How To Save Abortion Rights

I’m with TaosJohn, basically. I’m sure there are people who will do that, and I’ll cheer them on, but I think the rest of us unterbussen just don’t have the spare resources to invest in Versailles if we’re going to save anything from the wreckage. I could be proved wrong, of course, but, step 1: “We admitted we were powerless over the legacy parties.”

It doesn’t need a dem challenger. I serious third party has a chance now of pulling enough votes to cost him the second term. The real question is: do we want to give the rethugs 2 to three SCOTUS appointments. That would be the biggest cost of sabotaging Obama.

“crying amongst women” – yes, and where are the men? who stands with us? why are men so willing to turn away and call it “women’s problem” rather than a HUMAN concern, which it is? Seriously, your phrase nails it. Why the deafening silence?

awesome, spoke too soon, just feeling alone in my freaked out liberal womanhood right now, I guess you understand.

Yes, I do want to give the Republicans two to three SCOTUS appointments. I have counted on the Democrats to protect abortion rights since I was a teenager. They have failed miserably. They can’t threaten me with the loss of Roe any longer — not after what they’ve done now.

You called? 🙂

I, um, really don’t think that a Draft Clinton plan makes any sense. HRC has thrown in her lot with Obama, and the bulk of the elected federal party has voted for the bill, and it is done. Her denials of interest do matter: the Draft Clinton movement you propose would have all the credibility of PUMA, and it’s leaders would be PUMAs or well-known crypto-PUMAs.

The most straightforward way to save abortion rights is the most straightforward way: unelect Democrats who are unduly influenced by the Catholic episcopate, primarily—along with the Protestant right, but they seem to be less organized. There’s a reason why he’s called Bishop Stupak at FDL.

If you can’t unelect these now very obvious congressional Democrats AND replace them with pro-choice Democrats, then you then have to ask why. I suspect the most obvious answer is that their electorates are either ignorant of or comfortable with the religious-hierarchical influence.

There’s no Constitutional reason why this should have happened this way.

Ian, you had it right the first time, leave the United States. The only problem is that you can’t move away from the environmental damage that we will continue to do to the planet.

Ian. *shakes head* I know you’re disappointed at this outcome, but calm down for a moment. Everyone would believe a Hillary denial. Who could possibly think that Hillary would be so dumb as to think she’d survive a challenge to Obama and obtain the presidency in 2012 or 2016 or 2020 for that matter? Even if she managed to unseat him for a Republican, everyone except people who’ve seriously drunk the PUMA juice, people at whom everyone laughs behind their hands, knows that the party would destroy her and execrate her name forever and ever.

So everyone would believe that denial, and she’d be embarassed even to have to make it.

You labour under a delusion that the American media AND public sees the world the way you do.

They do not. Regardless of whether they like the bill.

Fuck Hillary draft Liz Warren like Taibbi suggested. As for me it’s third party and the Hell with the consequences. I think it will have to get a lot worse before enough Americans get mad enough to force substantial change.

par4 – I’m with you there, absolutely.

Vast left, yeah that was great. I do follow your work on correntwire. Good stuff!!!

Too late for Hillary (assuming for the sake of the argument there was ever a time). The Dems are rotten all the way through. That’s what the spectacle of Kucinich actually whipping for the bill on the House floor should show anyone with open eyes. When the blight gets this bad, the only thing to do is rip up the plants and make sure they don’t get in the compost. Or walk away.

* * *
What on earth can Mandos mean by “crypto-PUMAs”? Is that the kind of PUMA you need a magic decoder ring to understand?

And what, exactly, are we referring to with the term PUMA? Is it limited to Clinton supporters from the primaries who were never happy with Obama’s nomination, or does it include everyone who doesn’t say “Napolean Obama The Party is always right!”?

Just curious, because i’ve never liked or trusted the Clintons but party unity for the sake of unity, well, my ass…even if i’ve never been registered in either legacy party.

What on earth can Mandos mean by “crypto-PUMAs”? Is that the kind of PUMA you need a magic decoder ring to understand?

The very same. The kind of decoder one apparently used to find in cereal boxes, or so I’m told.

That’s the interesting thing. Why would Ian even bother to propose a strategy to unseat Obama in 2012? Or even put pressure on him? I thought everyone* believed Obama was toast because of this bill.

*Comparatively few people.

Clinton? How about an actual liberal?

Lyndon Johnson sacrificed the Presidency for a generation but got civil rights passed. It was a knowing choice. Obama may have sacrificed the Presidency for a generation for this terrible bill. It ‘s a really bad bargain for which we will all suffer.

