Democrats must move left, not right
There's been much in the news about the Democratic party making compromises with conservatives in order to win elections ... one example is the effort by pro-lifers to gain a foothold in the DNC. I think that is a terrible idea and I'm not the only one - Elizabeth Warren agrees with me ... Amid 2020 buzz, Warren urges Democrats to reject centrist policies and move leftward ...
Here's a bit from another article a couple of weeks ago in The New York Times ...
Of Course Abortion Should Be a Litmus Test for Democrats
Democrats will fund anti-choice candidates in conservative districts, Representative Ben Ray Luján, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in an interview this week, citing the party’s need to build “a broad coalition” to win control of Congress in 2018 ....
I relate to the flailing panic that is no doubt undergirding such a morally putrescent idea. Nineteen hyenas and a broken vacuum cleaner control the White House, and ice is becoming extinct. I get it. I am desperate and afraid as well. I am prepared to make leviathan compromises to pull us back from that brink. But there is no recognizable version of the Democratic Party that does not fight unequivocally against half its constituents’ being stripped of ownership of their own bodies and lives. This issue represents everything Democrats purport to stand for .... to be anti-choice on a policy level is absolutely indefensible from an economic justice, racial justice, gender justice and human rights standpoint. And if the Democratic Party does not stand for any of those things, then what on earth is it?
It’s true that the left will have to choose (and soon) between absolute ideological purity and the huge numbers required to seize the rudder of the nation and avert global catastrophe. But abortion is not valid fodder for such compromise, nor is racism, nor is L.G.B.T.Q. equality, nor is any issue that puts people’s fundamental humanity up for debate. Abortion is not a fringe issue. Abortion is liberty ....
What the Democrats need to do, I often hear, is to move away from issues of “identity” and toward purer, broader issues of economic equality. But there is no model of economic equality that does not reckon with “identity politics.” There is no economic equality without the ability to terminate a pregnancy. There is no economic equality without the overthrow of white supremacy. What good is an economic opportunity if large swaths of the population can’t access it? Telling minority groups that it’s their responsibility to sit back and wait, to subordinate their needs for the good of the party — that implies that “the party” is not theirs as much as everyone else’s. And it sounds a lot like the people we’re trying to defeat .....
Some say we should be willing to support candidates that disagree with us on just one issue, but why is it only women who are expected to take one for the team? Will the DNC support candidates who want to roll back marriage equality in order to get more religious conservatives' votes? Will the DNC support racist candidates so they can pick up the bigot vote that they missed in the last election? At what point does the Democratic party become just another version of the Republican party?
Here's a bit from another article a couple of weeks ago in The New York Times ...
Of Course Abortion Should Be a Litmus Test for Democrats
Democrats will fund anti-choice candidates in conservative districts, Representative Ben Ray Luján, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in an interview this week, citing the party’s need to build “a broad coalition” to win control of Congress in 2018 ....
I relate to the flailing panic that is no doubt undergirding such a morally putrescent idea. Nineteen hyenas and a broken vacuum cleaner control the White House, and ice is becoming extinct. I get it. I am desperate and afraid as well. I am prepared to make leviathan compromises to pull us back from that brink. But there is no recognizable version of the Democratic Party that does not fight unequivocally against half its constituents’ being stripped of ownership of their own bodies and lives. This issue represents everything Democrats purport to stand for .... to be anti-choice on a policy level is absolutely indefensible from an economic justice, racial justice, gender justice and human rights standpoint. And if the Democratic Party does not stand for any of those things, then what on earth is it?
It’s true that the left will have to choose (and soon) between absolute ideological purity and the huge numbers required to seize the rudder of the nation and avert global catastrophe. But abortion is not valid fodder for such compromise, nor is racism, nor is L.G.B.T.Q. equality, nor is any issue that puts people’s fundamental humanity up for debate. Abortion is not a fringe issue. Abortion is liberty ....
What the Democrats need to do, I often hear, is to move away from issues of “identity” and toward purer, broader issues of economic equality. But there is no model of economic equality that does not reckon with “identity politics.” There is no economic equality without the ability to terminate a pregnancy. There is no economic equality without the overthrow of white supremacy. What good is an economic opportunity if large swaths of the population can’t access it? Telling minority groups that it’s their responsibility to sit back and wait, to subordinate their needs for the good of the party — that implies that “the party” is not theirs as much as everyone else’s. And it sounds a lot like the people we’re trying to defeat .....
Some say we should be willing to support candidates that disagree with us on just one issue, but why is it only women who are expected to take one for the team? Will the DNC support candidates who want to roll back marriage equality in order to get more religious conservatives' votes? Will the DNC support racist candidates so they can pick up the bigot vote that they missed in the last election? At what point does the Democratic party become just another version of the Republican party?
posted by crystal | 9:52 AM
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