Posts Tagged ‘Democrats’
Uncover (the Truth About) Abortion Coverage to End the Deceptive Health Reform Dance
I wrote this commentary for The Daily Beast–please go there to comment and share too!
I felt that it was way past time for someone to call out the cynical politicians who won’t vote for health reform under any circumstances but are using women’s bodies as a rallying cry to whip up the anti-choice right. Shamefully, President Obama and most of the Democrats are dancing to their tune, and will continue to unless we voters speak out and insist that abortion and other reproductive health care is covered fairly along with other basic medical care.
They named it “The Abortion-Controversy Hoax.” Probably a better, shorter title than mine.
It’s September. Congress will soon return to tackle health care reform, and I can’t help but notice a familiar political two-step. If you want to see whether a politician–Democrat or Republican–can cut a rug, just ask him or her about abortion. They’ll swing around faster than Tom DeLay on Dancing With the Stars.
Partisans on the right mobbed town halls during the August recess to exploit abortion and women’s health, whipping up controversy around President Obama’s health reform plan. Twisted logic and deliberate misinformation abound in a YouTube ad campaign by the Family Research Council, which, along with other anti-choice groups, also launched a paid media blitz claiming Obama’s health reform plan would pull Granny’s plug while covering abortion—ignoring that most of us grannies want to make advance directives and would be quite grateful if our health plans covered the service.
Meanwhile, Democrats were doing a dance of their own and, without Senator Ted Kennedy to lead them toward their higher principles, tried unsuccessfully to waltz away from the hot-button issue with the Blue Dogs to whom they owe their souls and their majority. No wonder voters are increasingly questioning Obama’s plan.
Read MoreCome to the Party of the Future
Ralph Waldo Emerson had great sayings about almost everything, but this one describes the 2008 elections as well as any political pundit has done in almost two years worth of blathering: There are always two parties, the party of the past and the party of the Future; the Establishment and the Movement… This principle is…
Read MoreWill the Long National Nightmare Be Over?
I early-voted in Arizona a couple of weeks ago. It was almost like praying. I spent a long time on the ballot, which was quite extensive–in Arizona as in many Western states there’s always a raft of ballot initiatives to consider, and judges though appointed initially must be retained in office by a vote of…
Read MoreWomen Take Talmudic Advice, Organize for the Change They Believe In
The Talmud offers this advice, which I have often cited tongue-in-cheek as a metaphor for leadership in times of crisis, especially when it fell to me to figure out what the heck to do about it: “Where there are no men, strive thou to be a man.” A number of women I know are taking…
Read MoreNO WAY, NO HOW, NO McCAIN: HILLARY, THE DESIGNATED ADULT
Her orange pantsuit might be a Glamour magazine “don’t”, but like every word Hillary spoke last night during her moment at the Democratic National Convention, it was so right, so Hillary.
Her once-ridiculed pantsuit is part of the Hillary brand now, like Barry Goldwater’s thick-rimmed black glasses, Winston Churchill’s smelly cigars, Joe Biden’s train tickets.
Standing sharp against the cobalt blue DNC backdrop in the organgest pantsuit I ever saw, Clinton paid tribute to her “sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits”. It was a moment of feminist humor and a nod to the fact that she was today truly, completely, and finally ceding the Democratic nomination to her former chief rival, Barack Obama.
Read MoreWhat’s Up to the Women?
It’s the quintessential difference between Republicans and Democrats. I don’t mean beliefs or legislative platform. I mean their ability to coalesce around a candidate and move forward expeditiously to get him or her elected.
Super Tuesday came and went without a resolution to who will be the Democrats’ standard bearer, while John McCain’s ascent to front-runner status was aided by the Republicans’ winner-take-all-delegates primary rules. The Democrats–we both love then and hate them for this characteristic–are more, well, democratic. So they have a complex if not downright Byzantine, proportional formula for awarding delegates to their nominating conventions.
Which brings me to the importance of women in this election this year. Check out the state-by-state breakdown in Women’s e-News today. Women are the majority in the population, even more so the majority of voters because a larger percentage of women then men actually cast votes. And this year, the intersection of race and gender has made the breakdown of how women cast their votes more volatile than ever, as African American women–a pivotal Democratic constituency–are choosing to vote for Barack Obama in epic proportions, as high as 80%.
Read MoreHeadline as Haiku
The headline summed it up so accurately it made my teeth hurt: “Republican Unity Trumps Democratic Momentum.”
Robert Pear and Carl Hulse wrote the article that sums up Congressional Democrats’ 2007 accomplishments, or lack of them, in the New York Times, December 21. But whoever wrote that headline gets my vote for the Pulitzer. In fewer syllables than a classic haiku, he or she described perfectly the essence of American politics since the extreme right has held sway over the Republican Party.
The Democrats might have better ideas and public opinion on their side right now, but the Republicans–even when they’re in the minority—still run strategic circles around them.
Read MoreWhat Does the Election Mean?
WHAT A DIFFERENCE A VOTE MAKES—BUT WILL IT?
So now President Bush wants to cooperate. Now he wants to reach across the aisle. Now he wants to work together with the Democrats, finally to show he can be that “uniter not divider” of his 2000 campaign promises. That perhaps he isn’t even the sole decider of everything after all. What? Why would any Democrat in his or her right mind give this man the time of day?
Bush puffed and preened and bared his teeth before the election. But once he “got thumped”, as he put it, all that puffery deflated in a nanosecond just like you might see with any other bully. Rummy (who could do no wrong 24 hours previously) was shown the door the day after the elections, Congresswoman and probable next Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi–taunted throughout the election season as the very personification of liberal, liberal, liberal evil–was invited to lunch at the White House, and the president allowed as how he wants to work with the same Democrats he’s been wringing out and hanging up to dry for the last 6 years. And all too often, they have been complicit in their humiliation.
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