[QUOTE=DSYoungEsq;20162152That’s just stupid.[/QUOTE]
Politics is stupid.
:dubious:
I haven’t looked it up but didn’t you just describe Teddy Kennedy?
Ted Kennedy was unambiguously pro-choice. In fact, his Robert Bork speech eviscerated the nominee on exactly that point.
Incidentally, regarding Ted Kennedy and abortion, and because Google n-gram viewer is one of my favorite things:
there’s an argument to be made that it was his speech, in fact, that put the phrase “back-alley abortion” in the public lexicon.
You’ll notice that the frequency triples from 1987 to 1988, which coincides with the Bork nomination.
You are exactly 100 percent correct. Now who the hell was I thinking of?
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, maybe? (He was generally pro-choice, but did famously oppose partial-birth abortion, and was quoted as saying “you women are ruining the Democratic Party with your insistence on abortion.”)
I hate to say it, DSY, but damned if I even know what tent you’re talking about, the Democratic Party, or Roman Catholicism, or some Platonic ideal of a tent.
Look, a tent has boundaries. While the boundaries of what constitutes a Democrat are indeed vague, there are values that are obviously antithetical to what the party stands for. If one favors the rich enslaving the poor, then yes, that person has kicked himself out of the freakin’ tent. Because you know where the tent pole is that supports the center of the tent? This person is on the opposite side of the world from that location.
No cause can be everything to everybody. Any cause, any movement, any political party - even one as famously unorganized as the Democratic Party - must have some definition, or there is no reason for anyone to vote for it, because otherwise it is meaningless.
If it works out for them (a long shot at best), it’ll have to be coupled with an official indifference toward gun ownership.
By 1986 that was definitely true. But Teddy took some time coming around to that position. Many liberal Democrats were publicly antiabortion at the time of the Rie v Wade decision, and Teddy was one of those.
Over time, every Democrat with any ambition drifted to the “personally opposed but…” side and eventually to the enthusiastically pro-abortion side (even the Catholic Democrats no longer pretend seriously to be personally Opposed).
I am a Democrat opposed to gun control. You will kick me out of the tent when you prize my voter registration card out of my cold, dead hand.
The party should certainly have positions, on all of the issues. And a politician who consistently disagrees with the party, across the aggregate of all of those issues, should be kicked out of the tent. But if you had, for instance, a politician who wanted two more tax brackets on top of the ones we already have, going up to 50%, and who supported abortion rights, and who wanted single-payer tax-supported universal health care, and who supported gun control legislation, and was opposed to wars of aggression, and recognized the equal rights of minorities, gays, and the transgendered… but also thought that the minimum wage was unnecessary, do you really think that he should be kicked out of the party over that one issue? Even if his opponent is on the opposite side on all of those issues, and it’s impossible to get anyone elected from his district that supports the minimum wage?
I don’t mean to be offensive here, but this statement makes me wonder if you’ve paid any attention at all to the political history of the United States?
Often, in our lovely two-party system, a “party” is nothing more than a coalition of groups of people who are banding together for mutual political power. They each have their own main agendas, but they are willing to ignore the points of difference in order to gain the power they crave. As the coalition faces challenges, the central tenets for which they are willing to strive change.
The Democracy (as it was called in the early-to-mid-1800s) has exemplified this through most of its life. Look at what made up the party during the antebellum period. Similarly, look at the party at the turn of the 20th Century. Then look at the party in the 1960s, when for goodness sake at least a third of those who called themselves “Democrats” were staunchly opposed to civil rights for negros, a fundamental plank of the party.
I gave you a very concise example of a simple situation where the Democratic Party, according to DNC Chair Tom Perez, would be refusing to accept within its fold someone who otherwise would be substantially aligned with the basic principles of the Party. Do you or do you not accept that the person I hypothesized should be allowed to be a Democrat? If you do, then clearly you are saying that abortion should not be a litmus test. If that litmus test is not valid, propose a litmus test that IS valid. But if you do, I’m going to hypothesize a very real possible person who fails that test, but who agrees with the basic principles of the Democratic Party in all other ways, and ask what the Party should do with that person.
Do I think the Democrats should welcome someone who advocates a race war, but who is in favor of government helping the poor? No. But then I would hope that the Republicans would refuse to welcome such a person. Some people shouldn’t be welcomed by any party. But ignoring such obvious extremes, I think it’s poor politics to insist that any person cannot be a member of your party, because of some opinion that the majority of people in the party may have.
