Abortion, Muddled Middle. - Must reading for Democrats.
Muddled Middle
With the country still divided over abortion, Dems focusing on 2008 are looking at new ways to talk about the issue.
By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
June 10, 2005
Conservatives will have to decide who they hate more in 2008, Hillary Clinton or John McCain. That’s how a veteran of the Reagan White House sizes up the current field. The religious right loathes Hillary, the presumptive Democratic nominee, and they love Virginia Sen. George Allen, an amiable, Reagan-like figure whose father once coached the Redskins.
Allen will do well in the Republican primaries, but polls will show him losing by 7 percentage points to Hillary at the same time they show McCain handily beating her. That will be the moment of truth for evangelical Christians. What they do depends on how hungry they are to win. If they go with McCain, he could ease their anxieties by choosing Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as his running mate.
Improbable, you say, but this comes from a savvy observer of the political scene. Brother Jeb is beloved among the Christian right for shepherding the case of the brain-damaged Terri Schiavo into the national spotlight, and the Bush dynasty is yearning to be established. Tucked in a New Yorker article last month on McCain was the revelation that he assured conservative activist Gary Bauer that if elected president he would nominate pro-life judges. Bush refused to make such an explicit promise, which is why Bauer endorsed McCain in the 2000 primaries.
McCain broke with the religious right over the gay-marriage amendment, but he is pro-life and has a 100 percent voting record in Congress to prove it.
The conventional wisdom in Washington right now is that choice is a loser. When the heads of several women’s groups met recently with Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean on the veranda outside his office at party headquarters, Dean exclaimed, “The debate is no longer about choice--it’s about who decides.” That wasn’t exactly a new insight, and when Dean appeared soon after on “Meet the Press” to say that he thought maybe it should be harder to get a third-trimester abortion, the women’s groups went ballistic. It’s already extremely difficult, and as a medical doctor, Dean should know that.
Dean’s comments, along with Hillary Clinton’s “common ground” speech to abortion activists in New York in January, have fueled a spate of stories about how the Democrats are rethinking their unyielding fealty to abortion rights and trying to find a more nuanced way to reach voters in the vast muddled middle who are at best ambivalent about abortion. “The great challenge for Democrats is not to be put into a cultural box,” says Marshall Wittmann of the centrist Democratic Leadership Conference. Bill Clinton is the DLC’s patron saint, and he was elected president after 12 years of Republican rule in large part because he was able to defuse hot-button values issues from abortion to crime to welfare. “There’s not any magic to it, nor is it terribly complicated,” says Wittmann. “We live in a fairly conservative country, and progressives have to adjust the way they present their case.”
Progressives have gotten the message. At a press conference Thursday morning, Democratic pollster Celinda Lake introduced survey findings done for NARAL Pro-Choice America that show broad support for a “values-laden pro-choice message that focuses on promoting prevention policies.” This is a long way from the abortion-on-demand calls of the early feminists. Working with Frank Greer, a political consultant who helped Bill Clinton navigate the culture wars, Lake tested a new “frame” that promotes “a culture of freedom and personal responsibility” against the “culture of life” rhetoric coming from Republicans and the White House. Invoking personal responsibility along with freedom from governmental intrusion wins 61 to 27 percent and carries every demographic group except strong Republicans and adults over 75 years of age.
The country remains divided over abortion, but the new “message frame” is a guide for Democrats in talking about the issue. Only one in ten voters (11 percent) think all abortions should be made illegal. Thirty-nine percent think abortion should be legal only in the most extreme cases, as when a woman’s life is in danger or with rape and incest. Twenty-two percent think there should be only limited regulations on abortion while another 26 percent say regulations are necessary, but abortion should be legal in most instances. That means half the voters (50 percent) are opposed to or lean against abortion while 48 percent support abortion rights. According to Kathy Bonk with the Communications Consortium, the poll numbers have been stable for the last 10 years and the courts have backed up the pro-choice side in declaring unconstitutional the more extreme measures to restrict abortion. Yet the impression persists that pro-choice positions and politicians are losing ground in America.
The irony is that Hillary delivered the exact same “common ground” speech six years ago to a NARAL convention urging a greater emphasis on pregnancy prevention through increased access to family-planning services and affordable birth control. It didn’t get nearly the attention then. As First Lady, she was restating her husband’s position that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” Bill Clinton won the presidency by defying the conventional labels. Now it’s Hillary’s turn.
