Roll Over and Die

Over at The Poor Man, The Editors have been throwing out desperate options for rescuing the Democratic Party. The latest is to abandon the pro-choice platform, on the assumption that the Republicans will never really be able to outlaw abortion completely.

...but this would never work, right? We'd just be Republicans lite, and why would anybody want that when they can have the real thing? Well, that's just the thing - the Republicans have no real interest in outlawing abortion. Republicans have an interest in making an incremental approach to a total ban one which
never reaches conclusion, because once abortion is outlawed, where is the need to vote Republican? (snip)

If this is such a key issue for Democrats, why did we stay home on Tuesday and lose the Presidency to a guy who has all but announced his intent to ban it? (snip)

But we need to make tactical maneuver here. The Democratic coalition - women, minorities, labor, environmental, etc. - has been losing ground nationally for decades. The world is changing, and we need to adapt, or die out.

My response in his comments sections was this:

"Editors, I love your work, but fuck that shit.I'm not dying out and nobody I know is, either. Sitting around writing miserable screeds about how something that can fatally affect half the population is jettisonable from our concerns isn't going to do a damned thing except give more despair to the despairing. We have 40 years of catching up to do, to make the kinds of inroads the Republican right has made, 40 years of publishing books and establishing think tanks and setting up college auxiliaries and learning how to pull the bristly, fractionated elements of the Dems together. What made you think it would happen this year, after only the first time in memory that progressives fought the way Republicans have fought for decades? After Goldwater lost, his people didn't say, "Oh, gosh, I guess we'll never get the country to accept our crazy-assed ideas, might as well get behind civil rights and separation of church and state." They stuck to their ideals and fought, and they didn't give up because it didn't happen in the next 5 years. It's only now that their initial visions are beginning to be realized, and they still have a long way to go.We need to learn to build coalitions, and influence public thought. What we DON'T need is to eat our own."

We need to know where that bright line is, and defend it. That has been one of our greatest weaknesses.