What’s Tom Perez gonna do? Forbid me from *voting *Dem?
And perhaps it is possible that, someday, I will examine the political offerings and say “Hey, look! The Republican candidate offers a much more humane and progressive agenda than the Dem!”. And when pigs fly, they will be a hazard for flying cars.
I’m used to the idea that, in or out of executive office, a party has a leader whose job it is to keep the party as together as possible, and (particularly in the aftermath of defeat) to come up with both an over-arching message/narrative and supporting policies that would form the basis of the formal manifesto/platform for the next election. In the US does that formal responsibility live with the Chair of the relevant National Committee or the leaders in Congress (and which has priority?)
It would be normal to expect a party, if it’s to be effective, to be seen to be united around core principles and policies. Maverick candidates and MPs are allowed a certain amount of latitude, but if it’s in the manifesto and they oppose it, there’ll be trouble.
Mind you, in our case, abortion would be one of the few “conscience” issues that no party would dream of putting in its manifesto, leaving it up to the judgement of individual legislators, nor, come to that, is there any difference in the attitudes of any of the serious political parties to gun control or the principle of universal provision of medical care - but that’s the UK for you.
There is no formal leader of a U.S. political party. If the president is from that party, then the president is the de facto leader. But if not, there’s no designated leader.
The head of the national committee can play that role if he or she is motivated and effective. But the national committee is not the party. Very often, the highest elected official from that party will be looked to to provide that leadership.
American parties are very different from, for example, British parties. They’re not true organizational entities. They’re loose coalitions of individuals and organizational entities that have chosen to wear the party label.
To the extent that there’s any leader, it’s because some substantial number of party members have chosen to treat someone as a leader.
I think I understand where RTF is coming from, and I agree with him. Let’s take your example a bit further:
Do you think someone who advocates abolishing the Minimum Wage should be accepted into the Democratic Party? How about the Republican Party? I think it would be OK in the latter, but not the former. I don’t see why each party can’t have some litmus tests, I just don’t think abortion should be one for either party.
As a counter example, I don’t think the Republicans should accept someone who advocates for a “Living Wage”.
If the parties don’t have some way of distinguishing themselves from each other, what purpose do they serve by existing?
Or, look at it this way: Are you saying that all positions on issues fall into two and only two categories:
- Positions that should be acceptable to both parties.
- Positions that should be acceptable to neither party.
If you don’t, then a certain amount of litmus testing is OK.
I am aware of the “but Robert Byrd used to be in the KKK!” past of the Democratic Party. And way back further than that.
But it hasn’t been that party since it passed all that civil-rights legislation in the mid-1960s. That was fifty freakin’ years ago. Yes, the Democratic Party used to be a different party before that in many ways.
But oddly enough, even before the 1960s, it was still the party of the little guy v. the corporation, the party that taxed the rich heavily to pay for government. The big difference before then was that the ‘little guy’ it was fighting for was very specifically a white ‘little guy.’
What, saying it once, in the post immediately before the one you’re taking issue with, wasn’t clear enough?
Seriously, that was part of my confusion about what you were asking. It wasn’t clear to me, because if the ‘tent’ in question was the Democratic Party, I’d just answered the question you were asking. So it made no sense to me that you could mean that. So maybe you were talking about Roman Catholicism, that somehow the tension between two Catholic doctrines was a problem. Or maybe something else. I had no fucking clue what you were talking about really. Just because you think you’re being clear, doesn’t mean you’re being clear.
I did, in the very post you’ve been responding to.
Really, if you aren’t gonna bother reading what I’ve written before responding, it’s hard to carry on a decent dialogue.
Well, isn’t that a litmus test? And it’s one you and I would agree on. Yet you’re against the whole idea.
Now I’m starting to think I should let you argue it out with yourself, and I can rejoin the conversation once you’ve decided which ‘you’ has won.
Why, is it that important to you that the Republicans reject people who want to help the poor?
Imagine a unicorn. Should we kick this unicorn out of the Democratic Party?
If it existed, it would be so oblivious to the real world that you’d want to keep him from being eligible for the Democratic Party nomination for dogcatcher.
If it’s impossible to get anyone elected from his district that supports the minimum wage, then it’s redder than any Congressional district in the U.S.A. No Dem will win. But if you’re going to bother running a Dem candidate in this hypothetical district, you really need it to be someone who isn’t disconnected from reality.
He could withhold support from an otherwise liberal candidate that wins a Democratic primary in a swing state.