Glenden BrownCore Values
There’s something of a flap developing about the advice from Mara Vanderslice that Democrats should be more conservative about abortion. Vanderslice is one of those Democrats who is not so very liberal, who has been convinced by conservative rhetoric that anti-abortion is the only moral stance and she seems to believe other Democrats should follow in her footsteps. If folks like Vanderslice have their way, abortion, like opposition to the death penalty and actually defending the civil rights of glbt people, will be exiled from the Democratic party.
Digby sums up pretty neatly my feelings:
IÂ really wish the Dems would stop bullshitting themselves for five minutes and deal with reality instead of this public relations and marketing nonsense. These people want the party to become socially conservative. As, apparently, do a whole bunch of other Democrats for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that they hope to peel off some swing voters whom they have been persuaded would be more than willing to vote Democratic if the bitches and the fags would just STFU and get with the program. This nice young woman will show everybody how it’s done.
. . . If people like Ms Vanderslice would really like to help Christians in this country feel like they have a seat at the Democratic table, maybe she should spend a little less time cultivating the right wingers who already hate half the people in the Democratic party and concentrate a little of that energy in helping the liberal Christians who are struggling to survive the onslaught. I’d even help, and I’m not religious at all.
But Vanderslice and her friends aren’t actually liberals are they? They are missionaries going into the heart of darkness to convert the heathens.
Pastor Dan at streetprophets is a bit more sanguine. I’m quoting him at length:
There’s little to add to this New York Times profile of “faith outreach” consultant Mara Vanderslice:
- Mara Vanderslice bears a striking resemblance to Tori Spelling.*Â
- Improving 10 points on the national spread is impressive, but as I’ve said all along, Democrats have had a consultant problem, not a faith problem. That 10 point bump proves that Vanderslice is a good consultant, not that religion-inflected speech is in itself powerful, though many people will take it that way.Â
- Every time Democrats do talk about faith, the right wing will assume they’re insincere.Â
- Every time Democrats do talk about faith, some on the left will raise the specter of an erosion of the line between church and state. Sometimes that will be a substantive criticism, as in the case just cited, and other times, it will be Chicken Little.Â
Apparently there was something to add after all.
Frederick Clarkson has this to say:
. . .Criticism of religious leaders and institutions is healthy in a free society. Religious intolerance is not. Religious underpinning of an individuals values in public life is healthy as is their expression. Requirements and litmus tests and cheap pandering is not. Navigating all this is not always easy. Easy sounding solutions such as those proposed by Common Good Strategies are ultimately counter productive and very likely to backfire.
It is worth noting that Mara Vanderslice is a former associate of Jim Wallis at Sojourners. But more importantly, her line of thinking does not remotely represent the mainstream of American historical understanding of the meaning of the constitution and the first amendment, and candidates who follow her advice are placing themselves on the wrong side of what Pat Buchanan called the “religious war” going on in America.
. . . It really should go without saying that becoming the religious right is not the best way to counter it.
Of course there’s more!
People like Mara Vanderslice are nice, well meaning people who just don’t get it - conservative Christians are about 1/4 of the US population and their views are minority views. Well meaning political consultants are confused by the Republicans tendency to win elections; looking over the electoral landscape since 1980, they’ve failed to note that Ronald Reagan’s 1984 victory was the last time a Republican candidate won a broad consensus in the US. George W. Bush scraped by in 2004 - an extremely narrow victory over a terrible candidate. Consultants like Vanderslice have concluded that conservative values are the key to winning but have ignored the way in which conservative policies have to be sold dishonestly to American voters - with false labels and carefully tested talking points (compassionate conservative anyone?).Â
The majority of Americans (as Bill Scher points out in Wait! Don’t Move to Canada) agree with liberal positions on policy and social issues. The success of Republicans has rested on keeping their conservative relatives out of sight; as right wing conservatives have demanded and won greater visibility in the Republican Party and the Bush Administration, Republican popularity has dropped.Â
By arguing passionately for liberal values - for instance religious tolerance and diversity, reproductive freedom, comprehensive sexuality education, equal rights, equality of opportunity, and strong environmental policies - Democratic candidates show that they have core values. Richard Wirthlin long ago noted that many Americans didn’t necessarily agree with Ronald Reagan on every position but they liked his strong values and the sense that he know what he stood for and why. A candidate with strong core values can argue, successfully, “Look, we may not agree with each other on everything, but you can trust that I will operate out of my core values and I will respect you when you do the same.” Rather than attempting to use carefully neutral poll-tested language - which American voters can detect from a mile away and which they usually don’t trust - an honest enunciation of values establishes credibility with voters, even if it is at times a little rough.Â
In some sense, this is just another skirmish in the struggle between the party consultants and the activist base that Jerome and Markos talked about in Crashing the Gates. Vanderslice is a new variant of an old strain of play it safe consultants who is so afraid of being attacked by conservatives that she wants to make nice with them, even if means throwing core values and whole chunks of the population under the bus in the name of winning votes from a few, angry conservatives.
