The New Republic this week has a profile of sorts of the leading Dem presidential contenders in Iowa. Using an appearance before NARAL, it argues that all of them are shamelessly pandering to traditional Democratic constituencies:
So when the six Democratic presidential candidates spoke before a core Democratic interest group, NARAL Pro-Choice America, Tuesday night, one question that hung in the air of the Omni Shoreham ballroom was, which Democrat would “Sister Souljah” NARAL? The answer was nobody….As an aide to one candidate explained, the NARAL event was “box-checking.” There remains an iron triangle of Democratic constituencies–blacks, labor, pro-choice women–whom every candidate must appease during the primaries. Tuesday night, the six Democrats dutifully checked the abortion box.
What I don’t get is what Ryan Lizza expects the Democrats to get by speaking against abortion rights. In no way will the anti-abortion crowd give them their vote - ever. And while the last governer’s debate in Massachusetts showed that parental consent is still a political hot wire, I don’t sense a groundswell of moderates’ concern for “partial birth”/late-term abortions.
Besides, maybe most of the want-to-be candidates weren’t pandering - maybe they do believe in women’s abortion rights with the same sincerity that Bush and the Republic Party believes in fetal rights. There are complicated reasons why those political and cultural positions line up the way they do, but just because one might wish for a different kind of candidate (e.g. pro-life Democrat or environmentalist Republican) doesn’t mean that politicians are always pandering (though of course they do pander) or that blacks, pro-choice women and organized labor compose an iron triangle. (Josh Marshall has an excellent dissection of the notion that only white voters really matter). Careful political analysis should pay attention to the times that politicians say things for calculated reasons or to the times when they do things simply because someone contributes to their campaign, but it’s just as interesting to examine the way opportunity, ideology and/or lobbying can seamlessly intertwine.
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