Yesterday, I provided you with a list of the Democrats who voted last weekend to prohibit private health plans from covering abortion under the Stupak Amendment. There were 64 Democrats who voted for the Stupak Amendment; without their help, the Stupak Amendment could not have passed, and private health plans’ coverage of abortion would have been preserved.
You know, the 2008 Democratic Party platform reads:
The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right
to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all
efforts to weaken or undermine that right.
So the fact that 64 Democrats in a supposedly pro-choice party voted to undermine “a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay,” is already noteworthy. But wait! There’s more.
Some might try to explain away the defection of 64 Democrats from the clear policy statement of the Democratic Party Platform by talking about electoral challenges. “You see,” they might explain, “Democrats in some districts are especially vulnerable and have to vote against the Democratic Party Platform on this point because if they don’t, they could so easily lose election in 2010.”
My answers to that claim are the margins of victory claimed by each and every Democrat who voted for the Stupak Amendment:
Only 7 of the 64 Democrats who voted YES on the Stupak Amendment won election by 5 points or less.
57 of the 64 Democrats who voted YES on the Stupak Amendment won election by 10 points or more.
50 of the 64 Democrats who voted YES on the Stupak Amendment won election by 20 points or more.
38 of the 64 Democrats — MOST of the Democrats who voted YES on the Stupak Amendent — won election by 30 points or more.
13 of the 64 Democrats who voted YES on the Stupak Amendment won election by 100 points; that is, they were so strongly favored that they ran utterly unopposed.
With very, very few exceptions, the Democratic members of the House of Representatives
…who voted for the Stupak Amendment
…who voted to prohibit private health care plans from covering abortion
…who voted to restrict women’s safe and affordable access to legal abortion
…who turned their back on the declared platform of the Democratic Party
won their most recent election by huge margins.
These Democratic members of Congress can’t hide behind electoral necessity for their vote. They are personally accountable for their decision. And to the extent that the Democratic Party rank and file believe in the plank of the Democratic Party Platform of 2008 that declares…
The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right
to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all
efforts to weaken or undermine that right.
… then the Democratic Party rank and file should feel perfectly comfortable finding some different, more pro-choice candidates to run for election in those districts in 2010. Those wide margins of victory suggest that it is possible to find more progressive candidates and still win districts. And if Democratic Party leaders pooh-pooh the idea, then Democratic Party rank and file should print out this post and shove it in their leadership’s face.
This is what primaries are for. Anybody up for a primary?
I am working through the list calling and thanking each one personally for a job well done…
Well, of course you are, as is your democratic right. My first question is whether others will bother to counter you with their voices. My second question is whether you’ll exercise similar diligence in responding to those Biblical contradictions as you pledged to do months ago.
Thanks for this illuminating bit of research. Besides this bit of cow-towing to campaign-funders afraid of the anti-choice tyrants, “pro-peace” Dems vote for pro-war funding and “populists” vote to bail out bank-robbing bankers. Once their snouts are in the trough, Democrat or Republican, only a crowbar seems to get them out. So what’s that crowbar going to have to be?
These statistics are staggering; I note that of the 64, I could identify by name only 2 women. Since when did Democratic party decide that it should be men determining that it is only men who control what happens to women’s bodies and lives? It feels like we are living in Afganistan or Saudi Arabia or Nicaraga or Italy – in short, in any country that is controlled by men who use fundamentalistj, patriarchial religion as a means of controlling women, their bodies and their behavior – their very sense of themselves and their thinking – and thus our mutual future. The best means of population control and upward economic growth is to allow women education and control over their bodies. As persons knowledgeable of our planet’s current challenges understand, this tragic and horrific mind set of men (and of the women entrapped by this ‘Stockholm syndrome’) leads to future planet-wide catastrophe. To return to this current issue, why haven’t the Dems enabled more women officeholders?
Geri, if you think the answer is just to elect more women, I think you need to look at all the women on the Republican side, like Michele Bachmann.
My thought is that none of these ‘CANDIDATES’ should receive any mony from the Democratic National Committee for having broken from the ranks in such a rankling way. Perhaps they’d rather be Republicans — or, shall I say re-Publicans (turn them back to running taverns and other public entertainments if they’d rather have
a party than do principled legislating.
I’m thinking I will send money to anyone who runs against these folks, no matter their party. I hope FireDogLake and Blue America make it easy to donate to their opponents.