(One of these days, I should do a post on the role of anger in the conservative movement.)
December 27th, 2006 at 8:45 pm
Glenden said:
“By arguing passionately for liberal values - for instance religious tolerance and diversity, reproductive freedom, comprehensive sexuality education, equal rights, equality of opportunity, and strong environmental policies - Democratic candidates show that they have core values.”
I say:
Amen to that…but I still don’t have to buy into the joy of legal unlimited baby killing to be a good Democrat. There is a huge chunk of the population of this state that knows Democrats are better on nearly every issue than the Republicans but who are against government funding of abortion and who believe late term abortion when used for family planning purposes should be banned. It seems too close to senseless murder for us.
I don’t think you are arguing that support for unlimited abortion rights should be a litmus test for Democrats…at least I hope you’re not. To adopt such a policy would be foolish for Democratic prospects in the future especially in the west. There isn’t anything wrong with being the party that eschews dogmatic adherence to a party line on abortion…in fact…we make ourselves the rational party when we welcome people from all sides of the debate and encourage our party’s candidates and constituents to vote their conscience on the issue.
December 27th, 2006 at 9:25 pm
Jeremy - reproductive freedom is more than abortion. The government should not be in the business of telling women what to do with their uteruses. Providing medically accurate information about and access to contraception is part of reproductive freeom. Both men and women need conttraception and information about managing their fertility. Family planning services are good for families.
There is room in the Democratic party for people who are opposed to abortion. But, adopting the rightwing approach to abortion seems untenable in a party dedicated to defending individual rights. I would hope that liberals opposed to abortion would be more dedicated to finding ways to reduce the need for abortion than finding ways to outlaw is completely.
From the standpoint of party politics, the respect for women’s rights should be a core value; that can mean supporting policies to reduce the need for abortion (i.e. guaranteed access to family planning services and contraception). But, defending the right of women to make their own reproductive choices feels like a core value to me. The distinction between supporting abortion rights and supporting abortion seems basic to me. I hope no woman I know and care about ever faces that choice and feels her only option is abortion - but I would absolutely be with her if that were her choice; I also believe those of us who don’t have uteruses shouldn’t be telling those who do what to do with them.
December 27th, 2006 at 9:28 pm
Glory be the day when supposedly liberal politicians (who count on the liberal vote to get elected) drop the idea that they need to move to the right to come in line with the majority of Americans. It’s just not true. Americans continue to support progressive and liberal values even while “liberal” politicians move to the right.
Besides abortion, the war in Iraq is a good example: The majority of Americans want our military out, as well as the majority of Iraqis. We the people are much more “radical” than our liberal representatives when it comes to the war - all they can offer is weak-kneed future withdrawals and support for the immorality called the “troop surge” and escalation of needless violence.
December 28th, 2006 at 5:29 am
Glenden,
I agree with you on everything you’ve written about the importance of access to contraception and sex ed and the availability of family planning services. They have to be available. I also agree that Democrats cannot and should not adopt a policy position in opposition to abortion similar to what Republicans have done.
Democrats who are opposed to unlimited abortion rights aren’t against it because we want to control what a woman can do with her uterus. We think the killing of babies for convenience sake should be illegal because it involves killing babies, whether outside the uterus or in. For me personally I have no problem with the morning after pill or abortions in the first trimester for women who have been raped or whose health would be legitimately threatened by a pregnancy. Others disagree with me on the idea that a woman shouldn’t be legally allowed to have a later term baby killed and thats fine. I have my opinion you can have yours. Neither of us is in a position to question the legitimacy of the other’s status as a loyal Democrat and neither of us should be…especially in a state like Utah where our party needs so much help.
December 28th, 2006 at 7:27 am
Jeremy - it sounds to me as if we agree but not in terminology. Late term abortion is illegal. US courts have used the concept of “viability” - once a fetus can survive outside the mother’s body, then it shoud not be aborted. That seems to me a eminently reasonable point at which to draw the line.
The question then, to me, becomes how do we reduce the need for abortion, how do create a more effective system for adoption of unplanned children (I hate to use the term unwanted but the reality is many children are not wanted). I don’t remember the exact numbers but a sizable portion of women who have abortions already have children, suggesting the pregnancy is unplanned and that their financial and family situation makes another child unworkable.
What does a liberal social policy look like that would reduce the need for aborion? How does it differ from the misogyny of most conservative anti-abortion proposals? How does it respect the rights of women? I’m not opposed to reducing abortion but doing so shouldn’t simply involve reducing access and criminalizing providers and patients. As I said before, I believe the rights of women is a core value - if we agree on that, then the rest is working out the details. There is room for a wide variety of opinions in the Democratic party and I hope that everyone speaks up. I’m not saying you’re not a legitimate Democrat - I hope what you’re hearing is that being a Democrat means holding certain core values and finding ways to make workable social policy that benefits the widest array of people.
February 10th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
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