The DNC and abortion

The DNC under Tom Perez has officially embraced abortion rights as a central tenet of the party, promising to only support Democratic candidates who support a woman's right to choose.

There has been a fair bit of talk about this, and controversy, even from Democrats who support abortion rights themselves, saying that ideological purity tests will alienate potential voters and weaken Democrats who hold office in traditionally red areas like the south. There is something to that, along with gun rights and oppressing homosexuals, abortion is one of those issues that for many people are important enough that they will vote entirely based on it. Perez and the DNC are taking a risk here to be sure, but it isn't as great a risk as one might think.

Does anyone really think the DNC is prone to making its decisions out of a rush of emotion? No this is a calculated move to increase enthusiasm from the base, the election taught us that states we thought were safe are in fact quite the opposite, and one of the reasons for that is enthusiasm, Democratic turnout was about in line with the last election, but Republican turnout was up, and as always, the demographic that stayed home the most was young people, not coincidentally this is also the demographic that is overwhelmingly in favor of the right to choose.

I don't hold with the idea that the Democratic party needs to compromise its views to appease the conservatives, it is that logic that has hurt turnout and their representation for the last twenty odd years, sure the organization is not known for bold stances and so on, but perhaps it is about time they did, the GOP has absolutely no issue with embracing positions that take away rights from millions, I don't feel like it should be a stretch for their opposite numbers to do otherwise.

So what if the party loses people like Heath Mello, the mayoral candidate who prompted this? Honestly I see no great loss there, for one if he breaks with the party then they can primary him, for two if he still gets elected then it doesn't really hurt the Democrats, unless he changes all his views to fall in line with the GOP, a party that imposes rather more in the way of purity tests, then he will still be voting with the Democrats more often than not, all the DNC loses is being tied to someone with a view directly opposed to their platform, oh well.

Politics is so frequently about compromise, and one of the things preventing many from participating in the democratic process is that they feel like candidates can and do say anything to be elected without actually being accountable to those promises once they are, we are certainly seeing that in the White House right now, and if you think that won't hurt their turnout in a year or two then I don't know what to tell you. A party drawing a line in the sand on an issue and saying "We support this, and we don't support those who don't, end of story." is probably going to be immensely reassuring to voters.

The DNC has a fair bit of ways to go before you can truly call it anything approaching a progressive organization, and this step is a very calculated one with in view, and I assume theirs, very little risk. Ideally we'll see similar pronouncements on things like finance and criminal justice. I mean, we won't, but ideally we would. But this is still a good first step, and if it pays off it can lead the way to other steps like it.