With the country still divided over abortion, Dems focusing on 2008 are looking at new ways to talk about the issue.
By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
June 10, 2005
Conservatives will have to decide who they hate more in 2008, Hillary Clinton or John McCain. That’s how a veteran of the Reagan White House sizes up the current field. The religious right loathes Hillary, the presumptive Democratic nominee, and they love Virginia Sen. George Allen, an amiable, Reagan-like figure whose father once coached the Redskins.
Allen will do well in the Republican primaries, but polls will show him losing by 7 percentage points to Hillary at the same time they show McCain handily beating her. That will be the moment of truth for evangelical Christians. What they do depends on how hungry they are to win. If they go with McCain, he could ease their anxieties by choosing Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as his running mate.
Improbable, you say, but this comes from a savvy observer of the political scene. Brother Jeb is beloved among the Christian right for shepherding the case of the brain-damaged Terri Schiavo into the national spotlight, and the Bush dynasty is yearning to be established. Tucked in a New Yorker article last month on McCain was the revelation that he assured conservative activist Gary Bauer that if elected president he would nominate pro-life judges. Bush refused to make such an explicit promise, which is why Bauer endorsed McCain in the 2000 primaries.
McCain broke with the religious right over the gay-marriage amendment, but he is pro-life and has a 100 percent voting record in Congress to prove it.
The conventional wisdom in Washington right now is that choice is a loser. When the heads of several women’s groups met recently with Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean on the veranda outside his office at party headquarters, Dean exclaimed, “The debate is no longer about choice--it’s about who decides.” That wasn’t exactly a new insight, and when Dean appeared soon after on “Meet the Press” to say that he thought maybe it should be harder to get a third-trimester abortion, the women’s groups went ballistic. It’s already extremely difficult, and as a medical doctor, Dean should know that.
Dean’s comments, along with Hillary Clinton’s “common ground” speech to abortion activists in New York in January, have fueled a spate of stories about how the Democrats are rethinking their unyielding fealty to abortion rights and trying to find a more nuanced way to reach voters in the vast muddled middle who are at best ambivalent about abortion. “The great challenge for Democrats is not to be put into a cultural box,” says Marshall Wittmann of the centrist Democratic Leadership Conference. Bill Clinton is the DLC’s patron saint, and he was elected president after 12 years of Republican rule in large part because he was able to defuse hot-button values issues from abortion to crime to welfare. “There’s not any magic to it, nor is it terribly complicated,” says Wittmann. “We live in a fairly conservative country, and progressives have to adjust the way they present their case.”
Progressives have gotten the message. At a press conference Thursday morning, Democratic pollster Celinda Lake introduced survey findings done for NARAL Pro-Choice America that show broad support for a “values-laden pro-choice message that focuses on promoting prevention policies.” This is a long way from the abortion-on-demand calls of the early feminists. Working with Frank Greer, a political consultant who helped Bill Clinton navigate the culture wars, Lake tested a new “frame” that promotes “a culture of freedom and personal responsibility” against the “culture of life” rhetoric coming from Republicans and the White House. Invoking personal responsibility along with freedom from governmental intrusion wins 61 to 27 percent and carries every demographic group except strong Republicans and adults over 75 years of age.
The country remains divided over abortion, but the new “message frame” is a guide for Democrats in talking about the issue. Only one in ten voters (11 percent) think all abortions should be made illegal. Thirty-nine percent think abortion should be legal only in the most extreme cases, as when a woman’s life is in danger or with rape and incest. Twenty-two percent think there should be only limited regulations on abortion while another 26 percent say regulations are necessary, but abortion should be legal in most instances. That means half the voters (50 percent) are opposed to or lean against abortion while 48 percent support abortion rights. According to Kathy Bonk with the Communications Consortium, the poll numbers have been stable for the last 10 years and the courts have backed up the pro-choice side in declaring unconstitutional the more extreme measures to restrict abortion. Yet the impression persists that pro-choice positions and politicians are losing ground in America.
The irony is that Hillary delivered the exact same “common ground” speech six years ago to a NARAL convention urging a greater emphasis on pregnancy prevention through increased access to family-planning services and affordable birth control. It didn’t get nearly the attention then. As First Lady, she was restating her husband’s position that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” Bill Clinton won the presidency by defying the conventional labels. Now it’s Hillary’s turn.
posted by Sid Cottingham | 3:15 PM
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