Remember the post-Watergate bumperstickers: “Don’t blame me, I’mm from Massachussetts” . Well, “Don’t blame me, I voted Green” may become pretty popular.

I’m sure this idea will be met with scorn, but I believe we should get together with Ron Paul’s coalition. Sure, Ron Paul has some screwy ideas, but so does Hillary Clinton: Paul doesn’t believe in permanent war, but Hillary does, as her anti-Iran rhetoric makes clear. Paul believes in the free market, but he also believes the corporations are on their own, with no bail-outs and breaks from the taxpayers. Hillary said that “lobbyists are people, too,” and said they would have a seat at the table.
I think a left/right coalition is the best answer to the corporate Democratic party. It would absolutely put fear into the DLC.

heya, lambert! back during the early discussion at violet’s on whether the nascent party should be leftist women + other leftists or leftist women + other women, i voted for the latter. my faith in leftist dudes is not even the size of a mustard seed.

Bwah-haha. Boo-hoo-hoo.
No rights got thrown under any busses.
So what will the whining women do?
Vote for republickers who WOULD take their rights?
I doubt it.

Stupak got exactly what Kucinich got: squat.
The executive order is meaningless.
They both got the chance not to get squashed like bugs in November and they took it. Happily. Stupak’s kabuki poisoned his brand among his non-animal constituents and he needed to save face somehow. Obama gave him that.

Time to move to Ron Paul.

“So what will the whining women do?”

Stay classy, Democrats!

TW,

On her entire fucking career and her voting record = all of which is to Obama’s left. Way to his left.

Don’t mistake your ignorance of her liberal credentials for a lack of liberal credentials. Just because you drank the Obama-era Koolaid about how conservative Clinton is, doesn’t mean she’s conservative. it means you didn’t bother to educate yourself.

Lets be clear, Clinton is not ideologically radically different than Obama. Where they differ is in testicles, as in Obama has none and Hillary’s are bigger than Bill’s. But even that’s not really accurate. Obama-Rahma knows how to whip, just not for the right things.

I firmly believe Hillary would have done the work of her corporate masters, just like Obama, but I just don’t see her giving away the silverware, the kitchen sink and even the crumbs on the table to do it (i.e. reimportation of pharmaceuticals, Medicare drug negotiation, ERISA waiver, waiting until 2014, etc.)

Perhaps its because she’s a smarter politician. Perhaps its because she’s an actual policy-wonk. Or perhaps its because she doesn’t have cult-like status and therefore would feel pressured to, you know, deliver something more than a pretty speech and baseless claims of “reform” and “change.”

Whatever it is it definitely would have resulted in something better.

Thank you, Vastleft, for putting the anti-PUMA crowd in perspective. They remind me of nothing so much as the wingnuts who dismiss anyone who was against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or against anything like torture and end of habeas and domestic spying that BushCheney (and now Obama) were for. We are not “serious” -mostly cuz we were right – but apparently not for the right reasons. *eye rollz*
&4WIW, I have no love or illusions about Hillary. My support for her as the 2nd worst Dem (I overestimated Edwards) was mostly disgust for Obama who showed his true self almost from the his announcement, but no one would believe the obvious.
The point of draft Hillary is to weaken Obama. Once he’s weak enough, who knows, maybe someone even better than Hillary could be emboldened to run too (Alan Grayson, PLEAZE run!).

I like this idea, even though it’s unrealistic. I do think it is funny that the people who most embraced Obama because the Clinton’s were quasi-Republicans have to wake up to the fact that Obama is not only to the Right of Hillary but to the Right of Bill. Hehehe.

Like lambert, I’m done with both parties. I was a staunch Hillary supporter in the primary and still admire her, but our foreign policy is such a mind-bogglind disaster, and that’s the one area where I do not trust her–or any mainstream pol, from either party–so I can’t support her, either. We need a break, a radical break from the status quo. For my small part, I will proudly vote Green in the next presidential election–as I did in the last one.

And anonymous, Grayson is just as awful as Kucinich, Weiner, Feingold, and all the other big-talking quick-caving “progressive heroes” who yack a good game and utterly fail to back it up with action. Or worse, crawl abjectly back for more and more abuse as Kucinich did.

It’s hard to face up to the knowledge that these people are con men and liars when they talk such a good game–hey, I supported Edwards before Hillary, and up until his latest cave I thought Kucinich was one of the good guys. Ha! Yes, they will let you down every time and it’s hard to take one more betrayal, but it’s the only way to start fresh. Acknowledge that each one of them is a lying, vicious, evil con man and turn your back on them without a moment’s regret.

