Liberals Ready to Abandon Abortion as an Issue

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What you have to remember is that any decision like this is made out of some pretty cold electoral calculation. If the Democrats drop abortion as an issue they obvious reckon that there's more votes to be gained (sorry, regained) out of it than votes that'd be lost due to it.
Political geography plays a role too; a vote in (say) Southeast Ohio is worth more than a vote in (say) suburban New York.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It gets quite quirky because virtually every poll shows that between 55-60% believe abortion should be always or mostly legal,

There's a big, big differance between "always legal" and "mostly legal"

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Insofar as Roe v Wade is understood by the bulk of the population to mean that "abortion isn't illegal" then that's certainly true and that if it were to be overturned then all abortions would be illegal, then that's almost certainly true.

Mind you, letting Roe v Wade get overturned could produce a backlash against the court, the Republican party etc. something that would be benificial to the Democratic party.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

By and large I guess that'd be true... although there'd be less ticket splitting Republicans. Mind you that's lopping at most 1 to 2 points of the Democratic Presidential vote in New York, something that isn't worth losing sleep over.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

But I think most of the country would rather that the issue cooled off or died away. This is the problem when Judges legislate from the Bench... if an abortion law had been passed by Congress making it legal for (lets say) 25 weeks or something like that, it wouldn't be such a bile filled issue.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

From a political point of view, the Democrats should hope that Roe v. Wade is overturned.  Doing so would return the issue to the State legilslatures and would give them an issue with which to win them more than they would lose.  In patricular the Dems would likely gain complete control of the State Houses in Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota,  Nevada, New York, Oregon,  and could pick the lower House in Indiana.  The only States where it would be likely to hurt Democratic control or partial control are Montana and North Carolina.

There may be reasons for the Dems to filibuster Bush's nominee, but a narrow litmus test on this issue is not one of them.

Exactly. Nowt like a carefully engineered backlash is there?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

They'll say goodbye to NH,

Perhaps

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Nope. Those two are all about turnout. Perhaps the Democrats would lose some of their edge. Perhaps.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

You're funny

You must be logged in to read this quote.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

No... it's about 20%. Most people support restrictions of some kind. Most people would like this issue to go away.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Wrong

You must be logged in to read this quote.

So someone that thinks Roe v Wade should be overturned is a "bigot"?
Wow. What leaps of logic where required to produce that seemingly insane statement, Archer?

Is being called a "bigot" by a social darwinist a compliment, btw?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Legal in All cases 20%, Legal in Most Caes 36%, illegal in most cases 27%, always illegal 14%  Legal in all or most cases 56%, illegal in most or all cases 41%

You can spin that as a 56/41 split if you like... but there's a huge difference between "mostly legal" and "always legal" int there?
You can also spin that as a 77/20 split (restrictions or no restrictions).
Statistics are fun, no?

Alternatively instead of trying to polarise people for no good reason you can have a 20/63/14 split

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Their is a much bigger difference between mostly legal and mostly illegal.

Legally perhaps. Morally... no. Not really. See... that's the problem with the abortion debate; been mentioned by several posters before that there's really *two* debates going on.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Bottom line is that the overwhelming majority of Americans are moderate on the abortion issue

[Filuwaúrdjan]

STOP WITH THE REDSTATEBLUESTATE CRAP OR I WILL KILL YOU ALL

Thank you