind of afraid of the supreme court but also of a lot of the federal appellates.

the fear is that they'll challenge a bad state law, get in front of a bad federal judge and have it be upheld, then you've effectively solidified the bad law in precedent AND spread the bad law to OTHER states in that federal circuit. so they're holding off and basically letting shitty state politics stay there, hoping for calmer seas in the future. losing a court case farther up the chain has really terrible added consequences, iow

it could be all very misguided tho, i don't really know. but the court game on this is very chess-not-checkers, i am told.

I work with several pro-choice organizations closely and I don't know anybody in any of them for whom that is a top-level concern, D-40. The top level concern is protecting the rights of women who need abortions today to get them today. Sacrificing the rights of women today to preserve the rights of women who don't need to exercise those rights today is not, among any abortion-rights activists I know, the immediate priority. I think you are speaking on behalf of Democratic party members/activists who identify as pro-choice, but whose first loyalty is to the Democratic party.

anti-abortion people know exactly how to push on this to gain traction in precedent as well, make no mistake. 'fetal homicide' laws are meant as a wedge under the door

xp

I mean challenging the fetal heartbeat bills is a no fucking brainer, that's compelling a patient to undergo a medical procedure, nightmare shit, near total radio silence from Dems on a slam-dunk - you have to twist yourself into knots to call that "strategic"

when i bring up 'strategic' its not about winning seats. im talking about preserving abortion laws, exclusively. speaking of twisting things in knots

I was gonna say, some of you are letting passion make you unable to understand relatively simple English.

the fact is -- & goole's point supports this -- its not an either-or thing. sometimes its a good case to fight, sometimes its a misdirect. theres an article in I think it was the WSJ about this recently -- that conservatives are swamping the courts w/ these cases & some are worth fighting & some are designed to hide the 'bigger deal' cases etc

it is not preserving abortion laws when they are impossible to get after 20 weeks. this is pig-in-a-poke stuff. that right, allowing a women to get an abortion after 20 weeks, is being conceded on the grounds that maybe more rights will be taken away if people make too much noise about the right they're taking away.

i think that point is often otm but i dont think it actually contradicts a lot of what im saying

but you can't preserve a right by selling half of it. which again has been the Dem strategy since Reagan and is really aggressively the Dem strategy now - invoke the fear of overturning Roe as an excuse to not defend the already-established right to abortion in every state. when the budget deal stripped DC of funding for abortion, 28 women in DC who were scheduled for abortions the next day couldn't get them. that is reality; NNAF raised enough money to pay for a few of them, and may yet raise enough to pay for more, but the ground is conceded and won't be won back - who's going to win it back? not the party that nominally supports these women's right to abortion access; they already traded that right away!

I seem to recall when South Dakota voted for that crazy draconian abortion bill a few years ago (don't remember the details), that shit got overturned fast following a groundswell of objection. If the right has learned anything from its piecemeal approach to banning abortion, is that with a little bit here and a little bit there, public outcry will never (or likely won't) ever hit a critical mass of outrage. In this sense it's really ingenious to avoid a Supreme battle, since a Supreme Court overturning Row v. Wade would be like what went on in Madison over labor on a national scale. I'm not old enough to remember first hand, but the era of the back-alley abortion was muffled/muted by shame and secrecy. I don't think anger would simmer underground in 2011. It'd explode. I'd explode.

that is OTM. While Scalia and Thomas (dunno about Alito frankly) are up for the fight, I just don't think Roberts wants to overturn Roe -- and anti-abortionists know this.

well like i said, there's a lot of unfriendly judicial territory between the local level and the supremes.

Get cracking on those recess appointments, Mr. President!

the establishment right certainly doesn't want roe v wade overturned. year-in-year-out they get elected on social issues, particularly that one, & pass continued tax reductions. thats an engine for big business basically

the establishment right certainly doesn't want roe v wade overturned. year-in-year-out they get elected on social issues, particularly that one, & pass continued tax reductions. thats an engine for big business basically

this is true. but what they are accomplishing at the state level is genuinely appalling

Will Dems bungle getting the word out on Ryan's Medicare plan:

Democrats are banking that the Ryan plan will be politically toxic for the GOP. But these two polls suggest that won't necessarily be the case: the GOP's plan could still have widespread appeal unless Democrats manage to communicate exactly how the specifics of RyanCare would impact ordinary Americans. The Dems faced the same dilemma when it came to federal health reform: Americans tend to feel positive about many of the specific benefits of the Affordable Care Act, but the Republicans have continued to succeed in making them feel queasy about the law overall. So Democrats shouldn't simply assume that Americans will recoil at RyanCare at first blush.

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/04/poll-public-paul-ryan-medicare

Will Dems bungle getting the word out on Ryan's Medicare plan:

you forgot the word "how"

My god, I hate the word "banking" – in every sense.

lol i dunno, it conotes a fitting sense of "betting", esp given recent events

speaking of citizens united....

Former Senator Russ Feingold, a campaign finance purist who refused outside support in his own campaigns, sharply criticized Priorities USA and Priorities USA Action, the new groups that will take unlimited, and partly undisclosed, money to support President Obama's re-election campaign.

"Democrats who mirror the right-wing tactics of Karl Rove and David Koch do our nation no favors. Our democracy is best served by rejecting the fundamentally corrupt strategy of embracing unlimited corporate influence," said Feingold, who now heads Progressives United.

Reflecting the abruptness of the Democrats' pivot on the question of secret cash -- a central talking point in the 2010 election -- a group that backs Democrats on campaign finance issues put out a press release this morning headed, "Campaign Watchdog: Priorities USA Not Hypocritical."

"In order to change the rules of the game, we need to engage in the rules as they are, not as we wish they were. To act otherwise after Citizens United is to take a knife to a gunfight," David Donnelly, the national campaigns director of Public Campaign Action Fund, said in the release.