Coming from an Obama supporter this is comedy gold.

Who said I was an Obama supporter? He’s a mediocre corrupt technocrat like all the rest of them.

He was, however, elected.

What Lori said!

And then what Lori said.

And what Lori finally said.

Dancing Opossum is pretty smart, too!

In my humble opinion, Hillary Clinton was the smartest wonk to have run for POTUS is my (very long) lifetime. She is also a human being. And a leader. And a great women, too.

I was proudly an original PUMA and as far as I am concerned, my former political party can go f*ck itself.

mandos, you are an idiot. PUMA is simply a group of people who were right all along about what a dud Obama is and pissed that the party stole their votes.
Get over the fact that you have a penis already.

Keep it up, Lori!!!!

Amen to that. And to Teresa’s description of why I was/am a Puma (in the very best sense of that phrase).

I don’t doubt that Madame Secretary is fairly liberal on domestic issues…though her association with the former president of NAFTA and welfare reform could lead to questions on that front (that’s not exactly her fault, i realize).

My problem with her was on foreign policy. She’s a first-degree hawk. And her Senate votes in favor of wonderful, humane toys like clusterbombs and anti-personnel mines bother me. Sure, i knew that Obama probably wouldn’t be any better on foreign policy. I’ve never suffered from the delusion that i’d see a competent – non warmongering – foreign policy president in my lifetime.

But for the record, i voted “none of the above” in my faux primary. Not because i wanted to vote for Obama, but because i really wanted to vote for “none of the above”. I never voted for Bill. Wrote in Frank Zappa in ’92 and voted World Workers Party in ’96 because it nominated two women.

Wow, y’all really love me now. It may surprise some people to know that I actually think HRC might well have been a better president than Obama had she actually won—and I’ve said this before. HOWEVER, she’s no FDR: she is a supporter—in perfect agreement with Obama—on the two biggest things that have led the American ship of state awry. Those are the Americanist foreign policy orthodoxy and the neoliberal trade orthodoxy. Does anybody have any evidence to the contrary? She is Secretary of State, she is almost the physical embodiment of these things.

Almost everything else is merely an aftereffect or emanation of the imbalances caused by these two things. Yes, even this health care bill! That is why she is a conservative, and why a Clinton II presidency would not have ended up all that differently.

It’s funny, though, that people are loudly declaiming how wrong I am all the time at precisely a moment when it turns out I was actually right. Anyway, the real test is Nov 2010 and Nov 2012. I admit I had grown a bit doubtful about *this* Nov, but now I am doubting that doubt.

What makes PUMA and fellow-travellers ridiculous is not their love for Hillary, which is hardly worse than the Obama Fan Base. The list of what is wrong with them is pretty long, starting with a loudly chanted belief that adherence to procedure is undemocratic, and ending with a pathetic projection of their aspirations onto a Hillary who clearly doesn’t want to have anything to do with it. Somehow, saying this has something to do with penis.

Unfortunately for Ian’s thesis in this post, it is not the case that the American population is anything like PUMA—otherwise the proposed strategy might actually work. In fact, “Versailles”/”The Village” is just a little more representative of the American population than many people here would care to admit.

The American Revolution 2.0: If all you can think of is a savior, everything will look like does.

i don’t know if it is specifically clinton which would constitute the gravest threat. i do agree wholeheartedly with your premise.

without a serious challenge, the drift of current will be toward complacency.

Thanks, Marsha!! Lke all PUMAs you rock…And Lori is an amazing font of information.

“The list of what is wrong with them is pretty long, starting with a loudly chanted belief that adherence to procedure is undemocratic”

Again, comedy gold. Like myiq2xu said, you really need your own MSNBC show.

“I know Ron Paul is anti-abortion, but didn’t the “pro-choice” President just sign an anti-abortion Executive Order?”

Indeed, Disenfranchised. I find myself in close agreement with Ron Paul’s foreign policy, much more than I do with any Dem. And right now that policy is rather urgent, given our endless wars, bloodthirsty imperialism, and support of fanatical genocidal regimes the world over. And maybe ending those things would fix a lot of our domestic problems, too.

Clinton is somewhat more liberal than Obama on domestic issues, but it’s very hard under any circumstances no matter how propitious to imagine her challenging Obama in 2012. Apart from the inherent difficulties involved she seems to be a real team player. They’re joined at the hip on Af-Pak and other foreign policy issues. I don’t see a primary challenge happening and certainly not from HRC.

“Right now, I just don’t see enough of the established Democrats going along with it, and the rank and file progressives aren’t going to be a big force on her behalf, whether she deserves that support or not.”

I agree.